The codecs are open source. However, quite a few of them are patent encumbered (making them illegal to distribute in countries that honor software patents), and libdvdcss is a DMCA lawsuit waiting to happen.
New to this whole "FOSS" thing? When someone says they don't want to run non-free software, what they really mean is that their distribution/operating system should wave its hand and make all the bad stuff go away.
RMS's main beef with Debian is the optional non-free archive. That, and kernel firmwares which Debian might get rid of some time after Etch ships. That being said, RMS did sponsor Debian in its salad days and I think the FSF still uses it internally.
That is true, but many of the GNU components (except for the development stuff) has been pretty static the last few years, and even gcc does what it was set out to do. Cutting Novell off from updates would be fairly bad, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.
He's traditionally handed off the stable kernels, not the development ones (the "point" releases are handled by Greg KH).
Of course, it would be fairly interesting to see what could actually break 2.6 enough to force a 2.7 line.
In the interests of fairness, about 20 or so of those 37 bugfix releases were done after 2.6.17 was released as stable (2.6.16 is still being maintained as a "super-stable" type kernel).
Bugfix releases pretty much seem to be a non-issue, considering that most people are going to be using the kernel provided with the distribution, as opposed to a vanilla one.
2.6 was under consideration, from what I understand. Probably something to do with the eleventy billion 'stable' releases every couple of days. Slack 11 includes a 2.6.16.27 kernel in extras (ie, on the install disk), and a 2.6.17.8 kernel in/testing, so I really don't think it's a big deal.
Slashdot Mirror
The codecs are open source. However, quite a few of them are patent encumbered (making them illegal to distribute in countries that honor software patents), and libdvdcss is a DMCA lawsuit waiting to happen.
New to this whole "FOSS" thing? When someone says they don't want to run non-free software, what they really mean is that their distribution/operating system should wave its hand and make all the bad stuff go away.
Feisty is supposed to be including proprietary drivers by default to get AIGLX/Beryl working from the start.
RMS's main beef with Debian is the optional non-free archive. That, and kernel firmwares which Debian might get rid of some time after Etch ships. That being said, RMS did sponsor Debian in its salad days and I think the FSF still uses it internally.
That is true, but many of the GNU components (except for the development stuff) has been pretty static the last few years, and even gcc does what it was set out to do. Cutting Novell off from updates would be fairly bad, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.
While stable may not be particularly bleeding-edge, it is still very dynamic, which is the point of the author's grief.
He's traditionally handed off the stable kernels, not the development ones (the "point" releases are handled by Greg KH). Of course, it would be fairly interesting to see what could actually break 2.6 enough to force a 2.7 line.
Maybe a few years ago. 2.4 only gets the odd bugfix and has shit support for most modern hardware (do they even have x86_64?).
Or they could do the MS approach and end up with 5 or 6 "stable" ABI's because nobody wanted to break the first one to fix it...
In the interests of fairness, about 20 or so of those 37 bugfix releases were done after 2.6.17 was released as stable (2.6.16 is still being maintained as a "super-stable" type kernel). Bugfix releases pretty much seem to be a non-issue, considering that most people are going to be using the kernel provided with the distribution, as opposed to a vanilla one.
2.6 was under consideration, from what I understand. Probably something to do with the eleventy billion 'stable' releases every couple of days. Slack 11 includes a 2.6.16.27 kernel in extras (ie, on the install disk), and a 2.6.17.8 kernel in /testing, so I really don't think it's a big deal.