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List:       kde-policies
Subject:    Re: Suggested policy (was: Re: Apollon soon in kde-extragear)
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2004-02-13 17:10:59
Message-ID: 402D0523.3289F20B () mieterra ! com
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Waldo Bastian wrote:
> 
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> 
> On Fri February 13 2004 16:11, Rob Kaper wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 03:30:25PM +0100, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> > > I beg to differ. Several courts have granted themselves jurisdiction
> > > based on the idea that by publishing information on the internet you
> > > publish this information in the country where this information is read
> > > and as such are subject to the laws of that country.
> >
> > Then for the best interest of KDE and our developers, we should stop
> > accepting contributions from such countries and firewall connections from
> > them on our CVS/download servers?
> 
> I am not sure what you mean with "such countries". But, yes, that's one way to
> deal with legal problems that are bound to a specific jurisdiction.

This is par. important w/r/t the mirroring system, it seems.  For example, a
distributor may package some software unlawful in Dystopia and a Dystopia mirror
may mirror it, leaving the hapless KDE supporter in Dystopia off in some
Dystopian prison.

This would be another reason to update the KDE configure system to make it easy
to build subpackages (e.g., each software app has its own package), so that it
is easier for mirrors and distributors to filter out things they do not want to
distribute (incl. on KDE.org itself - e.g. it is far unlikelier that hosting
Apollon sourcecode is an issue, than the binary packages).  (Note:  one of the
difficulties of subpackaging is that the "doc" directory is not often included
in the appropriate subdirectory but has its own directory structure, so you
cannot just "cd SUBPACKAGE ; make install
" and be done with it).

> 
> > I'm sorry, but I refuse to bend over for some foreign government.
> 
> Well, this isn't about you, I don't care what you do on your own server. But
> for KDE it is a different matter since KDE is an international project and I
> think it is important that all KDE participants, regardless of
> citizenship/residency, can legally work on/with KDE without unnecessary risk
> of persecution.

The primary jurisdictions to worry about are Germany, the EU and the US.  One
can make refinements to subpackages (using the DISTRIBUTION file I suggested
elsewhere as well as perhaps a LEGAL_RISK file in subpackage directories that
list countries in which there may be a legal risk, and then adding a "country"
option to the build system 'configure' script which greps this file before
building the subpackage).

But if the proposal really is to comply w/ all the world's jurisdictions I think
you need to remove all CD burning software as well as audiocd: from KDE, all GIF
code, KHTML (unless it is modified to avoid the Eolas patent - MS's failure to
achieve this in IE despite a monumental effort probably means this is not
possible), etc.

Patent law will prove to be the real nemesis in all this, and any policy we
develop must bear this in mind (i.e., not just copyright law).

[ ... ]

Ciao,

Dre
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