[Mageia-dev] Gstreamer pfl codecs/plugins

[Romain d'Alverny]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 14:55, Frank Griffin <ftg at roadrunner.com> wrote:
> On 03/24/2011 09:45 AM, Romain d'Alverny wrote:
>>
>> http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=licensing_policy#acceptable_licenses
>>
>> "The tainted section accepts software under a license that is might be
>> free or open source and which cannot be redistributed publicly in
>> certain areas in the world, or due to patents issues."
>>
>> and
>>
>> http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=mirrors_policy#tainted
>>
>> "stuff we think we can redistribute, but that may have some patent
>> issues or other restrictions in other countries"
>>
>> look like consistent with each other, althought the "what belongs / is
>> allowed here must still be discussed" indeed looks like it's not
>> frozen yet.
>
> The reason I ask is that, in perusing the PLF package descriptions which
> include the reason the package is in PLF, the criteria seems to be "Mandriva
> was afraid to include this in main/contrib for <fill in your own reason from
> a large list>" .

So in the MDV context, that was valid for anything, true.

>  The Mageia policies try to enumerate specific reasons why
> things will be put in tainted, but don't explcitly say that there's anything
> we *wouldn't* put in tainted.  So it's hard to know whether tainted == PLF
> or not.

Well I believe you should see this first as a concentric thing: Mageia
is made of core, nonfree and tainted.
 * free software (OSI/FSF) goes in core;
 * that for which we don't have source but can redistribute go in
nonfree; checked on a case-by-case basis;
 * all the rest goes into tainted on a case-by-case study again;
things that likely either:
   - have no free license but under really significant patent-threat;

Indeed, it should be distinctively made clear whether:
 * tainted keeps a focus on free software that is under risk,
 * or if it has a "all the rest that doesn't qualify for core or nonfree"

I'd favour the latter as a default rule, keeping the case-by-case
study for inclusion and leaving real life situations help us sort this
out - it's really not easy to draw a general rule out of only a few
practical cases.

Anyway, two definitions is bad, so we should move it in a single place.

Romain