Re: MP3 decoder packaged with XMMS
On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 05:03:13PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 13:04:47 +0200 Diego Biurrun wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 01:49:17PM -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães
> > wrote:
> [...]
> > > I was under the impression that Debian *did* have a policy: if the
> > > patent is enforced, towards it, then the software will go to non_US
> > > -- to the benefit of the sane jurisdictions (as is the EU, in
> > > principle).
> >
> > And to what extent is that policy followed? Neither libdts nor the
> > many multimedia players available in Debian appear to be in non-US.
> >
> > How can I get an overview of all the packages in non-US? Looking on
> > Debian mirrors just reveals empty packages files:
> >
> > http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/dists/sarge/non-US/main/binary-i386/Packages
>
> Actually, AIUI, this is not (and never was) the role of non-US.
>
> non-US was used to distribute software that couldn't be exported from
> the USA to other countries.
> This prohibition was due to some (absurd) US laws regarding strong
> cryptography (seen as a *weapon*). However US laws didn't forbid anyone
> from *importing* the same software into the USA from abroad.
> The consequence was that a server placed outside of the US homeland
> could distribute these export-restricted software tools to anyone
> everywhere.
> non-us.debian.org was such a server.
> The only necessary precaution was that US citizens had to remember to
> *not* redistribute any package got from non-us.debian.org to people
> outside USA.
>
> Now that those US laws have been heavily relaxed, there's no point
> anymore in having a non-US section.
> As you can read in Sarge release notes[1], non-US is now obsoleted.
>
> [1] http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/releasenotes
That was my original understanding that got confused by posts in this
thread. The fact that
http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages
is not updated to reflect the obsolescence of non-US did not help.
Thanks for the info
Diego
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