On Sunday 27 November 2005 19:49, Tim Edwards wrote:
> Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> > 2) Repository hell affects _most_ other package distros, including
> > Debian. Ubuntu and other Debian-based distros get around them by
> > including software that may not be legally redistributed.
>
> Just out of interest what do Debian, Ubuntu and others distribute that
> is illegal? And even if they do how does having illegal software help
> get around repository problems?
Illegal probably isn't the correct word in all cases.
A great example is the RPM libdvdcss - it allows de-encryption of commercial
DVDs so that they can played (or illegally copied) under Linux.
It may be a DMCA violation to use libdvdcss since it provides features (like
DVD ripping, ignoring of country codes, and screen capture) that can be used
to get around DVD-protection schemes.
Interestingly, no one has ever challenged the use of libdvdcss and it probably
*isn't* illegal. If it was challenged in court, it would *probably* be ok to
use since no one has produced a way to play DVDs under Linux with commercial
software....although courts may order some of its features removed (like
ignoring country codes).
As if this wasn't a grey enough area already, the DMCA has no authority
outside the USA.
In some countries, personal use of strong encryption software is banned. In
those countries I assume CentOS is totally illegal out of the box since it
ships with OpenSSH, and can not be removed during installation.
Generally, distros like CentOS/Fedora/OpenSUSE/Debian try to stick to all GPL
licensed packages in their repos (which is no guarantee that they will be
legal everywhere). For a list of RPMs that are fully supported, but kept out
of OpenSUSE (SUSE includes them in the boxed version) since they aren't
licensed via the GPL see here:
http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/SUSE_LINUX_10.0.42_(i586).html
