[tex-live] movie15 and media9

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sun Mar 18 17:24:09 CET 2012


On 2012-03-18 at 23:15:57 +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:

 > On So, 18 Mär 2012, Philip TAYLOR wrote:
 > > to install the free Adobe Acrobat reader [1].  There is no possible
 > > reason for them not to do so other than prejudice or dogma.
 > 
 > * horrible security history
 > * "phoning home" javascript
 > * what else do you want ???
 > 
 > Using acro* is simply wrong, and energy should be invested in
 > improving open source viewers, not preaching for a horrible
 > dangerous and privacy ignoring product.

Norbert, are you going to missioneer people now?  I fully agree with
you regarding improvement of free and open source software.

But TeX Live provides packages from CTAN as they are, even if they
contain bugs or clash with others.  As long as it's impossible to
ensure some kind of quality standard, we shouldn't be too picky about
the quality of 3rd party software.

Sure, TeX Live has some policies about the inclusion of packages, but
what you said above is quite unrelated in this respect.

I sometimes doubt that I understood Stallman's definition of freedom
properly.  Isn't his main idea that there shouldn't be any
restrictions regarding the *usage* of software?

Adobe products are anavoidable in enterprise environments anyway (no
free viewer will ever be able to sign documents) and the printing
industry depends on Adobe software too.  Even asymptote is able to
produce interactive 3D graphics which require at least Adobe Reader.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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