[lug] Initial impressions of Kubuntu

[Nate Duehr]

Daniel Webb wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 03:18:59AM -0700, Nate Duehr wrote:
> 
>> Watch out down the road... Debian is on their high horse (not for me to 
>> decide if rightly so or not, just saying...) about Firefox and 
>> Thunderbird trademark issues.  They ended up changing the names of the 
>> packages that contain them in the next version.  I forget the new 
>> names... but they're headed downhill sometime from "unstable" at some point.
>>
>>
>> Ice-something...?  Bah, memory is the first thing to go.  :-)
> 
> I don't see this as a problem.  I actually prefer that they do things on
> principle even if it harms them short term.  I know there is room for both
> kinds of thinking (basically: the Linus pragmatic thinking vs. the RMS
> idiological thinking) but you have to admit that the idiologues are important.

Yeah, just a warning about the package name changing.  I tend to agree 
that Debian's attitude about such things serves a good purpose.

> Look what happened just this week with Sun using RMS's license to open Java.
> Talk about vindication... RMS has always said: we'll never accept your
> language unless it meets our idiological definition of free, and look who
> caved.  RMS and the idiologues are long-term thinkers.  If something harms
> their movement for a week, or a month, or a year it doesn't matter to them.
> What matters is the principles, and the faith I suppose is that those
> principles will win out in the long term if you are true to them.  I think the
> track record is fairly good that this view is correct in the realm of
> general-purpose software.

Still major problems with that one, people looking into it.  Trademarks 
on the logos, and the name "Java"... no one's quite sure if Sun will 
allow modified binary redistribution... etc.  Sun could be being good, 
or Sun could be being clueless or mildly evil, depending on the details. 
  Time and research of the actual licenses will tell.  Just like 
Firefox/Thunderbird.  :-)

Nate