On 06/12/2016 at 23:18, Simon Hobson wrote:
> Alessandro Selli <alessandroselli@???> wrote:
>
>>> OK fine, just have this yes or no question early in the install:
>>>
>>> =============================================================
>>> Are you willing to have the install try non-free drivers and firmware
>>> for your network, video, keyboard and mouse if free drivers and
>>> firmware aren't available or don't work? (Y/N):
>>> =============================================================
>>>
>>> You'll say no, and the first attempt so will I. But if it doesn't work
>>> with free-only, I'll try yes. Different strokes. You'll never get
>>> nonfree software, and I'll have maximal chance of getting an
>>> installation running.
>> This would require having some separate, independent third party set up a
>> non-free Devuan repository in order to protect the main Devuan one from any
>> liability that might incur from distributing material that is encumbered by
>> patents, non-free distribution license clauses, DMCA-infringment claims and so
>> forth. Something like repoforge or deb-multimedia.
>
> That's a non sequitur
> The ONLY, and I mean ONLY bit that's relevant is the one about licence terms - and that's *relatively* easy to deal with one way or another as the licence terms are there to be read (either there are terms that allow you to redistribute or there aren't).
> Claims for patent infringement, DMCA infringement, and so forth can be (and have been) thrown at completely open and free software.

Proprietary software is not encumbered only by restrictive licensing
terms. Patents and anti-circumvention laws also apply that further
restrict it's use, or the liberty to reverse-engineer it or to develop
and distribute a compatible, functional free-software equivalent. DRM
and DMCA were already used to restrict free distribution of derivative
works, and claims of fair-use exemptions were not always successful
against it.

Of course you know why to this date RedHat, Fedora etc do not carry in
their official repositories some packages containing mp3 codecs or the
libdvdcss library? Just a few remainders:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/MP3

    Introduction

MP3 is currently the most widely used format for lossy music compression
and is widely supported among music players. For a number of years,
because of the legal issues relating to implementing MP3 support, Fedora
was unable to include it at all.

However, as of 2016-11-10, Fedora is now able to include *MP3 decoding*
functionality. *MP3 encoding* functionality is still not permissible,
because it requires patented technologies and the patent holder has not
provided licenses that are compatible with Fedora's requirements.


https://rpmfusion.org/FAQ

      Why doesn't the Fedora project ship the Software that RPM Fusion
      offers?

As Fedora is officially affiliated with Red Hat, Inc. in the Fedora
Project, Fedora is effectively bound by the same legal restrictions as
Red Hat, as a US company, is bound by. This means in particular that
software encumbered with US patents cannot be included in Fedora.


https://www.videolan.org/legal.html


Legal concerns

VideoLAN is an organization based in *France*.
Therefore, most of the following page is redacted in French and refers
to French law, which is the only one to be applicable to VideoLAN.

To help you, some parts are translated in English. However, if in any
way, the French and English section show some conflict, the French
section *will prevail*.

[...]

    Are libdvdcss and libaacs legal?

      libdvdcss

libdvdcss is a library that can find and guess keys from a DVD in order
to decrypt it.
This method is *authorized* by a French law decision CE 10e et 9e
sous­sect., 16 juillet 2008, n° 301843
<http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichJuriAdmin.do?oldAction=rechJuriAdmin&idTexte=CETATEXT000019216315&fastReqId=1851277972&fastPos=1>
on interoperability.

*NB:* In the USA, you should check out the US Copyright Office decision
<http://www.copyright.gov/1201/> that allows circumvention in some cases.
VideoLAN is *NOT* a US-based organization and is therefore *outside US
jurisdiction*.

[...]

    Patents and codec licenses

Neither French law nor European conventions recognize software as
patentable (see French section below).
Therefore, software patents licenses do not apply on VideoLAN software.


We are now probably safer from negative future evolutions thanks to
the almost sure abandonment of the TTIP negotiations. However the law
is still too subject to different interpretations and variations, both
geographical and temporal, to risk failing this very young and fragile
distribution against even the most frivolous and doomed to fail legal
proceeding. We do not have the pockets to pay legal advice against such
a possibility, much less defending Devuan in court. Of course, we're
still too small a distribution to think we could be on the radar of such
entities like RIAA or the likes, but we do want to grow and rank to the
first positions on distrowatch, don't we? And how could we think we can
take on more risk than RedHat, Fedora and CentOS are willing to expose
themselves against?


Regards,


Alessandro