codec buddy, fluendo, etc.

[Karsten 'quaid' Wade]

On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 15:26 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Toshio Kuratomi (a.badger at gmail.com) said: 
> >> 2.  What improvements would we like to see in Codec Buddy and/or codeina?
> >
> > My number one gripe is that there's no help for people who can get codecs 
> > where they are not patented.  As a minimal step, mentioning that the 
> > patents don't exist everywhere and that free software implementations do 
> > exist would make me feel better.  However, that is only going to be helpful 
> > to more advanced users who will read that and know that they can turn to 
> > google for help.  We need to come up with questions for the lawyers that 
> > determine just how far we can push the envelope.  (Can we add the wording I 
> > mention?  Can we point people to a specific google search?)
> 
> Spot has been through this a few times, as far as I recall. I believe
> the wording is that we are allowed to mention sites that host software
> that 'for whatever reasons' Fedora cannot include. We can not go into
> specifics as to what that software is, how that relates to why we can't
> include it, etc., which makes linking to it directly from any CodecBuddy
> notifications pretty much impossible; that's why we don't have any such
> links on the wiki right now.

As for the question about the specific Google search, I've asked about
that in the past, and it links in to what Bill said.  You can see the
best example of what we are allowed to say here:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems

From the second to last paragraph in the Summary:

        The Fedora Project FAQ and the more informal, unofficial
        http://fedorafaq.org provide useful answers on commonly asked
        questions. However, the unofficial site is not associated with
        or supported by the Fedora Project. You can find many
        interesting things using a search engine like Google.
        OtherRepositories might contain software that has been not been
        included in the official Fedora repository. 

The interesting phrase being, "You can find many interesting things
using a search engine like Google," with the word 'Google' linking to
the search tool itself (http://google.com to be specific.)

So, we can tell people that they may find their answers in Google, but
we cannot tell them the answers to what ... nor what words to search
on ... nor provide an example search that is contributory infringement.

Clear as mud?

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
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