Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: last rites: games-fps/postal2mp-demo

[Ian Stakenvicius <axs@gentoo.org>]

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On 16/07/14 03:54 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 3:44 PM, Denis Dupeyron
> <calchan@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Let me try and be clearer. The packages I'm concerned with have
>> had their distfiles backed up. We're not yet in that situation
>> but the day the publisher stops distributing these distfiles,
>> I'll be ready to send the right email to the (hopefully) right
>> person and hope for the best. I was suggesting we did that more
>> often. And with that I'll stop here, because these childish
>> arguments are not worth any more of my time.
>> 
> 
> If people as individuals want to do that then this is something 
> between them and their local government - it is their
> responsibility to follow their own local laws or face the
> consequences.  If it is a game they bought then having an original
> copy of it is even completely legal everywhere I'm aware of.
> 
> It only becomes an issue if Gentoo is going to host a copy of it,
> even if privately.  If this is a matter of having some Gentoo
> project that lets people donate CDs of old games so that perhaps
> some day we can get permission to distribute copies of them, then
> I'd question the relevance to our mission, but it seems legal
> enough.  On the other hand, having a server someplace full of
> tarballs of unlicensed reproductions of distfiles seems like a
> legal landmine.
> 
> I think it is a laudable concept - it just probably isn't wise to
> do it under our organization as we really aren't set up for
> something like this.  We do operate in many jurisdictions where
> that activity is likely to be found illegal, and the US is just one
> of them (the one where we keep most of our money, BTW).
> 
> Now something that has been talked about is having a better way to 
> archive patches and such which are legal to store and
> redistribute. We don't really have a good solution for that either,
> but it seems like an easier problem to solve legally.
> 
> Rich
> 


Also, somewhat tangental to this, I personally think it's also a great
idea to contact upstreams -now- to try and get permission or license
exemptions or whatever so that we can mirror (or fetch, for
fetch-restricted distfiles) even now.  It takes a long time and a lot
of back and forth but it is possible, on occasion.  Then it's just a
matter of adding the gentoo-permissive text to the license file (or
adding it to LICENSE and ${PORTDIR}/licenses/ as a separate file) and
we're good to go.  I've personally only had success doing this with
foldingathome, to date, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try it.



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