Re: [gentoo-dev] Adding AdobeFlash-10{,.1} licenses to EULA group

[Lars Wendler]

Am Freitag 18 Juni 2010, 00:37:29 schrieb Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn:
> Dale schrieb:
> >>>>> One notable section is 7.6 in which Adobe reserves the right to
> >>>>> download and install additional Content Protection software on the
> >>>>> user's PC.
> >>>>
> >>>> Not like anyone will actually *read* the license before adding it to
> >>>> their accept group, but if they did this would indeed be an important
> >>>> thing of which users should be aware.
> >>>
> >>> I defend it is our job to warn users about this kind of details. To me
> >>> it sounds that a einfo at post-build phase would do the job, what do
> >>> you
> >>> guys think?
>
> Though I am not opposed to adding a warning, I think the license mask is
> sufficient. If users demonstrate their indifference by setting
> ACCEPT_LICENSE="*" or adding AdobeFlash-10.1 without reading the
> license, then I somehow doubt that elog messages will have an effect.

Maybe I'm quite alone with that but I have ACCEPT_LICENSE="*" because I hate 
to edit my make.conf each time I try to emerge a package with yet another 
license that is missing in the variable. But I still watch for elog messages 
carefully after each merge.
 
> >> Definitely yes! This is a very dangerous snippet in Adobe's license
> >> which
> >> should be pretty clearly pointed at to every user.
> >
> > Could that also include a alternative to adobe?  If there is one.
>
> There are three open-source flash browser plugins in portage:
> - swfdec: development seems to have stalled
> - gnash: I have received mixed reports about the stability of the
> current version. The next release will include VA-API support and other
> improvements.
> - lightspark: a recent effort which is in its early stages and still
> incomplete in many ways (eg. audio support is planned for 0.4.2)
>
> None of them I consider good enough to replace adobe-flash for the
> average user.

Unfortunately yes. Especially now that Adobe fails to provide x86_64 users a 
non-vulnerable plugin I'd very much prefer to use an open-source replacement 
that for sure would be fixed much faster in case it's affected by some security 
vulnerability as well.
One can only hope that flash finally vanishes from WWW now that HTML5 could 
become a good alternative...

> Regards,
> Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

-- 
Lars Wendler (Polynomial-C)
Gentoo developer and bug-wrangler