fedora-docs bugs

[Paul W. Frields]

On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 13:38, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Hi
> > > I wonder why RH can't see that? 
> > > ... no 
> > 
> > I'm pretty sure they can. However, directing people
> > to places where they
> > can (essentially) violate IP rights may be roughly
> > as actionable as
> > violating them yourself.
> 
> the violation of IP rights if any is not universal. we
> dont have software patents in India. its perfectly
> legal for me to use an mp3 player in fedora

Absolutely. But Red Hat is a US-based company and thus has to abide by
US restrictions. The Fedora Project servers are (I believe) located in
the US and thus similarly bound, I would guess. This is probably a FAQ
topic on a Linux legal list somewhere. I would doubt that the policy
will change from how Red Hat handles docs for their RHEL product, or
previous incarnations of Red Hat Linux.

Will that satisfy all Fedora users? Probably not, but we have to live
with it until people give up on patent-encumbered software or Red Hat
relocates all its operations to a nation that doesn't have these legal
entanglements. I'm not holding my breath for either.

International users will be able to make use of a multitude of non-Red
Hat hosted sites for HOWTOs and documentation. Once again, Google
conquers all. :-) No one's putting a lid on all that information, I'm
just saying that I doubt the FDP will address it. Doing so conflicts
with the mission of the whole Project (q.v. Bugzilla #129721).

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE