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

[Olivier Méjean]

Le mercredi 13 octobre 2010 07:24:32, Marc Paré a écrit :
> Le 2010-10-13 01:14, Tux99 a écrit :
> > On Wed, 13 Oct 2010, [UTF-8] Marc Paré wrote:
> >> Le 2010-10-12 22:04, Tux99 a écrit :
> >>> 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.
> >> 
> >> 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.
> > 
> > Are you seriously suggesting Mageia should produce a distro without ssh,
> > openssl and even with all browsers stripped of https support?
> > 
> > I can imagine how popular that would be with the majority of users...
> > 
> >> 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).
> > 
> > But here lies the mistake in your reasoning. Mageia doesn't have to
> > exclude all those packages, since the only liability Mageia has, is
> > towards the French laws.
> > 
> > So the sensible choice is to base the choice of packages to include on
> > French law. It is up to the user to make sure he/she only installs and
> > uses packages that are legal in his/her country.
> 
> Obviously running in circles here, I guess we both have our opinions and
> we let it rest at that.
> 
> Marc

There is no solution.

However, i would like to emphasis that VLC project - http://www.videolan.org/ 
- is based in France - and i don't remember VLC being sued and found guilty of 
patent infringement. Anyone can download VLC even from website located in USA 
(on cnet.com for example). VLC is not a small project so i guess if there were 
good reasons to sue the project for patent infringement it would have been 
done. VLC also hosts libdvdcss project (among other surely covered with 
patents in USA)

Archlinux which provides libdvdcss have at least one mirror located in the 
USA, as plf have also at least one mirror there.

So my feeling is that we should distribute codecs to access multimedia 
contents out-of-box (provided that the software are free - libre - is there 
are not free, that's for non-free media)

Olivier