Fedora/RH policies sometimes suck

[Arthur Pemberton]

On 4/10/07, Anne Wilson <cannewilson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 10 April 2007, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> > On 4/10/07, Anne Wilson <cannewilson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 10 April 2007 05:31, Ed Greshko wrote:
> > > > linuxmaillists at charter.net wrote:
> > > > > I just want to know what other
> > > > > packages are on the Fedora distro that are are missing
> > > > > original functionality simply because of legal issues.
> > > >
> > > > And that would help how?  Yes, you'd know what you're missing...but you
> > > > already know you're missing "something" so why not install the
> > > > OpenOffice rpms and be assured of missing nothing.
> > >
> > > No-one is answering the question.  Forget the OpenOffice fixation.  The
> > > question is 'How do we know which of Fedora's packages have been altered
> > > in this way?'
> >
> > I suppose you might say that you didn't like my ambiguous,
> > non-official response, but I would prefer that you hold me to some
> > regard higher than "no-one". I'll attempt a response again.
> >
> > OpenOffice is the first I have heard of this. And while I believe this
> > particular thing is a small thing, I suppose others disagree. If you
> > know of other specific cases, let us know... maybe someone can keep
> > track. But to my knowledge no such list exists, what does exist is the
> > publicly known policy. Again, no such list as that you request exists
> > to my knowledge.
> >
> > And besides OpenOffice, which I wasn't aware of, I am aware of no
> > other such deficiencies. And lack of codecs do not fit this bill since
> > codecs aren't part of the program. The feature in question here was
> > part of the program.
> >
> > > OpenOffice would be one, but there are others.  Totem comes to
> > > mind, and I'd guess that there are lots more.  As Les remarked, it could
> > > be indicated in the package name.
> >
> > Or, one could be aware of Fedora's fairly simple and straight forward
> > policies.
> >
> > > As for how it would help, we could then decide for ourselves whether we
> > > need to go to the source and build our own packages.
> > >
> > > Anne
> >
> > You could always do that. Have you suffered from any such "stripping"
> > before?
> >
> No, Arthur.  You are still not answering the question.  To be truthful, I
> doubt if anyone here can.  You (and others) go over and over the same points
> about OpenOffice.  That is not what the question was.  The question, once
> again, is how many other packages are similarly affected?  and how could you
> know?
>
> Being aware of the policies is no help at all if you don't know which bit of
> coding might transgress and whether it is present in the source material.
>
> Anne

The answer was... "such a list does not exist'

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