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

[Hartmut Noack]

Am 08.03.2013 12:31, schrieb 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

I fail to find anything of the above mentioned in this Blog-entry. This
one only talks about the(quite odd) rolling-release idea. Not a single
word on why a Shopping Lense is installed/active by default and nothing
regarding DRM.

Did he post something on these issues(after the September 23 post about
amazon)?

> 
> 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.
>