Package Maintainers Flags policy

[Patrice Dumas]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 01:44:37PM -0400, Seth Vidal wrote:
>
> Here is a list of the current French territorial disputes:
>
> Madagascar claims the French territories of Bassas da India, Europa  
> Island, Glorioso Islands, and Juan de Nova Island; Comoros claims 
> Mayotte; Mauritius claims Tromelin Island; territorial dispute between 
> Suriname and the French overseas department of French Guiana; France 
> asserts a territorial claim in Antarctica (Adelie Land); 

This has been suspended, I believe.

> France and 
> Vanuatu claim Matthew and Hunter Islands, east of New Caledonia

That doesn't make the flags of those countries illegal in France (though
there are other things that are censored in France, for example it 
could be possible for a medical software to be illegal in France).

Maybe some crypto software in fedora is still illegal in France, at 
least it was clearly the case for openssh in redhat 5-6 years ago.

Coping with every country laws, including countries where there is
no free speech looks wrong to me (and most restrictions in the US
looks already wrong to me, including patents and other stuff, like 
crypto regulations and certainly other I don't know about). I think 
that Fedora should only abide to US laws and the burden to make derivative 
works that are consistent with other country law should be on the 
shoulder of those who want to have a distro acceptable for their law.

As an added benefit, that would also leave the possibility for those who 
want to resist those laws to do it easily.

--
Pat