Ubuntu changes get worse: Now Digital Rights Management is under discussion

[Kaj Ailomaa]

On Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:16:17 +0100, <lukefromdc at hushmail.com> wrote:

> I've looked into rebasing my entire install directly on Debian because of
> first the Amazon mess, now the Mir mess, and finally word on Phoronix
> that Ubuntu is looking into supporting digital rights management, hoping
> to run on smartphones.  They are abandoning the free and open desktop-
> and will HAVE to do so if they want to be a third commerical smartphone  
> OS.
>
>

There's no indication what so ever, of what I can see, that Canonical is  
abandoning free software.

Please read what Marc Shuttleworth wrote in response to a lot of what has  
been going on lately. http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1228

IMO, all that has gone bad is communication. The suggestions and  
announcements might have been presented at a better time, and in a better  
way. People got a bit shocked when there were so many changes at once, so  
suddenly announced, changing scheduled events that had been planned for  
months. And to top it off, announcing a window X replacement. Just bad  
timing, I think.

Ubuntu has never been blocking non-free software. Rather the other way  
around. However, the OS itself is free, and will always continue to be.  
That is the pledge that Canonical has given, and I see no indication to  
them taking back that pledge.

Where do you draw the line? The kernel includes non-free drivers. You are  
free to build your own version of the kernel, of course.
Debian packages those separately, and puts them in a non-free repo, but  
not Ubuntu. Why? For practical reasons. Most people rather just have their  
wifi working right off the bat.

I'm not going to use DRM. Again, can't say what a Ubuntu phone will look  
like, but I find it hard to believe that one would be forced to use such  
non-free software technology.

That said, has anyone considered the dirty business around hardware?  
Precious metals and all that? I don't know much about it, but I think we  
could probably all agree on that all though the software is free, doesn't  
mean the machine it runs on is a blessing to humanity.