What do we think of this?

[Christopher Blizzard]

On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 13:55 -0500, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 13:32 -0400, Christopher Blizzard wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 09:53 -0500, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> > > Honestly, I think all of these comments come from one pivotal issue:
> > > 
> > > Fedora won't break US law.
> > > 
> > > Debian will. Ubuntu will. SuSE will. Gentoo will.
> > > 
> > > Thus, there is no need for "extra" repositories to arise for these Linux
> > > distributions. And the average user wants to have software that breaks
> > > the law (mp3, dvd, etc). So they have to go outside the safety zone that
> > > is the distribution for Fedora, and here there be dragons.
> > > 
> > > This problem sucks. It has always sucked. We're playing by the rules,
> > > where no one else is, and we're getting punished for it, while they
> > > prosper.
> > > 
> > > The rules (US law) are broken. I just have no idea how to fix it in my
> > > lifetime, much less in the period of relevance for Fedora.
> > 
> > Is there a reason why we don't say this widely?  It's a compelling and
> > simple to understand meme (free/non-free/illegal/illegal aside.)
> 
> Because we'd be accusing other groups of breaking the law. Thats
> potentially libel. I doubt Red Hat wants to take that kind of risk,
> whereas I am personally willing (I've got a pretty strong case that
> they're violating US patent law and the DMCA, and while I'd be more than
> happy to see these laws repealed, they're still the laws on the books).

That's easy to flip around into a positive personal assertion:  "We
don't do it because we feel it risks breaking the law and we can't
impose that risk on our users, either."

--Chris