I must be doing something seriously wrong...

Adam Williamson awilliam at redhat.com
Fri May 22 17:33:42 UTC 2009


On Fri, 2009-05-22 at 12:36 -0400, 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.

It's not 'a particular country or countries', it's the country where all
the icky physical legal bits of Fedora are incorporated. It would be
very difficult for Fedora to keep existing if it didn't comply with U.S.
law. Chinese law? Not such a big deal. There's a clear distinction here,
just as we don't appear to care very much about the implications of some
of the sillier laws passed in Europe lately.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net




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