On 10/20/06, Benjy Grogan <benjy.grogan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How did that official agreement come about?
There is no official agreement as part of the fedora project. You'd have to ask people involved with mplug.org as to how the re-distribution arrangement was made. You'll notice that mplug offers packages for several distros. In no way is that repository service a fedora-specific affair, regardless of the fact that Warren is involved. If memory serves me correctly, that re-distribution agreement was secured in the timeframe before Warren was hired as a RedHat employee. It is essentially a community initiative, not sponsored by Fedora nor by Redhat and it would exist regardless of Warren's status as a Redhat employee now or his activity in what is now the Fedora Project. I believe this flash repo was established during the timeframe of fedora.us activity, before the re-incarnation as the Fedora Project. I don't think its inappropriate for the annouce-list to carry annoucements concerning legally obtainable 3rd party packages, even if they are proprietary. I'd welcome annoucements about new vmware or crossover office packages from verifiably authentic distributors of those applications, even if I do not use them myself. If people are confused into thinking these flash annoucements are more 'official' arrangements than they really are.. then perhaps warren should use a mailing alias for these annoucements that is specific for the task, instead of reusing his own email address when sending. So for those of us without historical perspective will not assume that such a message written from warren expresses Fedora doctrine. Personally, I think such agreements between community members and aother proprietary companies will be difficult to duplicate. I'm still somewhat shocked that the macromedia agreement is in place at all, considering the language in the licensing agreement that is publicly available from macromedia/adobe's website concerning authorized re-distribution. And no I don't have access to the terms of the agreement between mplug+mirrors and macromedia/adobe. For all I know there is an NDA involved. Besides issues associated with clickthrough EULAs, which proprietary software distribution will have to deal with, my understanding is that the primary motivation for control of distribution of no-cost software from proprietary vendors is accurate record keeping of the number of distributed copies. If proprietary vendors are unwilling to give up that control, and let community help with the packaging tasks, there's not much community members can do about it except stand at the company gates hand-in-hand, singing a foss-focused version of 'we are the world' lyrics. -jef"snarky lyrics go here"spaleta -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
