[Mageia-dev] About panotools patent problem (and other problematic rpms)

Tue Feb 22 22:27:14 CET 2011

On 22 February 2011 20:09, andre999 <andr55 at laposte.net> wrote:
+>
+> <aside>
+> First of all, "tainted" in English implies that the software doesn't work.
+>  (Unless it refers to food, in which case it means "poisonous".)
+> So we should choose a more appropriate name, such as "constrained", or use
+> the Ubuntu approach and use a name which doesn't literally describe the
+> contents. ("Multiverse", in their case.)
+> Anything but something that implies that there is something inherently wrong
+> with the package in question.
+> That was one advantage of "plf", but of course that is already taken. And it
+> is certainly advantageous to include such packages directly on Mageia
+> mirrors.
+> </aside>
+>
+> A Cleaner approach -- albeit more work -- would be for the "constrained"
+> package to be an external module which adds the missing functionality. For
+> less modular packages, this would be replacing (only) the files which
+> provide the questioned functionality.
+> For a typical a music player-type application, this would be only a be a few
+> relatively small files.
+>
+> So a user that wants to add the "contrained" functionality would simply add
+> an extra package, which obviously would have a different name based on the
+> main package.
+> (It would be useful to suggest adding such packages during installation, if
+> the "contrained" repositories are selected.)
+> (That is, if such a related package is available in selected repos.)
+>
+> Think of the gstreamer packages -- the "ugly" perhaps corresponding to the
+> "constrained" packages being considered.
+>
+> my 2 cents :)
+> --
+> André
+>
+
+Just a small note, if you didn't like the colour of the bike shed you
+should have discussed the point before it was built, painted, the
+paint has dried and is about to have new residents.
+
+And if you discussed the issue and your POV wasn't adapted, what's the
+point re-emerging it now given that changing the new isn't easy now
+that the infra- is already in place.
+
+I like the name tainted, (note that the kernel does use the word
+tainted to indicate there's a non-open source binary blob/driver e.g.
+with the nvidia proprietary driver, so this usage is not unheard of).
+:)
+
+-- 
+Ahmad Samir
+