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

[steve]

Hello Kevin,

Thanks for your excellent comments. A lot of these I've thought of and have 
formed opinions about. So here goes ...

Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:57:16 +0200
> ...snip...
> 
> I think a number of people think it's a good idea to make CC licensed
> content easily available to Fedora users, but it's unclear to me at
> least how best to do this:
> 
> 1. First. What would be acceptable? Anything under a acceptable license
> to Fedora? So, I can make a 100MB package of all the pictures I have
> taken of my dogs as long as the license is ok? And can update it weekly
> as I take new ones? 

IMHO, sure. That should be fine. As long as you are committed to 'maintaining' 
it and someone finds it useful and actually installs it ...maybe someone who 
wants to create an application like a dog encyclopedia ...or wants for whatever 
reason create an dog face recognition software would find it useful. ...Ok, so I 
  was kidding a bit there, but seriously though, I would say, if you are 
motivated enough to 'maintain' the package, i think it should be acceptable 
(same as in software -- really how many terminals, mp3 players, desktops/window 
managers, office suites, pdf readers ...etc does one *really* need ...but the 
ones that are being maintained, are in Fedora aren't they ?)

> 
> 2. Is content thats under a Fedora acceptable license, but can't be
> read/used by any free tools acceptable? Ie, could someone package a
> flash movie?
> 
Umm ...yes, that is a problem. I lean towards not acceptable
(btw, aren't flash movies playable by gnash ?).

> 3. Is rpm the right format for this content? Perhaps it would be better
> to get people working on some kind of application/viewer thing that
> could hit the various CC content and search and download it easily for
> Fedora folks? Why should we package and duplicate this content for just
> Fedora users?
> 
This is one thing that I thought about long and hard. Yes, it would be /ideal/ 
to have a cc content 'manager', which makes cc content easily searchable. In 
fact this can even go beyond rpm by allowing users to rate, recommend, share, 
etc their collections by being peer-to-peer. In fact, IMHO, things like cc 
movies and cc music suffer because of the absence of such tools.

That said, I chose rpm because of the simple reasons that it is already there 
and does what I /personally/ wanted out of a manager:
a. Make stuff easy to manage (ie: the rpm query/install/erase flags), and ...
b. Make stuff searchable (via yum)

Also, I agree that making an rpm is making it Fedora (or rather rpm based 
distro) specific ...but is that not conceptually the same as distributing rpm 
rather than tarballs of software ?

> 4. How would we package some content. Ie, random pictures, or clip art,
> or movies. If multiple things in fedora can use them, would they go
> into some kind of /usr/share/CC-STUFF/ dir? or what?
> 
This is one question that stayed unanswered the last time i brought this topic 
up. I personally am ok with /usr/share/cc-content/{audio,video,text}

> 5. What about content thats licensed ok, but is
> Obscene/Adult/Objectionable/Gross? Who decides those cases? Is there
> any review of content? Against what guidelines?
> 
This is not purely a content issue, the problem exists with software too and 
Fedora's CodeVsContent[1] section in the Packaging guidelines already discusses 
this with regards to software. We can adopt and expand this if necessary.

> I personally think trying to get people involved in making a app that
> would easily search/download/use properly licensed content would be a
> better way to approach things than to try and (re)package everything
> in rpms, but perhaps I could be convinced otherwise.  
>  
Hmm ...well yes, but in my own personal experience, it is easier to package 
content in a rpm (even easier than packaging software, because of the absence of 
dependencies and complicated %build sections).

A dedicated application would be cool, but doesn't exist and the lazy dog that I 
am, i went ahead with rpm.

cheers,
- steve

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#Code_Vs_Content