From kde-policies Sun Nov 02 13:39:47 2003 From: "Petter E. Stokke" Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 13:39:47 +0000 To: kde-policies Subject: Re: P2P file sharing software in KDE's CVS X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-policies&m=106778043830267 MIME-Version: 1 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="--===============1018480442==" --===============1018480442== Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="=-C0Ttmgq6KYOBsy5ZC0D+" --=-C0Ttmgq6KYOBsy5ZC0D+ Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 21:32, Klas Kalass wrote: > Regarding kmldonkey: If there is still someone feeling that its exitance = in=20 > KDE should be discussed, please CC the authors so they can give statement= s. And here's my statement, FWIW (being the maintainer of KMLDonkey): First, about P2P in general and its presence in KDE. P2P is such an extensive issue that adopting a general "no P2P" stance would be catastrophic. I believe that KDE _must_ at some point provide an implementation of the BitTorrent protocol - sure, it's a matter of a few minutes' googling to find torrents for the latest Hollywood screeners, but the predominant use (and original intention) of the protocol is perfectly legal. Saying no to BitTorrent makes about as much sense as saying no to FTP and DCC (which are still the initial distribution points of pirated software). A similar case can be made for Freenet, which does enable one to access both illegal and seriously immoral material, but whose primary function is the enforcement of the right to free speech. On the other hand, providing suport for P2P protocols such as FastTrack (Kazaa), which serve no obvious purpose except the illegal redistribution of copyrighted material, might prove unfortunate. While I know there is immense end-user demand for these applications, and I doubt KDE would be at risk legally for providing them (to my knowledge, there has never been a legal attack on an open-source implementation of P2P software), it could still potentially lead to unwanted attention if such software were provided in the core KDE distribution. Indeed, it's probably fortunate that knapster never made it further than kdenonbeta. Now, about KMLDonkey in particular. As has been pointed out already, it doesn't by itself provide support for any P2P networks, it only serves as a frontend for the mldonkey application much in the same way that KMail serves as a frontend for a mail server (less so, perhaps, because KMail knows how to send mail on its own, but KMLDonkey doesn't know how to share files). It may be more obviously associated with illegal activity than, say, in the case of Konqueror and pirate FTP sites, but the fact remains that it doesn't even contain any code that could in any way be used to perform an illegal act, and it does have obvious legitimate uses, such as serving as a comfortable download manager for mldonkey's BitTorrent facility. Add to that the fact that KMLDonkey is in extragear and not kdenetwork (I'd almost have thought that suspiciously inappropriate myself), and that it's separate from the KDE distribution to the extent that web pages, release downloads and mailing lists are hosted elsewhere (KDE only provides CVS and translation), and the legal risk to the KDE project really becomes less than obvious. Even if someone were silly enough to sue over it, I expect there'd be a fortune to be made in countersuing them for wasting the court's time. Finally, regarding Apollon, the application which sparked the debate in the first place; that too is only a frontend to a P2P application, although it's less obviously decoupled from giFT than KMLDonkey is from mldonkey. It even requires giFT to be installed to be able to compile, while KMLDonkey is completely separate from mldonkey. Moreover, the legitimate uses of the only networks giFT supports (FastTrack, Gnutella, OpenFT) are less obvious. While I personally doubt any problems would arise from including it in extragear, it's certainly more borderline than KMLDonkey. --=20 Petter E. Stokke http://www.gibreel.net/ PGP key: http://www.gibreel.net/key.asc Fingerprint: 4FF3 12BD 692A 0FFF 984F 78DA 4776 81FB 1906 3A9F --=-C0Ttmgq6KYOBsy5ZC0D+ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQA/pQkjR3aB+xkGOp8RAuKXAJ0ZY1HtMq7RBe0w8zbALiBSrArMMgCfXPvu X1+Ua/Fso1Nws8XHjGP09UY= =XkHO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-C0Ttmgq6KYOBsy5ZC0D+-- --===============1018480442== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline _______________________________________________ Kde-policies mailing list Kde-policies@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-policies --===============1018480442==--