[maemo-developers] Identifying free/non-free apps (was Re: ... and QA of closed source applications?)

[From: Attila Csipa]

On Wednesday 06 May 2009 18:35:26 Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> > whether it's free or non-free. Do you mind filing an enhancement
> > request?
> I am happy to do this if you don't want to Attila.

Already did :) https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4477 , feel free to 
correct/comment.

> The distinction between free and non-free has to be made clear to the
> end user so they have the necessary information to decide what they
> want to download. Right now, it is unclear.

I agree (I personally think that the small gray note on maemo.org isn't nearly 
enough).

Also, it's not just about license pragmatism (which is every 
distribution/community's own choice). If non-free (=closed) means binary blobs 
in extras as hinted in another QA thread, I do think it's important even for 
license-agnostic users - you might be executing non-reviewable code on your 
device from an almost completely anonymous source (potentially with root 
privileges). That's something IMO they could/should be (made) aware of, even 
if they don't care about software freedoms or open source in general.



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