[Mageia-dev] Mirror layout, round two

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2010/11/27 Andrey Borzenkov <arvidjaar at gmail.com>:
> On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 11:29 PM, Thomas Backlund <tmb at iki.fi> wrote:
>>
>> The idea of this layout with some of the separate sections (codecs,
>> firmware, games, non-free, debug_*) gives a mirror maintainer in a country
>> (or company) the option to exclude the parts they legally (or by company
>> policy) can not mirror.
>>
>
> I wonder how "urpmi.addmedia --distrib
> ftp://server/with/omitted/sections" should be interpreted then.
>
> Also mirror list should be indicating which sections are present; is
> it supported right now?

And that will make the "$MIRRORLIST" approach problematic. Say I am
living in a country which has no patent restrictions but no mirror
either. Then the addmedia function will search a mirror in my
neighborhood and selects the next mirror which may be such a mirror
where the maintainer excluded the parts with patented software. Say I
am a new user who does not know about the option to manually select a
mirror and who does not know that such mirrors with missing branches
do exist. I must come to the conclusion that Mageia does not
distribute any patented software at all.

This can only be avoided on user level by asking the user first if he
wants patented software or not (including a text which explains the
problem). Then if he wants to have patented software he could be
connected to a mirror with the "patented software flag", if not he
will be connected with a mirror which does not have the "patented
software flag".

The other option may be that we do not allow mirrors without the
"patented" branch in the official mirrorlist. This would probably mean
no official mirrors in those countries with "patent problems" but
people there can still use other "off shore" mirrors.

-- 
wobo