Restricted modules in Ubuntu

[Matthew East]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 1:14 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> And speaking of components and restricted ones, it is a real pain in
> the neck to have to manually add in ubuntu-restricted-extras on *every
> single Ubuntu box I install*. They are not optional if you want to use
> the Web; Flash, Java and so on are pretty much mandatory. So, come to
> that, are the w32codecs from the Medibuntu repository.
>
> I am not American; I am not in America; I never plan to live in
> America. Nice place for a holiday, wouldn't want to live there. Yet as
> far as I know, I have to jump through hoops installing this stuff
> because they can't be included by /United States/ laws. These do not
> apply to me.

US law has nothing to do with this. As far as I can see, many of the
packages in ubuntu-restricted-extras are perfectly fine to use in the
US. Obvious examples from your original post are flash and java.

These packages are not installed by default because they are not free
software. Excluding non-free software by default is a choice that
Ubuntu has made of its own accord, not because of legal restrictions.

I gather from what you've said in your post that you may disagree with
that choice, and if so, you probably want to run a different operating
system. But blaming it on US law is misplaced.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF