Avi Schwartz wrote:
Over the years I used Linspire, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora and Mac OS X. All have their pluses and minuses.
Exactly. There's plenty of room in the open source world for everybody. I'm also not in Linspire's target audience (I've been running and developing with UNIX, BSD and Debian for many years) but I very much appreciate that an entrepreneur like Michael believes so strongly in the value and potential of open source that he'll commit the substantial resources to directly take on Microsoft in places like Walmart. That's something I know I could never do.
Similarly, I see nothing but good in ensuring that the most diverse range possible of open-source-based media players is widely available to the public. The recording industry probably wouldn't mind at all if devices as open and flexible as the Squeezebox were outlawed, so we need all the friends we can get to help protect our fair use rights. (I wish there was a Squeezebox/Slimserver for video so I could do the same thing with our DVDs that I've done with our CDs, but unfortunately we've already lost *that* battle.) The only way we even have a prayer of countering the RIAA's cash-laden influence in Congress is to show them many millions of happy, law-abiding users of open media players of all kinds. Piracy gets all the attention, but there are an awful lot of us who do pay for our music and simply want to be left alone to listen to it with devices of our own choosing.
Don't ever forget who our *real* opponents are: MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft and others who would happily destroy fair use rights and open source and encumber all media in DRM that can only be played in "authorized" devices from monopoly manufacturers at prices and under terms dictated solely by them.
All that said, I do have one small request for Michael. I haven't seen the manual for the MP3Beamer so I don't know how you credit to the open source projects that you use. But please do keep in mind that since so many open source developers are volunteers, their *only* reward consists of public recognition for their contributions. I'd be happy to have you use an open source project to which I've contributed as long as you simply acknowledge that project in your documentation.
--Phil _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
