The Multimedia Question

Rahul Sundaram sundaram at fedoraproject.org
Thu Jul 19 21:03:23 UTC 2007


Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 01:49 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:

>> Third party repository containing only Free but patent encumbered 
>> software hosted outside of US in a region not affected by software 
>> patents and in resources provided external to Red Hat. 
> 
> That definition fails.  And it fails completely.  If it is a Third party
> repository, you cannot control what other software is put in it.
> 
> If you _can_ control what else gets put into it, then it's not really a
> Third party repo.

In practical terms, I don't need to control a repository to be aware 
what goes into it according to their explicitly written guidelines by 
Fedora contributors outside of Red Hat.  It is possible that someone 
might sneak in a package that violates the guidelines in a official or 
third party repository. Either would be considered a bug and fixed.  If 
absolute control is necessary you cannot point to a third party 
repository at all but that is up to Legal to decide.

If that level of control is desirable, it needn't be a third party 
repository but a Fedora repository built and hosted in external (to Red 
Hat) systems in regions that don't enforce software patents by Fedora 
contributors.

Rahul




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