8.0 problems.

[Darrell Shandrow]

Hi Janina,

Well, I know why RH dropped MP3 support; the format is no longer an open
standard, but has been patented and licensing fees are being charged to
application developers who wish to support that format.  At least, that's my
understanding of the issues surrounding MP3.  But, well, RH really doesn't
care about open-source principles, do they?  I'd like to see someone in
authority at RH come on here, or in another even more public forum, and
explain some of their actions with respect to overly restricting blind
people who wish to purchase and access their RHCE training materials and
take their exams...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Janina Sajka" <janina at rednote.net>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, October 06, 2002 10:28 AM
Subject: Re: 8.0 problems.


> Adam, I don't understand you. On the one hand you criticize RH for being
loose about their approach to the GPL and
> fiddling with kernel settings. Of course, the GPL does allow this. You do
know that, right? Then, in the next sentence
> you criticize them for dropping MPEG support because of Fraunhoffer's
recent patent rumblings. Isn't that adherence to
> the GPL?
>
> So, what's your problem? You want strict interpretation? Or not?
>
> Seems to me you can't have it both ways, logically speaking. Not that
anyone needs to be logical, I guess. But, I don't
> understand the principles you seem to be trying to espouse here. What are
they, exactly?
>
> Adam Myrow writes:
> > From: Adam Myrow <amyrow at midsouth.rr.com>
> >
> > On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, Geoff Shang wrote:
> >
> > > I've been absent from the list for awhile.  What is this hz thing and
why
> > > has redhat messed with it?  Presumably it provides some kind of
improvement
> > > in someone'se opinion.
> >
> > Typical of Redhat.  There release notes say it is supposed to provide
> > better performance and using a value of 100 is a throw-back to the 386
> > days.  I don't know how they changed it unless it involved modifying the
> > source.  I really didn't like a lot of what I read in the Redhat 8.0
> > release notes.  For example, they dropped mpg321 and all MP3 support
> > because MP3 is patented.  Yes, we all know the problems with patents on
> > software, but this is getting ridiculous.  Ogg hasn't caught on yet, and
> > until it does, there needs to be some support for MP3.  Another thing I
> > didn't like is the statement that Lilo is obsolete and will be removed
in
> > the next version of Redhat.  Nobody else is using Grub, and I seem to
> > remember that the web site states that it is not ready for production
use.
> > I don't like how Redhat seems to be trying to appeal to idiots by saying
> > that they are on the cutting edge when what they are really doing is
> > dropping features that every other distribution of Linux treats as
> > standard.  Still, despite all this, I am curious about redhat 8.0 and
hope
> > to eventually find a mirror that isn't tied up to download it and play
> > with it.  Especially since it has Gnome 2 and perhaps I can do some
> > alpha/beta testing on Gnopernikus.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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>
> --
>
> Janina Sajka, Director
> Technology Research and Development
> Governmental Relations Group
> American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
>
> Email: janina at afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175
>
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