Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams writes:
> On Fri, 2005-08-12 at 09:14 -0400, Robert G. Brown wrote:
>> One suggestion (for the FC4-based linux@duke but also for other people
>> running FC4 repo mirrors plus local extensions). At least some
>> repositories, notably livna (which religiously goes on top of FC4
>> base+updates+extras and is apparently maintained by a lot of the FC
>> developers to provide a channel for those otherwise patent-encumbered
>> packages that we often need and that are actually legal for us to use,
>> but that RH cannot safely support in the distro itself) provide a lovely
>> rpm that basically contains their repo entry:
>>
>> livna-release-4-0.lvn.2.4.noarch.rpm
>>
>> Installing this rpm instantly enables yum to access e.g. nvidia and ATI
>> drivers all RPM packaged and ready to go and updated per FC kernel,
>> xmms-mp3, and other tidbits. My suggestion is that this (and perhaps
>> others like it) is an excellent candidate for e.g. add-ons/duke (or
>> equivalent elsewhere). So that one can go:
>>
>> yum install livna-release-4
>
> The problem is that since the repos contain packages that for some legal
> reason can't be in the distro directly, the distro also can't have any
> direct link/connection to said repos. So then you'd need to install a
> package to add the repo that has the repo packages in it.
Why? I don't see why this is any different from adding a URL to livna's
website or using it an email message on a list like this, or for that
matter stating things like "look for livna if you want some of the
encumbered packages".
Otherwise one cannot "mention" livna, dag, any of the repos out there
that have encumbered rpms, and that seems like it might be a pretty
major violation of that free speech thing. In fact, it would make it
really difficult to prosecute.
This proposes adding an rpm that contains what amounts to a link to a
site that possesses the rpms and actually distributes them. If is
already one degree of indirection, and the livna repo rpm is totally
unencumbered itself. Why is adding an rpm that contains
/etc/yum.repos.d/livna (only, not the CONTENT that livna distributes)
any different from adding an rpm that adds an rpm that contains the
livna repo data? Or an rpm that adds an rpm that adds...
I'd argue that it is really impossible to restrict adding this rpm even
to the Fedora core repository itself, especially if one adds similar
rpms for ALL (or at least several other) such repositories. The
decision to actually install the repo data on a system (which is still
absolutely legal) and use it (which may or may not be legal for at least
some of the repos out there -- it actually IS legal for livna in
particular, according to its website, and some things that might be
illegal in the silly old US with the best encumbrance laws that
corporate money has been able to buy are legal in Europe, where
RH/Fedora obviously has a market) is still entirely up to the user, and
those repositories also contain perfectly usable unencumbered rpms.
To put it another way, it may be illegal for me to sell ordinary
pornography out of my garage in my neighborhood (zoning restrictions
etc, non-kiddy porn per se isn't illegal to sell, purchase or possess in
NC, subject to community standard zoning issues), but it is certainly
not illegal for me to put up a website with a phone book on it that
contains (among other things) URLs and address information that can
direct people to stores where it can be purchased. Otherwise Google and
Yahoo are in Big Trouble. They're also in big trouble over livna, since
that's how I find things like the repo link in the first place.
rgb
>
> --
> Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazquez@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> http://fedora.ivazquez.net/
>
> gpg --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net --recv-key 38028b72
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