[Mageia-dev] rehashing the faac issue

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2012/10/2 Frank Griffin <ftg at roadrunner.com>:
> On 10/02/2012 04:03 AM, Guillaume Rousse wrote:
>>
>>
>> Given the importance of this package for several multimedia-related
>> software (it is a mandatory dependency for cinerella, for instance), I think
>> it's time to revisit this decision, and rather look for a pragmatic solution
>> rather than a merely bureaucratic one.
>
>
> I read the links, but I think the discussion would benefit from a statement
> of exactly why people don't want nonfree software in tainted.
>
> At least for my part, I always viewed tainted as being the equivalent of
> PLF, i. e. we'll put this stuff in there because it's legal where we are,
> and you decide whether you want to mirror it and make your own decision as
> to whether you want to use it.  I thought the whole point was to segregate
> tainted stuff from everything else so that mirror maintainers could avoid
> tainted yet still mirror the mainstream repos.
>
> If that's true, and tainted is just a dumping ground for stuff that we have
> legal or philosophical problems putting anywhere else, then I don't get the
> free/nonfree issue.

We have software in 4 different flavors:
1. free software (FOSS), most of them distributed under any of the GPL versions
2. non-free software, meaning they can not distributed under such
licenses as the GPL. Mostly it's closed source software (like firmware
for devices like graphic cards or some wifi chips)
3. tainted software, this is cost-free but patented software. In
countries which obey software patents (like USA) it is not allowed to
be distributed.
4. then there is software which is non-free AND tainted.

Of course this special point #4 is a bit bureaucratic. As "tainted"
(aka patented) is the stronger restriction than non-free we should
also place faac into "tainted" as it matches the sentence from the
MGA1 notes anyway (as quoted in Christian's mail).

In any way I agree that this more or less academical dispute about
faac should not make it impossible to make faac available.

-- 
wobo