[Ffmpeg-devel] FFmpeg naming and logo

[Rich Felker]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 10:47:07AM +0100, Michel Bardiaux wrote:
> >Apparently you fail to understand the meaning of free. I would suspect
> >that Michael can freely immitate the food he made for lunch, cooking
> >something similar or almost identical for his friends or himself or
> >anyone he pleases. As for his chair, other people can sit on it if he
> >wants to let them; he can disassemble it and study how it's put
> >together and use that knowledge in order to build a new chair, etc.
> >
> >Use of and dependence on non-free software is not acceptable, and it's
> >utterly hypocritical to design your logo in a nonfree data format with
> >nonfree software. Don't try to warp the issue with nonsense analogies
> >that don't hold water.
> 
> Fortunately I seem to have developped some immunity to your typically 
> harsh style, ...
> 
> I suppose you dont use a mobile phone because the embedded and network 
> software arent opensource?

No because it really has no impact on usability. You use a phone to
talk, not to run programs. There is no stored data locked away in a
proprietary format. It is not hypocritical because I am using a phone
to talk, not as the logo for free software...

> Ditto your car?

There is hardly software in my car, unless you call a few hundred
bytes of code on the tiny embedded system that controls the check
engine light software.

> That you arrange for your 
> internet traffic to go only through routers running Linux?

This is blatent trolling. Why should I have any bias towards Linux?

> No online 
> banking, no credit card,...

None, for completely independent reasons.

> BTW why do you bother with ffmpeg since its 
> not GPL, which by your rules is eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil?

Huh? Even more stupid trolling.

> The rules for the dev of ffmpeg (or of any opensource software I know 
> of!) do not put any restrictions on the tools one uses, a non-free 
> editor or IDE or movie-analyzer is supposed to be OK, as long as the 
> *final* code is not thereby subject to restrictions.

A proprietary data format is a restriction. This is similar the the
issue with Linus insisting on using the evil BitKeeper system for the
Linux source (although IIRC they moved to something more sane
eventually).

> By the same rules, 
> using Photoshop would not 'taint' the logo. What *is* to be avoided is 

It's not about tainting, it's about image. This reminds me of a story
(don't remember details so I may have butchered it, but here it
goes..) about some left-leaning politician, attending an
anti-globalization event, and his family gets out of the car and his
daughter is holding a can of Coke and that's the photo that gets in
the paper. The moral of the story: you end up looking like a hypocrite
if you're pushing free software as superior, then you use legacy
proprietary software for designing your own logo!

Rich