Big Blue Button Free Software?

Carsten Agger agger at modspil.dk
Sat Aug 31 06:35:21 UTC 2013


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.



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