Non-free packages

rehcra · 2004-10-19 21:10:34

Oh, I thanks for mentioning java. Otherwise I would forget. There is some opensource java implementation, but don't ask me, I don't use java.

Flash is a similar case. There is an opensource flash plugin, but it's unmaintained and after I compiled it didn't work.

There was an argument about mozilla (which I took part in:)). Mozilla nags you about installing flash and java until you do so (no way to tell it to shut up; it displays a dialog box each time you enter a page with flash/java contents). I proposed removing obsolete libnullplugin.so (which is responsible for this), which solves the problem. But most people didn't agree with me - I don't know why (perhaps this is because they want "vanilla" packages, which are not always good).

phrakture · 2004-10-19 21:21:20

rehcra - check my repo for a gplflash package

for reference:
http://phrakture.freelinuxhost.com/pkgb … D.gplflash
http://gplflash.sourceforge.net/

this project was newly revived...

rehcra · 2004-10-19 21:23:52

Thank you very much.

Some time ago I was googling and found the old package that gplflash is based.
I must check this one!

Btw, link to PKGBUILD doesn't seem to work.

rehcra · 2004-10-19 21:24:21

Sorry, it works now.

Haakon · 2004-10-19 21:28:35

rehcra wrote:

If I couldn't program, I wouldn't probably care about source code.

There are plenty of reasons to care about software freedom even if you're not a programmer.

rehcra · 2004-10-19 21:32:05

Haakon wrote:

rehcra wrote:
If I couldn't program, I wouldn't probably care about source code.
There are plenty of reasons to care about software freedom even if you're not a programmer.

Sure they are. But 99.9999% of those who can't program are not aware of them.

Haakon · 2004-10-19 21:44:27

And it's a shame. We need to spread awareness.

Dusty · 2004-10-19 21:58:38

ROFLMAO

Remind me to *always* post infalmmatory remarks before going on a short vacation. It's great fun!

I am a Java programmer.

Dusty

dp · 2004-10-19 22:50:25

Dusty wrote:

ROFLMAO
Remind me to *always* post infalmmatory remarks before going on a short vacation. It's great fun!
I am a Java programmer.
Dusty

does this mean, that you are a user or a programmer? (just joking - /me myself also java programmer, sometimes)

phrakture · 2004-10-19 23:01:53

Dusty wrote:

ROFLMAO
Remind me to *always* post infalmmatory remarks before going on a short vacation. It's great fun!
I am a Java programmer.
Dusty

I'll try flaming before leaving work for the day, and see what happens tomorrow:
Dusty is stupid stupid stupid stupid and I think he's stupid

Haakon · 2004-10-19 23:56:24

I couldn't not react to this comment, even if it reached me hora somni:

phrakture wrote:

Dusty is stupid stupid stupid stupid and I think he's stupid

I cannot believe you said that, that's completely ad hominem, and I dare say horribile dictu. You can't just spout out poisonous remarks a bene placito. You could bestow your opponents with aegri somnia. Dusty debated with you bona fide, and all you can do is attack his persona.

Honoris causa, say you're sorry.

Ex animo,
Haakon.

skoal · 2004-10-20 00:36:45

Eh? Richard Stallman? FSF? I guess the "commune" is alive and strong, and still recruiting.

Soviet Premier Richard and the FSF secret police are hardly responsible for the primary growth of Linux. I've seen GNU languish in obscurity for almost 10 years until Linus came along. That's not to dismiss their contributions to Linux. Hell, outside of the kernel, the majority of the OS base is of GNU origin. That's not my point, and furthermore, there have always been alternatives to GNU. Without Linus Torvalds and his work, there is no GNU, FSF, or Richard Stallman. They're riding the back of his pony, not the other way around. And, where is Linus today? Once with Transmeta Corp, and now with OSDL, all corporate backed, and all paying handsomely for his services. GNU/Linux? Give it a rest. More like, Linux/GNU.

