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

[lukefromdc at hushmail.com]

The story is on Phoronix:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMxOTc

On 03/08/2013 at 2:13 PM, "Hartmut Noack" <zettberlin at linuxuse.de> wrote:
>
>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.
>> 
>
>
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