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

Wed Oct 13 03:45:06 CEST 2010

On Tue, 12 Oct 2010, [UTF-8] Marc ParÃ© wrote:
+
+> http://www.riaa.com/faq.php
+> http://newteevee.com/2010/05/21/mpeg-la-threatens-googles-vp8-with-patent-pool-license/
+> http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/03/new-litigation-campaign-targets-tens-of-thousands-of-bittorrent-users.html
+> http://www.sevensidedcube.net/biggest-movie-law-suite-ever-hurt-locker/
+
+Marc, by looking at the links you posted I see that you indeed don't 
+understand the issue and are confusing copyright with patents.
+
+The only patent related issue you posted a link for, is the google vp8 
+one (which I'm well aware of) and if anything that confirms that even so 
+called 'safe' codecs like Theora aren't safe at all in the US.
+
+There is no way any Linux distro (or indeed any software company) can 
+make sure it complies with US patents, since the US patent situation is 
+a complete mess, as I mentioned earlier even Microsoft has been 
+successfully sued for unintentionally using unlicensed patent 
+technology.
+So just leaving out the bits that are currently in plf doesn't guarantee 
+at all that Mageia is compliant with patent laws in the US.
+
+> If you and others are willing to indemnify Mageia users and installers 
+> against any lawsuits due to packaging unlicensed software/codecs/etc , 
+> this would go a long way to giving people like myself piece of mind.
+
+Mageia cannot be sued based on US patent laws since Mageia is a French 
+association with no legal ties to the US.
+The packagers themselves are even less exposed since they don't publish 
+or distribute anything, Mageia does that.
+
+> If RedHat is able to maintain corporate headquarters in the US, then I 
+> would suggest we examine closely their packaging repos.
+
+In fact since Redhat targets servers they avoid most of the issue 
+as they don't need multimedia codecs, but nonetheless Redhat is very 
+exposed to patent lawsuits, just like any other US based software 
+company.
+
+> You cannot claim international status 
+> if you package a distro that is legal in one country and then illegal in 
+> another.
+
+If you ONLY want to include packages that are safe in EVERY country of 
+the world then you need to spend huge amounts of money on layers that 
+know patent laws for every country in the world and the distro will have 
+very few 'safe' packages left in the end.
+
+> This is why, in my opinion, Mageia should try to steer itself away, as 
+> much as possible, from grey and illegal areas and leave it to the end 
+> user's choice whether or not to install these packages.
+
+Exactly, that's why I suggested an install-time option for the user.
+
+> We are trying to build a great package. Why would the Mageia team put 
+> in peril its existence and the people's income 
+> (through potential expensive lawsuits)?
+
+We won't have a great package if we exclude everything that is 
+potentially a legal issue in some country of the world, in fact very 
+little usability will be left in the distro (look at plain 
+out-of-the-box fedora, which tries to comply to US laws).
+ 
+No distro out there is trying to comply to the laws of every country in 
+the world, most distros just try to comply to the laws of the country 
+they are legally based in, why should Mageia be any different?
+
+Again, as long Mageia complies with French law there is no risk of 
+serious lawsuits (there is no way to protect against frivolous 
+lawsuits), please don't spread FUD about putting it's existence in 
+peril, that doesn't help your argument at all.
+
+