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

[Thorsten van Lil]

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