Who could deny that Redhat, Suse, and Mandrake drove Linux in the mid 90's. Who could deny that IBM, HP, Intel and other OSDL contirbutors are the primary thrusts behind Linux in this millenium. What you enjoy now with the Linux kernel comes indirectly from the OSDL. Without corporate backing such as this, Linux would be only be a murmur, slightly on par with BSD. The partnership between Open Source and Commercial enterprise ventures is powerful, and welcome.

Richard Stallman sincerely believes:

There are social aspects of software, and free software can create community and social justice.

Gimme a break. It was these same elitist "commune" members that told me back in 96 (while posting in a thread), "Read the fucking documentation. Go back to windows you fucking illiterate." Hmm...I guess my BS in Computer Engineering, MS in Computer Science, and countless man hours in technical Industries wasn't good enough for them. A well written technical document has nothing to do with technical information, it's how you communicate it. I've seen how the "commune" treat people new to Linux. Some "community" and "social justice" they manifest. They pop up now and then in various Linux forums, only discouraging Window converts or the curious in general. Thankfully, the elitist "commune" seems quarantined in Gentoo for the time being. I can't wait to meet one of these guys in real life, wrap my hands around their little pencil neck, and crack it over my knee like a chicken bone. You can hide like that behind the comfort of your monitor, but I beg you, please talk to me like that in person. I beg you.

I use Windows because the market demands I do. I use Linux because Windows inflexibility demands I do. I use what I need to, when I need to. The GPL, FSF, and the Richard Stallman manifesto can kiss my ass. I want anyone who uses Linux, or contributes to it, to make some money for their efforts. I've paid handsomely for Windows Software. I've paid far far less for some Linux software as well. With that said, I've submitted several patches to free software in the past, like mplayer, XFree86, and several window managers. Not for community or social justice. Rather, just to make the damn thing work, and provide me a viable alternative to Windows at the comfort level of Linux flexibility. I use Open Source Software because it is far more powerful and flexible to most, but not all, closed source. However, most open source software lacks the polish of commercial software. How many of you ideological open source "weenies" have illegal downloads of Transgaming's WineX, instead of just using Wine? Where's your conviction now?

If Arch wants to go "dicking" around by splitting repositories (or whatever) to pacify some grand FSF phillosophy, then I'll gladly move on and find another distro. I think Arch developers should be rewarded for their efforts, much like Redhat or the like. Maybe someday they will, who knows if they want to. Maybe they just want to develop something to keep them productive while using Linux, from all it's contributors, open source or otherwise. To be honest, I'm only here because of a productive tool like Pacman. Just keep everything easily accesible in package form, and don't complicate the issue as part of some "movement" or "awareness". If I ever whiff the stench of FSF in Arch...it's been nice knowing ya...

rehcra · 2004-10-20 07:01:55

One more thing about mplayer - there's dependency on 'divx4linux'. So there should be

depends=('libmad' 'libungif' 'gtk' 'libvorbis' 'cdparanoia' 
         'sdl' 'libjpeg' 'libpng' 'lame' 'libtheora' 'esd')

instead of

depends=('libmad' 'libungif' 'gtk' 'libvorbis' 'divx4linux' 'cdparanoia' 
         'codecs' 'sdl' 'libjpeg' 'libpng' 'lame' 'libtheora' 'esd')

IMHO It's ridiculous to include dependency on divx4linux. libavcodec both codes and decodes mpeg4, and AFAIK does it better than divx.

LB06 · 2004-10-20 07:43:36

I agree that if there are open source alternatives to proprietary software, the deps should be replaced. However, if there are no viable alternatives, I still don't see why that dep should not be included. For example, if gplflash only works half of the time, it is NOT a viable alternative.

rehcra · 2004-10-20 07:51:02

LB06 wrote:

I agree that if there are open source alternatives to proprietary software, the deps should be replaced. However, if there are no viable alternatives, I still don't see why that dep should not be included. For example, if gplflash only works half of the time, it is NOT a viable alternative.

gplflash seems to support flash 3 and 4.
We should try to provide choice to users if opensource version is inferior to propertial one.

