Installing and newbies

[Derek Broughton]

Billie Walsh wrote:

> On 05/08/2008 Jussi Schultink wrote:
>>  This is Kubuntu not Ubuntu, so the choices of software are of course
>>  going to be KDE choices. We have Kmail and  Konqueror as defaults.
>>  Flash and Java cannot be included for obvious free software reasons.
>>
> 
> I keep seeing this about certain "non-free" applications. BUT, I have to
> question that statement. Java, Acroread, Flashplayer, etc may not be
> open source but they are FREE. 

No, by definition, they're "free", not "Free".  More caps probably makes
them _less_ Free :-)

> There is no charge from the supplier for 
> their download and installation.
> 
> How can they NOT be included because they are "non-free" when they are
> FREE?
 
Seriously, they are not "free" of licensing constraints.  For most of them,
that really means "not free for people to use for anything they want", and
Canonical won't include them for philosophical reasons.  But some of them
are actually free for any use, and are open source, but _still_ have
license restrictions that prevent Canonical from redistributing them from
their own servers.  These can't be included for _legal_ reasons.

Java is approaching Free-ness, but I think the redistribution thing is still
a problem.  When you download from multiverse, you must still (the first
time) accept a restrictive license agreement.
-- 
derek