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Re: Enabling and installing of "risky" ("patented") codecs - made easy



On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 03:44:30PM +0000, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 09:15:42AM +0200, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> [...]
> > I suggest that, if such a repository will be created for patented
> > codecs, that e.g. sponsored uploads will not be allowed to this
> > archive. I know that most of you will hate this idea, but I
> > believe it is necessary to keep the original purpose of such an
> > archive.
> 
> As a sponsoree myself, I'm not entirely certain I understand why
> it's any more likely that a sponsoring DD will overlook and upload a
> package with the wrong section, than that a DD will upload a
> similarly incorrect package he or she directly maintains. And either
> way, wouldn't verifying that a package is appropriate for some new
> patent-problems section fall on the ftpmasters and their delegates
> to police? And further, if this became canonized in policy as a must
> or required directive, wouldn't such a problem warrant a bug of
> severity serious, potentially release-critical even?

Here's an idea. Would it be useful to translate the legal issues of a
package into a technical one by marking packages with one of these
package tags:
-------------
Patent_issue: yes/no
Patent_issue: de,us,...
-------------
Thus whoever uploads it, it will be followed more closely and similary
would such a tag be useful to aptitude/dpkg so as to signal upgrades
that may contain patent or similar issues. I would expect the user to
set a location setting in dpkg so that the messages would be a warning
in certain locales and informational in others.
This of course then leads to who will make the determination?
(-legal,ftpmasters,DD)
There is also P-A-S which is not maintained by DD but my ftpmaster,iirc.
This may be a similar situation.
And the issues of how often it will be reviewed to keep up with legal issues?
And since all distros have these issues, maybe a joint effort to
maintain a legal issue list.

-K
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