LB06 · 2004-10-20 08:13:42

rehcra wrote:

LB06 wrote:
I agree that if there are open source alternatives to proprietary software, the deps should be replaced. However, if there are no viable alternatives, I still don't see why that dep should not be included. For example, if gplflash only works half of the time, it is NOT a viable alternative.
gplflash seems to support flash 3 and 4.
We should try to provide choice to users if opensource version is inferior to propertial one.

Agree, but why do you want to get rid of codecs? There is no alternative for it afaik.

rehcra · 2004-10-20 08:51:30

LB06 wrote:

Agree, but why do you want to get rid of codecs? There is no alternative for it afaik.

First of all I don't want to get rid of them totally. I want to have a choice not to install them when I do "pacman -S mplayer". Currently they are a dependency, so one is forced to install them. But mplayer will work fine without them - it's only pacman that demands installing them. The solution is so easy - just modify the PKGBUILD and mplayer will work both with and without codecs. Those who must have codecs would do "pacman -S codecs mplayer" and those who don't need them just "pacman -S mplayer".
I just want to watch some mpeg4 movies and for this libavcodec (opensource, included with mplayer) is sufficient. Why am I forced to install this codec windows bloat?

paranoos · 2004-10-20 09:21:35

i always roll my eyes when i see there are more postings in this thread. i really would like to see this discussion end.

i think it's pretty obvious that Arch was created to be a pragmatic distro. this isn't our project to decide what direction it goes. no matter how many users want Arch to be an RMS-friendly distribution -- unless Mr. Vinet wants it -- it's not going to happen.

I read an interview with Dr. Stallman a while back, and he said he used Debian at the time, but he doesn't like it because it allows people to choose proprietary programs to install (which wasn't the case when he first installed it afaik), even though they aren't in the main repositories. he said that if he could pick a distro at the time, it would have to be Extramedura's distro (it's a town in Spain that created a distro for school and community use iirc). So this should give you an indication of how strict his rules are.

back to the issue at hand, if the mplayer package is compiled to depend on codecs, it is because the packager felt that was the most convenient for himself (probably also taking into consideration what he thinks most users want, but not necessarily). if you want mplayer without having to install codecs, you have the freedom to use Arch's pkgbuild and make your own. this doesn't just apply to proprietary/free options, but also to lesser-used options such as compiling mplayer with libcaca support, to get colour-ascii "video" in the terminal.

i really hope this discussion will end in the Arch forums, because it seems to me this is not the audience Arch caters to. fork the project into your own, if it is really that important.

the basic principle i'm trying to convey here is that people shouldn't have to change for you. it is not a fair request.

paranoos · 2004-10-20 09:26:04

oh, and about removing the codecs dependency -- the codecs support is compiled in, it's not something mplayer can magically use if it's available on your system. it has to know about it when it is being compiled.

so if you remove the dependency on codecs, then you are forcing all the people who want support for it to compile it themselves. that includes me. and probably the person responsible for packaging mplayer.

rehcra · 2004-10-20 09:53:24

paranoos wrote:

oh, and about removing the codecs dependency -- the codecs support is compiled in, it's not something mplayer can magically use if it's available on your system. it has to know about it when it is being compiled.
so if you remove the dependency on codecs, then you are forcing all the people who want support for it to compile it themselves. that includes me. and probably the person responsible for packaging mplayer.

There are two different matters:
- support for windows codecs (compiled into mplayer); This is a configure option; I agree this shouldn't be disabled.
- dependency on the codecs package; that is, each time you install mplayer you have to install codecs. I think this pacman dependency should be disabled, because disabling it gives more freedom to users.

I only consider a change in the second matter. It won't force you to recompile mplayer.
The fact is that mplayer's support for codecs is open source. I'm not opposed to this. However, the codecs themselves are not open source.

Only inconvienience for people like you would be to do a separate "pacman -S codecs".
This is minor compared to the inconvieniece I have because of the need of making my own mplayer package.

