[wplug] SuSE Confusion

[Patrick Wagstrom]

On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 19:44 -0400, Gentgeen wrote:
> On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 19:12:30 -0400
> "Robert E. Coutch" <robert.coutch at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
> > All this talk about installing an updated distro got me 
> > thinking..................
> > 
> > Is there a distro things like MPlayer and Rosegarden on the CD's?
> > I don't mean a crippled version of Mplayer.

The reason why no distro ships these is because they can't legally be
shipped to many countries, specifically the United States.  Many of the
algorithms for things like mp3's are covered by patents.  Using MPlayer
with the Win32 codecs is in violation of the license agreements for
those codecs.  DeCSS is in violation of the DMCA because it circumvents
a protection device.  The list goes on.

That being said, there's ways for every distro to get them.
Ubuntu/Debian has multiverse and Marillat's repository, fedora has the
fedora extras, etc.  Most decent distros have a way to stay up to date
with these (apt, yum, up2date, etc).  But just because you can doesn't
make it legal.

Of course a Gentoo fan will use this chance to point out that of course
Gentoo lets you do that.  Of course, you're still breaking the law,
violating patents, international agreements, and a handful of other
issues.

Such is the way things are.

--Patrck