On Sunday 27 November 2005 19:49, Tim Edwards wrote:
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
- Repository hell affects _most_ other package distros, including
Debian. Ubuntu and other Debian-based distros get around them by including software that may not be legally redistributed.
Just out of interest what do Debian, Ubuntu and others distribute that is illegal? And even if they do how does having illegal software help get around repository problems?
Illegal probably isn't the correct word in all cases.
A great example is the RPM libdvdcss - it allows de-encryption of commercial DVDs so that they can played (or illegally copied) under Linux.
It may be a DMCA violation to use libdvdcss since it provides features (like DVD ripping, ignoring of country codes, and screen capture) that can be used to get around DVD-protection schemes.
Interestingly, no one has ever challenged the use of libdvdcss and it probably *isn't* illegal. If it was challenged in court, it would *probably* be ok to use since no one has produced a way to play DVDs under Linux with commercial software....although courts may order some of its features removed (like ignoring country codes).
As if this wasn't a grey enough area already, the DMCA has no authority outside the USA.
In some countries, personal use of strong encryption software is banned. In those countries I assume CentOS is totally illegal out of the box since it ships with OpenSSH, and can not be removed during installation.
Generally, distros like CentOS/Fedora/OpenSUSE/Debian try to stick to all GPL licensed packages in their repos (which is no guarantee that they will be legal everywhere). For a list of RPMs that are fully supported, but kept out of OpenSUSE (SUSE includes them in the boxed version) since they aren't licensed via the GPL see here: http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/SUSE_LINUX_10.0.42_(i586).html