to autodownload or not to autodownload

[Horst H. von Brand]

Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl> wrote:

[...]

> Let me try to explain the orignal rule with an example. For example a
> GPL licensed emulator for an old acorn computer may not be included
> despite its GPL license since it is only usefull using acorn riscos
> roms which are copyrighted and may not be freely redistributed. Since
> its only use is with copyright protected material, shipping the (non
> functional) emulator could be seen as contributary copyright
> infringement since the emulator clearly does not have a significant
> non infringing use.

OK this far.

> OTOH, shipping a doom engine variant clearly is fine, even if it is
> one which doesn't work with the freedoom datafiles, since the original
> doom engine was released under the GPL by the doom copyright holders,
> so clearly they allow distribution of the engine without it being
> accompanied by doom datafiles.

I fail to see the difference of A creating a program P and content C, and A
creating P while B creates C. The program P could very well be open source
and the content C closed in both cases.

And if streched enough this could even forbid CD players or MythTV (code is
open, content (music CDs, TV programs) isn't).

> So changing this unwritten rule to mean that any piece of software
> which is non functional without any content, and for which no freely
> redistributable content is available, may not be included. Would be a
> very broad stretching of the original rule (which we really need to
> write down somewhere).

I don't really know what the "unwritten rule" was. I do agree this should
be clarified.

[...]

> In general the problem is that content creators (artists) are not as
> much into freedom thinking (yet?) as the freesoftware movement is, esp
> they think that no one should be allowed to make any money of their
> work in any way. On top of that they also often think that their
> creation is perfect as is, and don't want others to harm their work by
> modifying it.
> 
> Take the largest opencontent movement for example, the creative
> commons, many of the licenses they provide are non free by our
> standards, and unfortunately the non free ones, esp. the non
> commercial one, are the most populair ones.

Including such stuff in Fedora proper would preclude any commercial use of
the distribution, that is quite contrary to its spirit. Perhaps a
"non-commercial" repo could be set up?
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
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