Autodownloading considered harmful [LWN.net]

By Jonathan Corbet
February 13, 2008

A Fedora user recently asked: might it be possible for the project to put together a package which would automatically download and install the (proprietary) Google Earth application? Debian has googleearth-package, which makes an installable package from the downloaded application, but there is no such convenience for Fedora users. The quick answer appeared to be "no" - Fedora is for free software only, and packaging tools for proprietary programs do not fit the bill.

It did not take long for others to point out the "autodownloader" facility shipped with the Fedora games spin now. This tool is needed to make certain games work where the game is free software, but it needs proprietary data to provide the full experience. Games like Quake3 and Rise of the Triad fit this description. With autodownloader, these games can be shipped with Fedora and the proprietary data will be fetched automatically on the destination machine. This scenario does not seem all that different than downloading a proprietary application like Google Earth and installing it.

The difference, as seen by the Fedora camp, is that autodownloader can only obtain data, not code. The fact that much of that data may, in fact, be code which is fed to a virtual machine within the game is sort of glossed over. In the discussion, it was also suggested that games requiring autodownloader should come with enough free data to be minimally usable, though that does not seem to have been enforced with great vigor. Alan Cox's suggestion that the real test should be "is it possible to create free data for this game?" makes some sense, but that is not the operative rule now.

Such a discussion cannot go on long, though, before somebody brings up the real sore point: CodecBuddy. This time, it was Hans de Goede who raised the issue:

Not only does it automatically download some gratis closed source code, it even offers the user to buy closed source code, effectively free advertising for commercial closed source!

According to Hans, there is no point in discussing autodownloader as long as CodecBuddy remains in the repository.

Outgoing Fedora leader Max Spevack is trying to organize a discussion aimed at reaching some sort of clarity on these issues. Christopher Blizzard had an interesting idea: hand more of the decisions about (and responsibility for) the shipping of problematic code to the upstream projects. The Miro project was held up as an example. Christopher's proposal has some echoes of the disintermediation of distributions discussion which was covered here last week. When it comes to patent-encumbered codecs, distributions like Fedora would happily accept disintermediation.

In the absence of a real solution to the patent problem, some sort of disintermediation may be the only workable answer for distributions like Fedora. They may not be willing to ship the code, but others are. So it's mostly just a matter of making the connection between those repositories and the users as straightforward and painless as possible. Spending time with search engines to find useful programs or data may build character, but it does not help create a useful or pleasurable Linux user experience.

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