 Today, I wanted to ask your opinion on something because I'm kind of unsure of what direction I want to go regarding some of the software I've been working on here in recent weeks. I switch over to my desktop. I spent much of today working on this little welcome application for DTOS. It'll be called DTOS Hub, but one of the things I was adding here in the last few days, this additional software tab where I'll have categories like, you know, web, audio games, yada, yada, yada, and you can have various popular programs that I think many people, especially new to Linux, will probably want and won't know how to get, especially some proprietary applications, for example, Discord. Now I've always been of the opinion that Linux distributions really should only ship free and open source software by default where possible. And obviously you can't have everything be free and open source software because sometimes there's just no free and open source alternatives to certain things, for example, drivers. Sometimes you have to use proprietary graphics drivers, Wi-Fi drivers because there's not an open source driver for certain types of hardware. But as far as most applications on a GNU slash Linux system, I think they should all be free and open source. You should ship with free and open source web browsers, office suites, video players, things like that. But I know many people don't care about free and open source versus proprietary software. They're OK using proprietary software. I'm not one of those people, but I know some people just don't care. And I want to make sure that they can install their proprietary applications like Discord, for example, if I go into the video category, you know, DaVinci Resolve or whatever it is they want. And I think that kind of makes sense. But one of the things I did on video the other day was I was showing some of the programs that get installed in the DTOS installation script. And one of the guys pointed out in the comments that one of the fonts that I have installed by default on DTOS is not licensed under a free license. And when he pointed this out, I actually was not aware of that because JoyPixels is the font he pointed out. It's one of the standard fonts that's in the Arch repositories, just the standard Arch repositories. And I assume because it's in the Arch repo, it was probably free and open source software. Now, Arch is not one of these staunch free software distributions like, for example, Debian. Debian will not put anything proprietary in their standard repositories. They just don't do it. Arch doesn't care, right? A matter of fact, one of the programs I just showed you, Discord, which is, of course, proprietary software, is in the standard Arch repository. So they will put some proprietary stuff in their repos. And apparently JoyPixels is licensed under a proprietary license. Now, proprietary fonts. Do people really care about that? Had I known it was proprietary, I might have looked for a different alternative. But I do know in DTOS, one of the font packages that I install out of the box is the Microsoft Fonts. I package that up for the DTOS core repository because I know the Microsoft core fonts are one of those font packages everybody installs. Because if you don't, many websites are going to look like garbage because they expect most people to be using Windows. Most of those websites were designed to use a lot of those Microsoft Windows fonts. So it's kind of a tricky situation. You know, are proprietary fonts the end of the world? No, not really. It's not like it's a proprietary program that's running some scripts or something on your computer that could be doing something nefarious like spying on you or mining for Bitcoin, right? It's a font. But still, would I prefer that to be licensed under a free license? Absolutely. So really, I think what I want to ask you guys are those of you that know about free and open source software movements, right? You know about free software and the four freedoms and you actually care about it. If you don't care about free and open source software versus proprietary, your opinion really doesn't matter on this. Well, I won't say your opinion doesn't matter. But if you don't care about it, then it doesn't matter. So the people that do care because those of us that do support free software, open source software, not all of us do it to the same degree. And many of us have different opinions on what's OK and what's not OK. Like I just said, I don't mind distributions shipping proprietary software if there's not a free and open source alternative. For example, if you were trying to make a Linux distribution that was a gaming Linux distribution and you wanted to ship steam installed out of the box, steam is proprietary. But if it's specifically for hardcore gamers, they're going to want steam and there's no free and open source steam, right? Steam is steam, it's proprietary. I get that. I wouldn't trash any Linux distribution for doing that. The problem I have is when distributions start installing stuff like Google Chrome as a default web browser, right, which is proprietary. I know it's the most popular web browser on the planet. But when we have such great open source browsers like Brave and Chromium and Firefox, LibreWolf, Kube browser, I've got a lot listed here. You know, there will eventually be part of this DTOS welcome application. I think GNU slash Linux distributions really need to be promoting the open source applications when they can. You know, if people want to install the proprietary applications, don't prevent them. Matter of fact, provide links to some of the popular proprietary applications for the people that really need it. I don't I don't want to prevent anybody from running proprietary software. It's just I would like to introduce more free and open source software to people where possible. But for those of you that support the free software movement, the open source movement, what are your thoughts? Are you OK with Linux distributions, shipping, proprietary software where there's actually free and open source alternatives that are viable? For example, there's many distributions that ship Google Chrome as a web browser out of the box. There's many distributions that ship proprietary office suites out of the box. And even though LibreOffice free and open source software is really good, you know, they go in these proprietary directions. And of course, I've made some compromises myself with DTOS. I have those Microsoft core fonts and the JoyPixels fonts installed out of the box, even though they're not licensed under a free license. If you care about the free and open source software movement, are you OK with my decision in that? Or if you're not, I mean, what is is there an alternative? Because there's no real alternative for fonts like the Microsoft core fonts. Many websites depend on those fonts to render correctly. Is it the end of the world of a website? You know, doesn't have the correct fonts and looks a little weird. For most people, no, but especially if it's a new to Linux user. And that's kind of what I'm thinking. People that have used to going to their same websites every day, day after day, and they expect it to look a certain way because they expect aerial and comic sans and all those Microsoft fonts to be there. Because the websites always displayed at a certain way. And now those those fonts are not on a system. And the website looks all jacked up and they're they're going to blame Linux. Oh, look, Linux, their web browsers, these free and open source web browsers, they can't even render websites right. So I'm a little torn again in some directions. I want to go. That's why I'm asking your opinion. Those of you that support the free and open source software movements. What are your thoughts about Linux distributions shipping proprietary software where there are free and open source applications available for an open source alternatives to those proprietary programs? Are there occasions where you think it's OK or are you more hard line? And hey, that's never OK. I want to know in the comments down below before I go. I need to think a few special people. I need to think the producers of this episode. Dustin Gabe James, Matt, Max and Michael Mitchell, Paul, who has won you bald, homie Allen, Armored Wreck and Chuck Commander Waring Green, Dylan Marsh from Erion Alexander, Peace, Archon Vador, Polytech Realities for less red profits, Steven Tools, Devler and really these guys. They're my high steered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This episode would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen, all these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon. I don't have any corporate sponsors. Joe's coffee has not called to let me know they wanted to sponsor the channel. Yet I depend on you guys. So subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys, peace. And yes, more Haskell and GTK videos are on the way.