Kiosk mode & distributing proprietary add-ins

Derek Broughton derek at pointerstop.ca
Mon Mar 30 13:01:25 BST 2009


Alan Pope wrote:

> 2009/3/29 Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>:
>> *But*... what if before despatch one added the "universe" repository &
>> did
>>
>> apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
>>
>> Would that still be OK?
>>
> 
> No, because doing so would install at least msttcorefonts and flash,
> both of which have non-redist EULAs.
> 
>> (or whatever the relevant package names are - the most common useful
>> proprietary add-ons, those which are freely available from the online
>> repos.) Nothing, in other words, that any Ubuntu user can't just add
>> themselves without licences, payment, EULAs or anything else.
>>
> 
> You may or may not realise but neither flash nor msttcorefonts are
> actually in any repository that Canonical/Ubuntu operate.

Actually restricted-extras _are_ installed by default.  iirc, they're
specifically "free as in beer" binary-only software mostly to provide
hardware drivers.  Liam didn't suggest to get msttcorefonts from Ubuntu -
he suggested medibuntu - and didn't suggest where to get flash.
 
> If you install Flash or msttcorefonts what actually happens is you get
> a little script downloaded which then downloads flash/fonts/whatever
> direct from Adobe in the case of flash and sourceforge (mirrors) in
> the case of msttcorefonts.
> 
> So again, you're still bound by the licenses for those packages.
> There's not a special agreement that allows Canonical to redistribute
> Flash because they dont actually redistribute it.

You could easily create your own "non-free-extras" package, that would
depend on all the non-free packages you wanted, and would be installed the
first time a user logged in.  It would then present any licenses for
approval.  That's not unlike what you get when you start up a new Windows
computer. As long as that stuck to packages that were properly downloaded
in a way the proprietor approved (afaik, the medibuntu packages are all
fine) you'd be OK.  Downloading an illegal hack wouldn't remove the onus
from the retailer and place it on the purchaser of this mythical computer.
-- 
derek




More information about the sounder mailing list