[Fedora-packaging] Is there any legal barrier for packaging Popcorn Time for Fedora?

[T.C. Hollingsworth]

On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 2:44 PM, Miro Hrončok <mhroncok at redhat.com> wrote:
> From my POV, Popcorn uses ffmpeg stuff (just a quick check, not sure)
> and therefore cannot be in Fedore either way and should go to rpmfusion.

Yeah it needs ffmpeg + chromium (by way of node-webkit).  It's
definitely a no-go in Fedora, and probably isn't okay even for
rpmfusion even given that it _bundles_ ffmpeg and chromium.

Aside that, it's entire purpose is quite clearly to promote copyright
infringement.  The UI doesn't even attempt to offer legally
redistributable content in any way.  I would not want this in Fedora
or RPMFusion even if it were permitted on a technicality.  I believe
we have a responsibility to promote responsible use of peer-to-peer
file sharing technologies.  That means peer-to-peer file sharing
technology included in Fedora needs to work with all content, not just
a specially crafted list of illegally redistributed content.

To that end, packaging the underlying technology of this is definitely
on my TODO list.  The peerflix nodejs module provides a really neat
CLI that lets you stream any torrent to any application that works
with the HTTP streaming protocol.

This is much nicer in that:
a.) you must provide your own torrent file/magnet link (hopefully
something public domain from archive.org ;-)
b.) it has no dependencies on any codecs.  You can stream a webm
torrent to totem or dragon, or a mp4 torrent to VLC if you have that
installed.  It also works with audio files, and any other possible
filetype you can think of that has a viewer application that supports
the HTTP streaming protocol.  It's completely content agnostic.

If anyone is interested in helping out please contact me and I can
give some pointers on where to start.  I've tried to make nodejs
packaging incredibly easy.  :-)

-T.C.