I must be doing something seriously wrong...

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On 05/22/2009 09:36 AM, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Toshio Kuratomi (a.badger at gmail.com) said:
>>> Given what Fedora does with respect to software patents in otherwise
>>> free software, I think you're wrong here. We *do* make that choice
>>> and related modifications all the time.
>>>
>> That situation is different, though, as Fedora has been told that there
>> isn't a choice WRT patents.  The decree of eliminating patents has come
>> down from Red Hat legal so unless Fedora has the wherewithal to be
>> funded by someone else than Red Hat there is no choice being made here.
>>
>> Fedora does have a choice WRT flags.  There is a benefit to not shipping
>> flags but it isn't a matter of if we do ship flags, Red Hat will no
>> longer sponsor us.
>
> It is still a situation where, due to the legal and cultural climate
> of a particular country or countries, we draw the line as to content
> &  code that we include.

No to the countries portion.  Patents are due to the legal rules of a 
particular country.  The country that Red Hat is incorporated in and 
therefore the country that we cannot violate the laws of and remain a 
project supported and funded to a high level by Red Hat.

>  To reference my later point, I feel fairly comfortable
> saying that we're not going to be shipping default backgrounds consisting
> of naked people, or photographs of open surgical procedures, or overtly
> religious iconography, or any variety of things, even though we have no
> legal obligation to in that regard. Do we need an explicit policy on that
> too? (I'm sure someone will argue that we should go ahead and ship all
> those things if upstream includes them; I most assuredly do not agree.)
>
Oh definitely someone.  Fpr instance, I disagree on some of your points 
here.  What if there was an open source reader integrated with content 
for a specific format of medical textbook?  That would be something we 
ship despite having photography of surgical procedures in it.  We 
already ship sword and gnome-sword which is religious.  So, since we 
disagree, how do we resolve the impasse?  Popular vote?  rock  scissors 
paper?

You argue that banning flags is not a slippery slope and yet the 
examples you cite here just show that we are already on a slippery 
slope, flags would just be sliding further.  There are things that we 
must leave out of the distribution because of laws in the country Red 
Hat is incorporated in (patents).  There are separate choices we make 
about not including open source software/pieces of open source software 
(webcollage).  For the things we do have a choice over, we need to be 
explicit in what goals we are trying to achieve.  Enumerating our goals 
shows where we are headed as a project.  Showing that "Be downloadable 
by anyone in any country not barred by US law" trumps "Package any 
maintained open source software" or vice versa is a good piece of 
information about who we are that people looking to contribute to a 
Linux distribution would like to know.

> It's why I feel slippery slope arguments are missing the point - the
> line as to what we'll ship and what we won't ship is already there, even
> outside of legal obligations; this discussion about flags is essentially where
> to place the line.
>
I try to avoid being extremist about things but if you're saying the 
reason we're justified in banning flags is because we're already 
patching out other things then perhaps we need to reexamine those other 
things and reincorporate them into the distribution.  Slippery slope is 
a problem that should be solved, not an excuse for doing it more.

-Toshio