The legal issue is important for a new distribution, there are several aspects to be covered

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).
Mageia legal context (draft)
Source is available at Mageia legal xmind (of course WikiLicense applies) see CompileXMind to edit it
ToDo:




Examples for managing those illegal (in many countries) software patents


What's the use of a fair trademark?

some examples:

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 examples
Another 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:
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_GPL
http://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 :

what are the risks?

https://www.mageia.org/pipermail/mageia-dev/20101012/001084.html

upstream impacts of legal approach

vlc
http://www.videolan.org/press/2010-1.html AOL requires to suppress shoutcast functionality
no 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.html

Other references (for association structure mainly)

http://www.gnomefr.org/association/statuts/
http://www.gnomefr.org/association/reglement/

Laws applicable to Mageia


CategoryBlogMageia CategoryMageiaDev
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