[Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc

[Marc Paré]

>
> Questions about patents is related to which law applies to Mageia. No answers
> to which law then no clear policy can be applied.
>
> For me, since Mageia.org will lead the project (and will own Mageia
> trademarks) is located in France, since build system of Mageia will be in
> France then French law is the law we have to consider for Mageia. Debian runs
> under SPI organization located in the state of New York, USA, thus is ruled by
> US Laws.
>
>

As we keep going round in circles, do we have anyone on-board with firm 
knowledge on international patent/licence laws in this domain (lawyer)? 
Should we just check with the FSF.org and they could give us an opinion 
on this? Maybe someone from the Mageia core group could check behind the 
scenes with the FSF?

If anything, the laws of most countries adhere to the notion that "being 
ignorant of the law is no excuse". If we are to put "questionable" 
software on different servers, we should maybe get crystal clear facts 
on the ramifications of doing so. How did the other distros go about 
making their decisions? I would check with the MAJOR distros, as this is 
what Mageia is all about. People all over will clamour for our distro. 
We are going to be a MAJOR and influential distro. So we should behave 
this way as well when we are setting up our mirror network.

So, it sounds to me, that a core group individual, should, as an 
official representative of the Mageia project, approach these 
organisations and FSF to check and to get advice/opinons. Just to make sure.

Marc