[Mageia-dev] Mirror layout, round two

Sat Nov 27 07:55:40 CET 2010

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
+