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

[Marc Paré]

Le 2010-10-12 22:04, Tux99 a écrit :
>
>
> Marc, just as a further point to reflect on:
> there are countries in the world were encryption is illegal or severely
> restricted.
>
> According to your logic that would mean we can't include ssh, openssl, pgp,
> and even https support in any browser.
> Does that seems reasonable to you?
>
> You need to face it, it would be impossible to make a distro that is legal
> in every country of the world and at the same time is of any use to the
> users.
> Therefore I don't see the need why we should comply with US patent laws
> when we don't comply with for example Chinese encryption laws.
>
> The only reasonable choice is do what every other distro does:
> comply with the laws of the country where the distro is legally based in,
> in this case France.
>
> Regardless of all that, it is ALWAYS the user's (not the distro makers)
> responsibility to comply with local laws of where the distro is being
> installed/used.
>

All of your points are exactly what I am trying to point out and even 
reinforce my concerns. These are all true. This is why, in my opinion, 
the Mageia distro should not be installing all of these controversial 
software packages by default. These should be added on after the Mageia 
official distro and the user would thereafter install further software 
packages that he/she wished to have to make the distro work as he/she 
wished. This would then remove that layer of liability from the Mageia 
project group. In my opinion, Mageia should be wary in wanting to 
install a fully functioning distro if this means using software packages 
that may get it into trouble (Mageia itself). Let the user then assume 
that responsibility/liability. This is where, I consider the "easy 
urpmi" served its purpose well. It installed repos where the available 
software that most users would need was made available, but this again 
was by user choice.

Cheers

Marc