[Fedora-packaging] Digging up an old dead thread ...

[steve]

Hi Jussi,

Thanks for your comments, my replies are inline below ...

Jussi Lehtola wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-06-24 at 20:22 +0200, steve wrote:
>> Now, however, I do have some time and so I decided to submit a few of packages 
>> as an example of the idea:
>> 
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=507912
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=507915
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=507916
> 
> These do raise a packaging guideline question that has been discussed a
> while ago: is reusing a (binary) PDF okay, or should the PDF be compiled
> in the build?
> 
> For normal software I'm for using the upstream PDFs if they're not
> missing anything, but in the case of pure documentation packages I'm not
> sure.
> 
Well, in a lot of cases of documentation (for instance the first BZ above, the 
Advanced Linux Programming book), you may find only the PDF. Also there is other 
CC content which might have problems like content whose 'generation' is patent 
encumbered (If I understand it correctly most media patents apply to the 
creation/encoding/decoding of the content rather than the content itself, so for 
instance I could conceivably re-distribute a CC licensed mp3 without any patent 
issues).


>> b. About other CC licensed content -- A lot of the available content is licensed 
>> with the Non-Commercial restriction, which is considered as a Bad License 
>> according to the wiki page on licensing. Why is non-commercial only restriction 
>> considered bad ? ...and is there an alternative to including this in the 
>> official Fedora repository -- for instance the rpm fusion repository ?
> 
> Non-commercial is bad, since it limits the users freedom, so it is
> non-free. Rpmfusion does have a nonfree repository which accepts these
> kinds of packages.
> 
Ok. I accept that. Thanks for the suggestion of submitting to rpmfusion's 
nonfree repo.


>> Now, coming to the original question i raised, would it make sense for me to 
>> submit additional such packages possibly even the non-tech related ? Can we have 
>> an 'alpha', 'beta' or 'rawhide' of a creative commons repository to see if the 
>> idea gains popularity and to create some policies regarding this ?
> 
> This has been discussed before. IIRC the result was to continue on the
> current code vs. content model, i.e. decide on a package basis whether
> it's OK to go in.

Umm ...ok. I accept that the Code Vs. Content is the right thing to do for 
"Fedora -- the distribution".

The question i was asking is, would an alternate non-distribution specific repo 
for cc-content be something Fedora would be interested in doing ? Unless i 
misunderstood the replies to the thread i referenced earlier[1], i think there 
is some interest in doing this:

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-packaging/2009-February/thread.html#00054

cheers,
- steve