On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 18:33:21 PM -0500, Chad Smith ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
wrote:
> This whole conversation is beyond me. Java is free, as in beer, it
> can be used by anyone on any computer on any platform in the
> world.... Why anyone would exclude it for some stupid political
> reason is beyond my understanding.
You need to distinguish between "any private, non-commercial user",
"any distributor" and "any corporation or government office". Those
three user classes differ enourmously in skills, money and *concrete*
legal obligations (vs personal, subjective "stupid political
reasons"). At home, you, me and any other computer geek can patch and
install by hand whatever is needed if we want. Non technical users, as
well as organizations with common IT policies on what can be installed
by who and when simply cannot.
Which of those "anyone" are you referring to?
> I don't need a lecture on the difference between software that is
> free and free software.
If you don't, you should also remember that, quite often, people are
"forbidden by law", not simply "unwilling" to rewrite a JRE or
whatever it is.
Furthermore, each developer may have his own "stupid political
reasons", but system integrators are not developers. A distributor
trying to integrate and package Gpl and non Gpl programs may find
itself sued by the developers of *any* of the packages, not just the
proprietary ones.
So, regardless of this particular issue (how free is Java, and is
OO.o really useful without it) it's not that simple.
Ciao,
Marco F.
--
Marco Fioretti mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Fedora Core 3 for low memory http://www.rule-project.org/
There is more to life than increasing its speed. -- Mahatma Gandhi
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