Legality of Fedora in production environment

[Vladimir Makarov]

Josh Boyer wrote:

>On Fri, 2007-05-11 at 18:58 +0400, Dmitry Butskoy wrote:
>  
>
>I understand your concern, but unfortunately I don't see how Fedora as a
>project can really help here...
>
>  
>
Sorry, I missed this thread and most probably what I am writing here
does not belong to this mailing list devoted to Fedora developing.

I know that GPL was translated to Russian several times (the first
time as I remember was in 1989).  I think it is better ask FSF about
the issues.  By the way Richard Stallman participated in creation of
first Russian copyright law (about 1991) through prof. Ivannikov who
was an official expert of such law.  The first law was quite liberal.

Now the situation is quit different.  Russia has been trying to become
a member of WTO for long time (about 10 years).  Currently Russia has
biggest unregulated issues with the USA which is pushing software
piracy agenda.

I think Russian police knows well what is Linux.  The problem is their
attitude to Linux.

Here is the typical example.

http://pcnews.ru/news/linux-microsoft-open-170187.html

In brief, the russian police believes that Linux is a sign of ongoing
criminal activity.  Here is a babel fish translation of the news.

May 10, 2007.

The conference of the division chiefs of the Moscow police took place
on Friday. The Moscow poliece chief Vladimir Pronin gathered
conference for determining the new tasks to the colleagues resulting
from the new federal law about the copyright protection. On the
conference lieutenant general Pronin conducted the associative
parallel that software pirates are rapers and killers. This conclusion
Pronin drew, on the basis of the measures of the punishments, which
the state introduced. Checking all companies and organizations of
Moscow to the object of the observance of the copyright law will
become the first stage on the fight with the piracy.

At the conference they noted that the determination of status of some
Microsoft program products is already worked out.  Complicated
situations appear, when an enterprise uses operating system Linux.
Pronin is iron confident, that the enterprise, which uses Linux, has
something to hide.  Police experience showed that Linux is used by the
"dark companies", which carry out pornography, by a money laundering,
by hackers and so on.

One of the representatives of police division commented about Linux:
"The usage of Linux according to the Russian laws, unfortunately, is
not a crime.  However, this fact testifies that the user fears that
those checking can find something forbidden on his computer and the
user desires to hide that.  One should place all such hackers on the
calculation and conduct the periodic inspections, carry out
explanatory conversations.  Linux on the computer as storing
pornography according to our laws is not a crime, but Linux and the
pronograpy are closely connected with the activity of production,
circulation, propagation, seducing young and that is absolutely
illegal".