[Mageia-dev] Teamviewer and X86_64 build . . .

Mon Nov 28 17:54:59 CET 2011

Bringing a small bit of controversy, not on the very topic, sorry, but
+on a few remarks.
+
+On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 15:25, Oliver Burger <oliver.bgr at googlemail.com> wrote:
+> Am Montag, 28. November 2011, 15:10:01 schrieb Florian Hubold:
+> I don't agree. I do think our main goal should be to provide a good linux
+> distro with as few proprietary packages as possible.
+
+Guys, please reread our announcement
+(http://mageia.org/en/about/2010-sept-announcement.html ); quoting a
+small part of it: "keep a high-level of integration between the base
+system, the desktop (KDE/GNOME) and applications; especially improve
+third-parties (be it free or proprietary software) integration;".
+
+That was a plan, and plans are made to change and adapt, but still.
+
+> But I don't like us providing more and more nonfree applications.
+
+If we are not to provide (that is package, host and distribute - and
+that is perfectly fair) these, couldn't we at least ease that for
+others (that would like to package their own apps, or host a specific,
+separate repository of nonfree apps that would still appeal to a
+significant fraction of users)? That would mean some more doc and
+tools for 3rd party packagers. And would solve in the same time one of
+the question that was opened on Council and not yet ported to -dev
+(aka, very large nonfree packages, such as games -data).
+
+Or do we let them in the cold?
+
+> It really is not that difficult to install things like flash, skype, teamviewer
+> and so on.
+> In my eyes it would be the far better solution to provide documentation on how
+> to install them then provide a lot of those "get-foo" packages.
+
+Right.
+
+> Although "easy usability" is a good thing, people should remember they are
+> working on the most complex machine they do have in their homes.
+
+They wouldn't use it if they had this in mind. No one would. :-)
+
+> While nobody expects to be able to use a modern video recorder without reading
+> the manual first, everybody expects to be able to use a far more complex
+> machine like a computer without reading anyting?
+
+That's a fallacy. There's no excuse for making things more complicated
+that they need to be.
+
+It's not absurd that most people _expect_ that installing an
+application on their system is as simple (and as safe) as a drag'n
+drop or as typing an URL in their browser. Their focus is beyond that.
+
+Romain
+