[Mageia-dev] rehashing the faac issue

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2012/10/2 Johnny A. Solbu <cooker at solbu.net>:
> On Tuesday 02 October 2012 14:58, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
>> IMHO a package is "not free" anyway as soon as it qualifies for
>> "tainted" - whatever reason.
>
> That is subject to jurisdiction. I happen to live in a country where software patents doesn't apply. Therefore patented software is Free software in my country. And I believe that is the situation in several european countries, and other countries around the world. Even FSF and Stallman says this. If the software is not patented in "your" country, it is Free software in "your" country.

Yes, that's correct. But we should look at the reason why we decided
to have this "tainted" repositiry in the first place (was decided
after a lengthy discussion right at the beginning). We have it because
Mageia is not only for those countries who do not recognize software
patents, it is for the whole world.

The "tainted" repository was implemented to make it easy for those who
do live in countries like USA and others to be able to avoid this
software which may be illegal in their country. The alternative would
be for them to have to search the whole "core" repository for such
software to be able to avoid it. Same goes for mirrors - we
implemented the "tainted" repo to make it easy for mirror maintainers
to offer this software on their servers or not. We give them the
opportunity of easy distinction, what they actually do is up to them.

If all Mageia users were living in France or the same kind of
jurisdiction we would not need the tainted repo at all.

So, the reason we have tainted is not caused by any official
definitions but it is a service for users and mirror maintainers who
are not as lucky as you and me.

-- 
wobo