[Mageia-dev] rehashing the faac issue

Tue Oct 2 13:50:34 CEST 2012

2012/10/2 Frank Griffin <ftg at roadrunner.com>:
+> On 10/02/2012 04:03 AM, Guillaume Rousse wrote:
+>>
+>>
+>> Given the importance of this package for several multimedia-related
+>> software (it is a mandatory dependency for cinerella, for instance), I think
+>> it's time to revisit this decision, and rather look for a pragmatic solution
+>> rather than a merely bureaucratic one.
+>
+>
+> I read the links, but I think the discussion would benefit from a statement
+> of exactly why people don't want nonfree software in tainted.
+>
+> At least for my part, I always viewed tainted as being the equivalent of
+> PLF, i. e. we'll put this stuff in there because it's legal where we are,
+> and you decide whether you want to mirror it and make your own decision as
+> to whether you want to use it.  I thought the whole point was to segregate
+> tainted stuff from everything else so that mirror maintainers could avoid
+> tainted yet still mirror the mainstream repos.
+>
+> If that's true, and tainted is just a dumping ground for stuff that we have
+> legal or philosophical problems putting anywhere else, then I don't get the
+> free/nonfree issue.
+
+We have software in 4 different flavors:
+1. free software (FOSS), most of them distributed under any of the GPL versions
+2. non-free software, meaning they can not distributed under such
+licenses as the GPL. Mostly it's closed source software (like firmware
+for devices like graphic cards or some wifi chips)
+3. tainted software, this is cost-free but patented software. In
+countries which obey software patents (like USA) it is not allowed to
+be distributed.
+4. then there is software which is non-free AND tainted.
+
+Of course this special point #4 is a bit bureaucratic. As "tainted"
+(aka patented) is the stronger restriction than non-free we should
+also place faac into "tainted" as it matches the sentence from the
+MGA1 notes anyway (as quoted in Christian's mail).
+
+In any way I agree that this more or less academical dispute about
+faac should not make it impossible to make faac available.
+
+-- 
+wobo
+