RFC: On-demand package installation API in kdelibs
Martin Sandsmark
sandsmark at samfundet.no
Wed Jul 28 20:33:49 BST 2010
On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 09:16:48PM +0200, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> On Wednesday 28 of July 2010, Martin Sandsmark wrote:
> > On Wednesday 28 July 2010 17:58:57 Lubos Lunak wrote:
> > > - Amarok will complain about MP3 support not being present (which is the
> > > case by default with some distributions because of legal reasons) and will
> > > try running a specific script to install it
> >
> > Won't this move liability over to KDE?
> > Helping/asking people to break various laws (DMCA in the case of libdvdcss,
> > patent laws, etc.) is not something I want to do. :-)
>
> I'm not a lawyer, so I can't tell for sure (and Amarok already has support
> for it now, just not as a generic KDE functionality).
Yes, Amarok already has it, and GNOME already has it, but that doesn't mean
they can't be targeted in a future lawsuit.
> I think KDE should not be responsible, because this should not work on its
> own, without the packager helping it a bit. If Amarok finds out it cannot
> play mp3, it would just do 'installCapability( "amarok-mp3" )' and that'd be
> it, it would be just saying there is something missing, but vanilla KDE
> wouldn't do anything about it. It would be up to the code provided by the
> packager to make this call actually install something. Even if there would be
> one day a generic upstream code to install a package, it would be up to the
> packager to provide a package that provides "amarok-mp3".
But this is all technicalities, and AFAIK laws usually care about intents. If
it is our intent to help/recommend people break the law, then we can be held
responsible for that (even if the technical implementation is distro
specific), or?
I'm not a lawyer either, though. Maybe we should mail the Software Freedom
Law Center or something and ask?
--
Martin Sandsmark
:wq
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