metapackages

[Julien Olivier]

Le mardi 27 septembre 2005 à 09:01 +0200, Reinhard Tartler a écrit :
> On 9/26/05, Julien Olivier <julo at altern.org> wrote:
> > I don't think it is legal to distribute flashplayer-mozilla and
> > j2re1.4-mozilla-plugins. Is it ?
> > However, about w32codecs and libdvdcss, it is legal to distribute them
> > in most countries.
> Nope, currently it is the other way round. Thats the reason we cannot
> include these packages into multiverse although we'd really love to.
> But if you know some lawyer who can give legal advice, we are pleased
> to hear from him ;)
> 

Just to make it clear for me, and probably others too: what exactly is
the problem with w32codecs and libdvdcss redistribution ? I thought it
was something related to US patents, but I might just have been
misinformed.

> > So I guess, there could be a
> > multiverse-multimedia-non-us package with w32codecs, libdvdcss2,
> > gstreamer0.8-mad, gstreamer-faad, and I'd add gstreamer0.8-lame,
> > gstreamer0.8-pitfdll and gstreamer0.8-a52dec.
> 
> We don't separate US from the rest of the world. This would need extra
> overhead in the infrastructure for litte profit.
> 

OK, I see. But as a European user, I feel I have to ask: is it legal for
me to install such packages (as I did, assuming it was), or should I
remove them ?

If the problem is really an opposition between the US and the rest of
the world, maybe a good solution could be to create a non-official
repository containing packages that are legal in non-US countries, and
meta-packages to install them. But this wouldn't have to be linked to
Canonical in any way of course.

-- 
Julien Olivier <julo at altern.org>