[Mageia-dev] Repository question: where do we put non-free+tainted RPMs?

Wed Jul 6 14:26:41 CEST 2011

Am 06.07.2011 14:04, schrieb Ahmad Samir:
+> On 6 July 2011 13:58, Romain d'Alverny<rdalverny at gmail.com>  wrote:
+>> On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:10, Wolfgang Bornath<molch.b at googlemail.com>  wrote:
+>>> If we go back to the beginning of the discussion where to put such
+>>> packages which were in PLF we made a clear difference:
+>>>
+>>> 1. All non-free goes into non-free
+>>>
+>>> 2. Software which may be illegal in some countries (mostly because of
+>>> licensing) will go into tainted.
+>>>
+>>> That's all. Clear and simple.
+>>>
+>>> The question about GPL or other free licenses is not touched by
+>>> tainted. So, everything which does not have to go to tainted will go
+>>> to free (core) or non-free, depending on it's status.
+>>
+>> Indeed. http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=licensing_policy#acceptable_licenses
+>> says:
+>>
+>> "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."
+>>
+>> Reformulating it in an other, more explicit way maybe:
+>>   - "core" hosts 100% free software that can be redistributed anywhere
+>> (or almost, the world is a bit more complicated than that)
+>>   - "nonfree" hosts non-free software that can be redistributed anywhere (same)
+>>   - "tainted" hosts all the rest, be it free software or not.
+>>
+>
+> Third point is wrong, "a license that is might be free or open
+> source", which, I think, means only software with an open source
+> software License.
+>
+> Although the wording should be clearer / more precise.
+>
+
+The reason why we have tainted is, that there are patents, which 
+restrain some user to use this software. So, it's a question of 
+legality, which should get the higher priority. The differentiation if 
+it's free or not-free is only a question of ideology.
+
+Therefore, for me the situation is very simple. If there are 
+questionable patents for a software, we have to put it in tainted 
+(otherwise we destroy the whole idea of core/non-free/tainted). There is 
+no other option. We may can think about a tainted-free and 
+tainted-nonfree (like PLF) but IMHO it's not needed and as long as we 
+don't have such a repo, all tainted packages have to be put into tainted 
+(no matter what license they use).
+
+Regards,
+Thorsten
+