[Mageia-dev] rehashing the faac issue

PhilippeDidier philippedidier at laposte.net
Wed Oct 3 18:26:14 CEST 2012


Claire Robinson a écrit :
> On 03/10/12 15:20, Sander Lepik wrote:
>> 03.10.2012 17:07, Guillaume Rousse kirjutas:
>>> Which means using 'nonfree' repository instead of 'tainted'...
>>>
>>> OK, let's vote here:
>>> - how many people for using 'tainted' ?
>>> - how many people for using 'non-free' ?
>>>
>>> Any solution involving technical changes doesn't qualify for a simple
>>> solution, and doesn't seems worth the effort for just a single package...
>>>
>> Well, you can't list 'non-free' as an option here as faac contains
>> content that belongs to tainted repo. If you land it there we will cause
>> problems for some mirrors and that is a no-go option.
>>
>> If you want to vote then we can vote between those options:
>> - land it in 'tainted'
>> - it remains excluded
>>
>> My vote goes to tainted. Yes, non-free and free packages will be mixed
>> but most users would vote for including it. Free software lovers can
>> just avoid it. They should be better informed than normal user anyway.
>>
>> -- 
>> Sander
>>
> 
> I vote for tainted. I like Colin's idea too though.
> 
> Claire
> 
I vote for tainted too ...

It is quite simple for faac and handbrake and cinerella (both absolutely
needing faac) :
They may be provided in tainted with some information in URPMI telling
that they contain a basis (MPEG4 standard) that is not opensource, even
if everything else in their source is GPL or LGPL... so that opensource
exclusive users may choose not to install them, and other users are not
afraid with this information...)

There's a patent problem for them ... mirror admins may choose to
provide or not the tainted repo in their country. and users may choose
to use a foreign country repo if they want not to respect the local
law... ;)



It is a little more complex for avidemux, mplayer (the mencoder part of
it) libquicktime, gstreamer ... for them faac is an option

Now they are provided in core (built without option leading to patent
problems) and in tainted (built with options leading to patent problem
such as libdvdcss, lame, faad ...)
Every user has the choice to use or not patent encoumbered softwares
(this choice is only restricted by local laws) don't have to question if
they are opensource or not : they are !


If faac is pushed into tainted
What to do with the "build with faac" option for vlc mplayer and others ?
1) - Build them all only with this option (plf choice) (excluding de
facto strict opensource users from some useful tainted other options !)

2) -Build them once without this option (OK for strict users )
- and build them a second time with this option  ... informing
opensource strict users that it's not for them and others that this adds
the possibility to work on aac or mp4 files
(can the two versions coexist in the same repo ? need to give two
different names to them? modify the buildsystem? increases QA job ? )



A developers informal vote is perhaps not enough ... Need a poll ?
More than this, that concerns the QA team too and perhaps the Board :
perhaps some legal problem, even in France indeed, that we do not know!!!
I can't know if the fact that Fraunhofer (one of the authors of the
standard) provides a copyleft enhanced encoder is a good or a bad news
for the possibility to use freely faac --- I mean free as beer,  until
everything is rewritten to be built upon fdk-aac instead of faac !)

For Mageia4 the faac problem will certainly be closed, thanks to fdk-aac.



Philippe



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