[Mageia-dev] [RFC] Moving various packages/codecs to tainted

Tue Jan 10 05:00:14 CET 2012

Frank Griffin a écrit :
+> On 01/09/2012 06:38 PM, Anssi Hannula wrote:
+>> On 10.01.2012 01:30, David Walser wrote:
+>>
+>>> That's the absolute last thing I want to see happen.  It's one of 
+>>> the reasons Fedora and others that do that are not viable options 
+>>> for a lot
+>>> of non-technical users, and it just makes it so you have to jump 
+>>> through a lot of extra hoops just to have a reasonably working system
+>> I'm absolutely fine with either moving codecs to core or tainted, as
+>> long as we are at least somewhat consistent in what is in core and what
+>> is in tainted.
+>
+> I agree with both of you, but the problem is the difference between 
+> non-free and tainted.  Unfortunately, both are required for a 
+> "reasonably working system".  But in the case of nonfree, it's just a 
+> matter of us internally getting past the "purity of the media" issue.  
+> In the case of tainted, there are legal issues.
+
+Patent claims are potential legal issues, since among other things, most 
+claims are invalidated when (or before) they reach the courts.  So it 
+makes much more sense to wait for real legal patent threats.  Agreed, it 
+does make sense to put packages in "tainted" when real threats arise.  
+Such cases will impact much bigger and richer targets before us, so we 
+will have plenty of time to react.
+
+> I think that the ultimate solution is going to have to be integrated 
+> support in the installer allowing the user to hook up either nonfree, 
+> tainted, or both, just by answering a simple prompt.  The mirror 
+> database probably ought to (if it doesn't already) keep track of which 
+> mirrors supply nonfree and tainted (or better still, check at install 
+> time), and customize mirror selection based on the user's response.
+
+Good idea.
+Note that only "tainted" is optional on official mirrors.  (Yet they all 
+seem to carry "tainted", including in the apparently "patent-threatened" 
+countries such as the U.S.)
+
+> For non-network installs, I don't see a way around separate ISOs, at 
+> least for tainted.
+
+Another reason why we should limit what goes into tainted.  Since many 
+users don't have a connexion reliable enough for network install.
+Our goal should be that it "just works out of the box", for as many 
+users as possible.
+Without unduly compromising our commitment to open source, of course.
+
+As for separate ISO's, if we go that route, we should arrive at some 
+solution that minimises the work involved (including testing) to produce 
+them.  Such as maybe producing a DVD with enough non-free firmware and 
+drivers to get almost everyone's hardware working properly, and then 
+excluding the few non-free packages to produce a totally free DVD for 
+the purists.
+(The non-free kernel-firmware package is only about 20M, for example.)
+
+-- 
+André
+
+