On Sunday 27 November 2005 19:49, Tim Edwards wrote: > Bryan J. Smith wrote: > > 2) 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