[Mageia-dev] Mirror layout

Wed Dec 15 02:48:48 CET 2010

Hoyt Duff a écrit :
+>
+> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 2:44 AM, Ernest N. Wilcox Jr.<ewilcox at bex.net>  wrote:
+>>   People who break laws are criminals - no ifs,
+>> ands, or buts, about it.
+
+Although I disagree with your conclusions (which I will explain further 
+down), your post does bring up an important point.
+Mageia would better avoid alienating potential users who might 
+mistakenly associate Mageia with illegitimate activity.
+
+Which makes including a set of Mageia repositories specifically for 
+constrained (or "tainted") software problematic.
+Although having such repositories for Mageia on a site like PLF 
+shouldn't cause problems, as there would be a clear distance between 
+them and Mageia.
+
+> People who break _criminal_ laws like murder and assault are criminals.
+> People who break _civil_ laws like traffic or zoning are not usually
+> considered criminals by the general public.
+> So, not all laws are alike and not all people who break laws can be
+> reasonably labeled as criminals.
+
+And in the case of alleged patent vioations, users may be violating the 
+patent holder's civil right to demand compensation for the use of their 
+patent.  Where it can become illegal, and only in the civil law sense, 
+is if the alleged violator refuses to pay the compensation demanded, and 
+subsequently a court decides that the patent applies and the 
+compensation demanded is reasonable under the circumstances.
+(At least, that is how it works in the U.S.)
+So we are talking about something that is less illegal than jaywalking.
+(Luckily here in Canada, as in many countries, software patents don't 
+exist.)
+
+Note also that for free/open source software, where no possibility of 
+collecting royalties exists, there is generally little interest for a 
+patent holder to restrict Linux users and thus encourage the development 
+of alternate solutions, which could then be adopted by those currently 
+(or potentially in the future) paying royalties to the patent holder.
+
+> When there is dispute in the larger world community as to whether or
+> not some behavior rises to a criminal nature, one cannot assign it
+> some moral value and enforce it world-wide with any significance.
+
+Exactly.
+
+>> If the Mageia community chooses to opeate as a
+>> criminal organization, I will have nothing to do with it.
+
+Rest assured, no-one is proposing that.
+You may not be aware, but (as I have recently learned) both Debian and 
+Ubuntu openly distribute packages constrained by software patents, and 
+have many mirror sites in the U.S. - without any apparent problems.
+
+> ...
+>
+> In other words, if the taint is available to you, and you believe to
+> touch the taint is bad, don't do it. But don't force others to follow
+> your rules.
+
+Very true.  As Richard Stallman says, free software is about freedom.
+Let's keep it that way.
+
+> The PLF approach has been a good one because it allows the specific
+> option of touching the taint or not while accepting the official
+> distro defaults.
+
+I think so too.
+PLF packages also enable many options which are somewhat incompatible 
+with the free/open source philosophy, but not necessarily legally 
+constrained.  So there is a role available for PLF that would probably 
+not be as well served by a set of constrained repos on Mageia.
+
+- André
+