Re: [ox-en] petition for macromedia to develop linux version of shockwave
- From: "Benj. Mako Hill" <mako debian.org>
- Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 19:35:52 -0500
<quote who="Raj Mathur" date="2005-03-26 08:38:19 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]">
"Geert" == geert lovink <geert basis.desk.nl> writes:
Geert> http://www.petitiononline.com/linuxswp/petition.html
Uh, why're we petitioning for more proprietary software? Wouldn't
it make more sense to give incentives to people to develop a free
Shockwave renderer?
Amen.
I'm not an expert in Shockwave and Flash so I can't really speak about
where one ends and other begins but Macromedia *does* release a
GNU/Linux version of their SWF player as proprietary software.
SW and SWF are non-free and proprietary standards implemented with
non-free and proprietary code. Asking for a proprietary implementation
of the proprietary standard that runs on your free OS is shortsighted
at best and very counterproductive at worst -- at least it is if your
goals are freedom and not just a quick fix.
Instead, we should:
(a) Put effort and money into building free/open Shockware and SWF
players implementations. http://www.schleef.org/swfdec/
(b) Put effort and money into developing and demanding open and
license and royalty free standards which anyone can implement!
The good news is that both of these are already happening (at least in
terms of Flash). Lets direct our effort there and send around a
petition for *that*.
I'd rather have a (however badly working) OpenOffice conversion than
a Linux version of MS Office.
What we really need is open, documented, license and royalty free
standards for saving documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. With
that said, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Regards,
Mako
--
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako debian.org
http://mako.yukidoke.org/