[Dev] Parabola stance on game assets

[Freemor]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 08:42:45AM -0400, bill-auger wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 08:31:29 -0300 Freemor wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 04:10:20AM +0100, pribib wrote:
> >  [...]  
> > 
> > I see no freedom issue with youtube-dl as the user MUST supply the
> > link of what to download.
> > Basically If we patch youtue-dl not to pull
> > from non-free sites then we MUST (to be consistent) block ALL
> > browsers we package from going to those same sites.
> 
> 
> someone told me that youtube-dl has a search feature - that would be
> a different situation - i assumed it was only for youtube like
> minitube 

From grepping through the man page the only "search" option just lets you use
fuzzy or broken URLs. It is not a search and list content type affair.


The only possible issue I see with YTDL is there is a option to list all the
sites it has extractors for. I'm not sure this qualifies as "recommending"
those sites and again the user has to specifically ask YTDL to show that.  So
it is not like some YTDL suggests these things.. It just says I know how to
work with x,y,z if you directly ask "what can you work with" 

> the one thing that leaps to mind about this is that the amount of work
> required to rescue all such programs would be enormous - if such a
> zero-tolerance policy were adopted it would most likely result in most
> such programs being removed rather than rescued

Agreed

>  - and im not saying
> thats a bad idea - but i am saying that the scope of that decision would
> reach well beyond games or any other programs purely for entertainment
> - if the goal is to 1) remove search or import capability, or 2) filter
>   content, or 3) replace content, or 4) blacklist the entire program;
> then to give that treatment to any one program would be a significant
> task - but there are probably hundreds that would deserve it equally

For me the question is one of user responsibility. It is not Parabola's job to
infantalize the user and act as a giant cultural filter. 

It is our job to not say "here use this non-free thing." 

If we start getting into "oh No! that can touch/show a non free thing" then we
are into censorship and that is not a place I'd be comfortable with.

For me as long as "thing we provide" needs user interaction to reach "non-free
thing" then the choice to use non-free thing is the users.

That would leave us with only 2 clear categories to worry about:
1.) Includes non free thing
2.) loads non free thing automatically without user interaction

A much smaller set I'm sure


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