Internet is dying - diagnostics

[Oliver Grawert]

hi,
Am Montag, den 30.10.2017, 19:44 -0500 schrieb Doug:
> As I sent in a previous post: Mint 17-3  long term on a Dell laptop 
> works right out of the box with the Broadcom wifi board.
> If they can do it, and of course, Windows can do it, then any Linux
> can 
> do it, if they want to. Perhaps they are too damned stubborn,
> because some "non-free" software is involved. I think this is
> obscene!

As an american, using a distribution with included mp3 decoding without
license from fraunhofer could have (theoretically) put you in jail
until april 2017 ... [1]

The only way around that would have been to:

 - buy a license (which canonical did for ubuntu)
 - to exclude it to not put your users at risk (the debian way)
 - to simply ignore that fact and just include it, assuming your 
   users know they are not allowed to use that software in their 
   country (like mint does) and not distributing it from a country 
   where that law applies.

If you want your distro to be used in professional environments
(offices, server rooms) point 3 is indeed not an option ...

Different countries have different copyright, patent and "piracy" laws,
a distro consists of many software packages and if you want your distro
to be fully legal in all countries (and also provide mirrors in these
countries) you need to exclude some bits or buy licenses on behalf of
your users ... 

If you want to complain about obscenity, complain to the lawmakers of
such countries or to the vendors of such non-free software,
distributors are on the same level victims of this as you are ;)

ciao
	oli

[1] http://www.i-programmer.info/news/181-algorithms/10750-mp3-free-at-
last.html
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