non-oss software on our media?

Hi, 

we discussed already once [1] the situation with proprietary software on 
our distribution. We agreed on the list and in an IRC project meeting that 
it's not nice but is very convenient for many users and should stay therefor 
on media.

I'm opening the discussion again as with that we never will achieve a user 
friendly licence as already copying of our software on DVD is not allowed and 
even some mirrors have an issue with this licence. We receive on a regular 
base inquiries in this regards and bad press [2].

Here is our proposal for new discussion. 

*Ship any media of openSUSE with open source software and proprietary software 
which allows redistribution (eg. firmware), for details [3].

*Add during installation automatically an online repo with the non-OSS stuff 
and install per default flashplayer (5MB) and the fluendo plug-in (210K) for 
mp3. 

This would allow us to offer a user friendly end user licence agreement (EULA) 
and would remove the cause of bad press and angry users reading the EULA 
really carefully. 

Some background info:
- survey of usage of proprietary[4] software showed that only flashplayer and 
acroread really are used by a majority of users (Java is not an issue anymore 
as we ship with 11.1 openJDK)
- with the distribution of 90%+ of broadband access amongst our users 
flashplayer via online repo shouldn't be a problem. And without internet 
access flashplayer won't be an issue for anybody.
- For acroread we're sure that the open source alternatives (kpdf, evince, 
okular) are at same level with acroread. The only drawback we're aware of is 
the missing functionality PDF Forms offers today.

We're asking for your buy-in for having a more friendly EULA, to make the 
distribution of openSUSE easier and get the software in more hands. 

BTW: we'll replace the proprietary agfa-fonts with the open source alternative 
Liberation fonts with openSUSE 11.1.

Best
Michael 

[1] http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2007-07/msg000...
[2] http://lwn.net/Articles/283555/
[3] http://en.opensuse.org/Non_oss_software
[4] 
http://files.opensuse.org/opensuse/en/c/ce/SurveySummary_...

-- 
Michael Löffler, Product Management
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex