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Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

> Add to that, that they do not care about copyright and license issues and just ship their ISOs with pre-installed Oracle Java and Adobe Flash packages and several multimedia codec packages which infringe patents and may therefore not be distributed freely at all in countries like the US.

Hmm, that was actually one of major selling points for Mint around me - it was the distro that "worked", with relevant software, codecs and drivers being preinstalled and not crippled due to strange laws on the other side of the ocean.

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It's user friendly, yes, but also reckless. The distro won't "work" any more if it gets sued into oblivion by Oracle, Adobe, Nvidia, AMD and whoever else feels like kicking puppies.

Hmm, why would they be. Mint already offers a special version for people living in countries where they can be sued for installing a video decoder or a video driver - it's called a "No codecs" version and it's meant for users in USA and Japan.

Suing in the rest of the world would be a rather wasted effort right now.

The flip side is that if you believe that laws like those around software patents should change, someone ignoring them and taking the risk of being sued is a more compelling demonstration than carefully observing the rules and then complaining about them on HN.

More pragmatically, it seems unlikely that Oracle or Adobe will sue a distro for helping them distribute the Java/Flash runtimes. They want their runtime to be on as many devices as possible.

> The flip side is that if you believe that laws like those around software patents should change, someone ignoring them and taking the risk of being sued is a more compelling demonstration than carefully observing the rules and then complaining about them on HN.

As EU citizen I have zero influence on US politics. Complaining on HN to US citizens is literally all I can do.

> More pragmatically, it seems unlikely that Oracle or Adobe will sue a distro for helping them distribute the Java/Flash runtimes.

Then maybe those companies should change their license terms. Right now, Adobe does not even allow you to use a downloaded Flash installer on two computers, you must either download it separately on each PC or apply for a special license: http://www.adobe.com/products/players/flash-player-distribut...

If they want to shoot themselves in their feet, I'm not going to interfere.

> As EU citizen I have zero influence on US politics. Complaining on HN to US citizens is literally all I can do.

What about making nice things that US citizens can't legally have? If you're legally in the clear in your own jurisdiction, you don't even need to take a risk yourself.

I'm not a lawyer and I don't know exactly what our situation is in the EU, so don't take my word that that's safe. Software patents may be technically banned, but I think people disguise them as 'business method' patents. And if you use US project hosting like Github, maybe someone can sue you there. I'm suggesting that, at the margins, we should take some risks.

IF, IF ,IF... meanwhile we are going by just fine while the others wait for Hypothetical Risks and Hypothetical all in one interfaces (this last one is just my rant against Canonical).

Most people install some packages as soon as they install an OS. A distro could be very nearly as user-friendly by creating a wizard that takes users through the steps of installing these proprietary things in a legal way.

OTOH, it's exactly what pushed me away from Mint.

I remember not long ago Mint included just about every browser media plugin ever made, including RealMedia, WindowsMedia etc., stuff that was obsolete 15 years ago. Maybe it still does.

All that stuff doesn't just mean bloat, but also significant security risks. You can somewhat get away with it because desktop Linux isn't a major target (yet), but it's just very bad practice that shows a lack of care.

There are still sites where those plugins are very useful. I'd like a distro that shipped them all.

> I remember not long ago Mint included just about every browser media plugin ever made, including RealMedia, WindowsMedia etc., stuff that was obsolete 15 years ago. Maybe it still does.

Weren't those just VLC wrappers?

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