Haakon · 2004-10-20 11:33:16

skoal wrote:

How many of you ideological open source "weenies" have illegal downloads of Transgaming's WineX, instead of just using Wine? Where's your conviction now?

I'm tired of these strawman attacks. You don't know what anyone have installed, and you can't just assume things to open a window for attack. I have regular Wine installed, thank you very much.

How much free software do you think we'd have today if the FSF were never around with their GNU software and their GPL? It's one thing that you're not ideologically persuaded, but to tell the FSF to "kiss your ass"? Hello?

I'm sorry you hate software freedom, but I somehow doubt Arch would be worse off without you.

phrakture · 2004-10-20 14:25:40

ok this is retarted - someone close this thread.... I've tried to change the mood twice to something less harsh.... no flaming or anything, then someone responds to a post from 2 pages ago, flaming them saying "i doubt Arch would be worse without you".

You sir are the one that this statement applies to. skoal has posted many a helpful tidbit in other forums, yet I have never seen your name until this thread. You supply nothing to the community except your debian-oriented "free as in freedom" banter.

In my eyes you have lost value. You provide nothing to arch users, except your heavy-handed opinions about what is "right" (by chance are you a communist?) and insult many who actually do provide to others. If you're really such a software philanthropist, then help out others with what you know in addition to force-feeding others with you opinions you read in a Stallman quote. Until I see you provide back to the users, you will not warrant an opinion or reply from me. You are a child. It is people like you who make me wish I had never come to linux (well, you and the linuxquestions forums).

I am done with this thread. I have tried to lighten the mood (see my response to Dusty) and I have tried to help remedy the mplayer problem. Yet I still see one person stuck in his own little world, making sure everyone knows what "free as in freedom" means. I realise I am guilty of the opinions I expressed earlier, however, this time I am angry.

And to you, good Mr Haakon, I will give you your own words, for it would make me ill to use them myself:

Haakon wrote:

I somehow doubt Arch would be worse off without you.

Mr Green · 2004-10-20 14:46:49

Ouch!

soniX · 2004-10-20 14:59:49

Mr Green, you are not turning into a Mr Purple are you ?

ravster · 2004-10-20 15:11:20

Mr Green wrote:

Ouch!

Arrr matey, she's a big one, ain't she. <Insert pirate with parrot over here>

Arch Linux

#51 2004-10-19 21:10:34

Re: Non-free packages

#52 2004-10-19 21:21:20

Re: Non-free packages

#53 2004-10-19 21:23:52

Re: Non-free packages

#54 2004-10-19 21:24:21

Re: Non-free packages

#55 2004-10-19 21:28:35

Re: Non-free packages

#56 2004-10-19 21:32:05

Re: Non-free packages

#57 2004-10-19 21:44:27

Re: Non-free packages

#58 2004-10-19 21:58:38

Re: Non-free packages

#59 2004-10-19 22:50:25

Re: Non-free packages

#60 2004-10-19 23:01:53

Re: Non-free packages

#61 2004-10-19 23:56:24

Re: Non-free packages

#62 2004-10-20 00:36:45

Re: Non-free packages

#63 2004-10-20 07:01:55

Re: Non-free packages

#64 2004-10-20 07:43:36

Re: Non-free packages

#65 2004-10-20 07:51:02

Re: Non-free packages

#66 2004-10-20 08:13:42

Re: Non-free packages

#67 2004-10-20 08:51:30

Re: Non-free packages

#68 2004-10-20 09:21:35

Re: Non-free packages

#69 2004-10-20 09:26:04

Re: Non-free packages

#70 2004-10-20 09:53:24

Re: Non-free packages

#71 2004-10-20 11:33:16

Re: Non-free packages

#72 2004-10-20 14:25:40

Re: Non-free packages

#73 2004-10-20 14:46:49

Re: Non-free packages

#74 2004-10-20 14:59:49

Re: Non-free packages

#75 2004-10-20 15:11:20

Re: Non-free packages

Board footer