Published at LXer:

I am becoming more and more convinced that the real thread to free software (and I am talking here about software released under a free license, not software that you can download and use for free) is contempt. Proprietary software is a competitor, but not a real threat. Proprietary software cannot really kill free software: no matter how many law suits you start, how many patents you file, how many pre-installed versions of Windows you have, common sense will always win. Contempt, however, the the real danger.

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Here is the reply I was going to make on the linked site, but I really dont want to register to a 'free software magazine' site that allows junk articles like this to pass.


Did you even look for how to donate money to VLC? Its very easy-

http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html

As for google and canonical, you shouldn't be suprised.

If you want to keep using canonical products, try using synaptic....its got more power and options than the ubuntu software center. Synaptic-> settings-> filters will let you filter out 'non-free'. I'd suggest trying debian, slackware, or maybe some other distro rather than ubuntu if you actually care about FOSS and proprietary software.