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

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

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