On 08/31/2013 01:23 AM, Robert Kehl wrote:
Am 31.08.2013 00:14, schrieb Immanuel Giulea:
BBB is considered open source. Not sure if it qualifies for "Free Software" under FSF definition.
The components of BBB seem to all be open source, yes, but they use Adobe's Flash technology as the only component to access content offered by the product. So the users are forced to use Adobe's Flash viewer, which is closed source.
Correct me if there is a free or even an open source version of a flash viewer - I don't think there is. Hopefully there will never be, as HTML5 is the uprising star in active web contents in my eyes.
So, how can a server software be free if we need to use non-free client software to be able to use it?
There's gnash, but it doesn't work too well.
But if BBB is under the GPL, it's free software. Its dependency on Adobe Flash is, if explicit, a design flaw, but that doesn't make BBB any less free in itself. Anyone who wanted could switch it to a another format provided it's feasible, technically.