Fedora and MP3 [LWN.net]

Fedora and MP3

Posted Apr 6, 2006 2:48 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203)
Parent article: Fedora and MP3

While it is true that long term solutions are needed lest things grow much worse, TCPA being the big bogieman, there is also Eric's totally valid point that we have a problem NOW.

If Debian can have an unfree repository, and tell people it exists, why can't Fedora? I brought up a similar point regarding unfree repositories and, not being ESR, was ignored. It isn't just the (very real) legal fears with Fedora, it appears they want to be more Catholic than the Pope and more RMS pure than Debian. MP3 is a real risk considering their cash pile, pointing at deCSS for DVD playback would almost certainly provoke a lawsuit. I'll give em those. But what is their justification for refusing to permit the official existence of a repo with closed device drivers, Flash, Acrobat Reader, etc. Macromedia even has a yum repo for flash, so there isn't ANY legal reasons for not pointing at it, only political or tactical reasons. Unless RedHat would have us to believe they live in fear that Macromedia would have both the stones AND the mental defect to sue for pointing to a URL they publish for the explicit purpose of easing installation of their product.

It wouldn't be quite as bad if they hadn't already pulled the 'secret legal problems' excuse with mono only to reverse course without explanation. One gets the impression RedHat plays the legal threat card for unrelated business reasons, such as keeping Fedora just hard enough to get up and running to discourage potential RHEL customers from using it in the case of unfree software and not wanting to aggrandize Novell in the case of mono and reversing when it was clear they were only harming themselves.

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Fedora and MP3

Posted Apr 6, 2006 5:11 UTC (Thu) by wtogami (subscriber, #32325) [Link]

> It wouldn't be quite as bad if they hadn't already pulled
> the 'secret legal problems' excuse with mono only to reverse
> course without explanation.

http://gregdek.livejournal.com/4008.html
To clarify, we did explain the MONO thing. We had to keep quiet for a while because at the time we were busy building this patent alliance, which is a way to use the existing system to protect certain FOSS applications from patent attack from certain players like Microsoft.

Fedora and MP3

Posted Apr 7, 2006 17:29 UTC (Fri) by ametlwn (subscriber, #10544) [Link]

If Debian can have an unfree repository, and tell people it exists, why can't Fedora?

The analogy is flawed. Debian non-free contains stuff that is not released under a DFSG free license but that we believe to be able to distribute without legal troubles. It is not Debian/warez. Afaik RedHat OTOH is not distributing MP3 software (either in Fedora or as part of the non-existing Fedora/non-free) because they think they might get into trouble.

Fedora and MP3

Posted Apr 10, 2006 18:54 UTC (Mon) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]

> It is not Debian/warez.

I take it you didn't actually read my post. If Macromedia is publishing a yum repository then it really takes a disturbed mind to connect telling people about that URL with 'warez'. I don't even think the most extreme lawyer at the MPAA would do want to try that one.

I granted that MP3 support is dodgy in the US, even just pointing to a non-US repo and probably even if it had a notice explaing the patent situation and recommending it only for folks in jurisdictions where there aren't any legal issues. My point was their carrying a supportable position far into la-la land where pointing people looking for a flash plugin to Macromedia's own yum repo is a non-starter.