Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised [LWN.net]

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 23, 2016 2:33 UTC (Tue) by viro (subscriber, #7872)
In reply to: Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised by rahulsundaram
Parent article: Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Oh, for fsck sake! Rahul, it's much, much simpler, and moral considerations don't have a damn thing to do with it. It's the same difference as that between Joe Average Wankstain having a stash of pirated tracks (nobody gives a damn, prosecuting is too costly to bother with) and somebody starting to sell large amounts of CDs with the same, which is really asking for trouble.

Distributors can be sued *and* it just might be worth the effort. Simple as that...

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Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 23, 2016 4:53 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

It seems pretty clear to me that Debian is focused on licensing for reasons other than not getting sued. Commercial distros have that concern more.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 23, 2016 19:41 UTC (Tue) by hitmark (guest, #34609) [Link] (1 responses)

Debian has always been whacked on that topic.

They effectively forked Firefox over a trademark issue, yet claim they needed to go systemd because the alternatives require too much effort to maintain.

I applaud their technical efforts, but in recent times their horse has gotten mighty high...

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 23, 2016 20:33 UTC (Tue) by MattJD (subscriber, #91390) [Link]

> They effectively forked Firefox over a trademark issue, yet claim they needed to go systemd because the alternatives require too much effort to maintain.

I'm not sure this works towards your point. Firefox is "forked", in that they compile it themselves, which doesn't let them use the Firefox trademark. They don't need to modify Firefox for this even, it's included in Mozilla upstream. They aren't creating their own web browser.

There claim on systemd is that to maintain an entirely separate init system that they have to solo fix is too much effort. This isn't a matter of putting minor fixups on top of Firefox (the most they do), but maintaining the entire Firefox code base by themselves.

I'm sure Debian has made contradictory decisions in the past, but this isn't an example of one.