- organization: association or foundation
- who's responsible for what: president, treasurer
- licensing according to free software http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html & http://opensource.org (OSI) & http://faq.tuxfamily.org/License/En (see DFSG to be complete)
- responsibilities of those involved: upstream, packagers, mirror-admin, testers, developers, users, magazines distributing CD/DVD, sites selling CD/DVD
- for packaging-specific issues, see Blog20101013MageiaLegallyGreyPackages
Legal management of licenses for Mageia
Well let's focus on what's distributed, mainly libre-software though copyright is not the only thing to take into account (software patents are still illegal in many countries for those trying to prevent fair-sharing and getting selfish-temporary "rights" in some countries, trademarks too have drawbacks unless they are used appropriately).
Source is available at Mageia legal xmind (of course WikiLicense applies) see CompileXMind to edit it
ToDo:
- add user involvement
- identify relations on graphic
- communicate about smallest common multiple (SCM) vs greatest common denominator (GCD): empower users to contribute what they are authorized to, in their respective country, to provide as much as possible (SCM) in the distribution rather than as few as is possible everywhere (GCD), hence adding as much as possible for as many people as possible
- add cease & desist risk (DMCA)
- precise DIY: "Do It Yourself" as a movement empowering people to just do it, related to free software in many ways
Examples for managing those illegal (in many countries) software patents
- plf
- example with mp3
- encoding with Frauhnaufer
- reading ? (check references)
- users
- distribution
- who can be concerned? packager, mirror-admin, distribution on sold CD, distribution by magazines, other Mageia-based distributions (work to be re-done or additionnal work)
What's the use of a fair trademark?
some examples:- http://www.debian.org/logos/index.en.html
- OIN ?
- Fedora vs Red Hat?
- Linux Foundation for use of Linux (appropriate for any GNU/Linux distribution iirc)
- http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/linux-foundation-trademark-usage-guidelines how to write it
- http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/legal/trademark/attribution everyone and sublicensees
- http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/lsb example of logo
- http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/
- http://foundation.gnome.org/licensing/index.html (find out KDE trademark too :D)
Copyright attribution, or not?
See this discussion about Open Core http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/10/17/shuttleworth-admits-it.html interesting with Qt and Gtk examplesAnother answer by MS at http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/36379-canonical-copyright-assignment-policy-same-as-others?start=1 (see all 3 pages)
Medium for those interested to follow
Implementation should provide two means of contact, depending on the subject:- private: (mageia-issues?) because some things have to be discussed without public knowing, between trusted people
- standard support: licensing, official position, explanations, like is debian-legal for example
TODO: Discuss -legal only or any need for a -licensing ML ? (IMHO, -legal is sufficient even though it would be public, private contact being possible, only requires proper explanation of what subjects can be addressed and which should not)
Some references in French
http://framalang.org/wiki/FRAMALANG:_10_m%C3%A9prises_courantes_sur_la_GPLhttp://faq.tuxfamily.org/Licence/Fr
check CategoryLibreAdvocacy, particularly ContributionLibre (in french)
Implementation in Mageia
Those legal issues can be treated in the continuity of existing practices :- libre software with identified libre licensing and no legal issue :
- mageia managed and promoted, work in common with local initiative, take into account contributions whenever possible and promote commiters (packager or maintainer or user workgroup integration)
- non-free software distributed with needed clauses (contract for flash, non-commercial clause...) :
- identify clearly which derived works by communities is possible (e.g. nvidia, flash, other?)
- libre-software with illegal-in-europe patents or trademark issue,
- check http://plf.zarb.org/faq.php and http://plf.zarb.org/about.php to provide end-user with easiest way to benefit from what is available, keeping in mind responsibilities of those involved: upstream, packagers, mirror-admin, testers, developers, users
- well, just distribute through plf - as usual - no change :)
- room for improvement: see below
what are the risks?
- cease & desist (from DMCA): should it concern the whole distribution or a single repository (which side-effects? one package would be better, from mirror-admin point of view, should be one directory, keeping the rest available)
- is it necessary to have patents / not_relevant_patents / DMCA / crypto / DADVSI|LOPPSI or a single directory? may be in the src.rpm description? to be pragmatic, just check how many packages are concerned at the moment
- 86 in http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/plf/mandriva/cooker/non-free/source/
- 184 in http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/plf/mandriva/cooker/free/source/
- for >13000 packages in the distribution? well, who can take descriptions from plf (well documented to tag it and give advice about what should be included in mageia as a "must have"? see MoSCoW )
- the current plan is to keep those packages in a dedicated repository at the choice of the admin-mirror
- what are the risks for our users? none identified at the moment, for example nobody has been sued for using libdvdcss (counter-example?)
- Mageia keeps on responsibly managing these kinds of risks, based on experience of its members understanding globalcontext & shortcuts
upstream impacts of legal approach
vlc
http://www.videolan.org/press/2010-1.html AOL requires to suppress shoutcast functionalityno problem with codecs, even if patented, as it's illegall in Europe to patent this kind of thing
RDA mail on Mageia ML
https://www.mageia.org/pipermail/mageia-discuss/20101004/002134.htmlOther references (for association structure mainly)
http://www.gnomefr.org/association/statuts/http://www.gnomefr.org/association/reglement/
Laws applicable to Mageia
- Mageia.org registred in France, French Laws applies
- Mirrors of Mageia are under local laws, responsability of maintainer of mirror to comply with local laws
- can mirrors delete on part of repos if needed by local laws → should be yes
CategoryBlogMageia CategoryMageiaDev
