Now before you fire up your trusty keyboard to shoot me down in flames for suggesting this. I want you to think about the continuing challenges that Ubuntu (and Linux in general) face as they compete against Microsoft for a share of the desktop OS market.
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motters
16 years 33 weeks 20 hours 1 min ago
A devil's bargain
This is exactly the sort of thing which Stallman warns about. If you confuse freedom with price then it's all too easy for proprietary or patent compromised software to start creeping into the system. You're trading practical convenience for freedom.
What's being suggested here is that Canonical pay licence fees to software patent holders for things like mp3, dvd, etc and pass on these costs to users. Is it really a good idea to prop up the patent system in this way?
It is important that GNU/Linux distro companies make money in order to remain viable in the long term. However, they can do this by other methods than by cosying up to patent holders, thereby defeating their own cause. One obvious way is to provide certification training courses ("Ubuntu certified professional", etc).