[Nix-dev] Proprietary fonts not installed by default

[Michael Raskin]

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Tony White wrote:
>> Please do not mix these two issues too much. Filtering out proprietary
>> software should be one switch, and avoiding free software endangered by
>> possible legality of software patents in the US should be another
>> option. The reason is simple: in Europe software patents are void and it

> That's a currently valid point, however there is no telling what will
> happen in the future.

I do speak about two distinct switches. I think there always will be
some countries with sane patent law.

> People (Evil IMO) Are working to change the law in Europe and they are
> very persistent, if currently failing miserably.

And people fighting them are persistent, too. Considering trivial ease
of inside-EU "smuggling" (which is never legally smuggling if done by EU
citizen for personal use, as far as I understand) this will mean that
either patent trolls lose or there will be the first country to give in
which will immediately suffer. Given that EU directive about smoking
failed to cover smoking non-tabacco plants legal in Netherlands...
Either there will be patchwork of legislations or there will be no
software patents.

By the way, it is in our best interest to distribute patent-endangered
free software as wide as legally possible: sudden discovery that PC used
to compose the decision would be illegal because of that very same
decision stalled one anti-Microsoft trial in the US. Everybody except
patent trolls should know that they will lose something...

> To add to that, UK patent law differs slightly from Europe in that
> computer programs used in an industrial process are not covered. The
> UK is also in Europe but use NixOs in maybe a POS or CAD system to
> produce a product or retail some goods here in the UK and there you
> go, you've broken the law unwittingly.

Not great, but anyway. You select "patent law forbids software
compatibility in my jurisdiction" flag. Both these flags should be
prominently described on the site front page and in the beginning of
documentation.

> Unless someone is a lawyer and wants to volunteer to deal with legal
> issues and represent those responsible for NixOs, I still think it
> should all be placed under one umbrella of restriction as most of the
> other Linux distributors do, which includes software with vague or non
> proprietary licenses. Whether or not certain countries allow or

Vague licenses - yes, they should be excluded by default. Europe-based
distributions do not exclude patent-endandgered software, though.

> disallow patented software. Programmers, packagers and maintainers are
> not lawyers. So should distance themselves from such political and
> legal nonsense and focus purely on the job at hand instead.

Checking license for open-sourceness is feasible. After all, license
came with software, it is not like you need to search for it. Knowing
whether some exact piece of software is endangered by patents is
impossible. Even for most lawyers, as court decisions contain random
factor. So legality in the US is impossible do determine correctly. You
know there were patents for "smiley" which could be used against
Thunderbird? I never said successfully, but who knows.

By the way, if you provably knew about a patent and broke it, the
damages sought are bigger, so you are discouraged from researching grey
area...

Checking license is feasible, checking patents is hard and error-prone.
So we should distinguish what we checked and what we think we found out.

> Distancing every developer and every user from any legal nonsense in
> one full swoop is the safest option and that's where I stand
> regardless of the legal validity of where I live or where anyone else
> lives. The distribution is available world wide in ISO format and
> should by default be aimed at everybody with the option to choose.

ISO should be as free as possible. Default policy of excluding FreeType
from repositories (the safest decision for the US) may be somewhat too
strong.

> I disagree wholeheartedly that individual non free stuff and potential
> patent infringing software be treated differently by default because
> some people can have have it whilst others can't.

Well, where I live it is unclear even whether GPL can be valid.. So, if
Russian law will insanely turn out to make GPL valid and BSD license
invalid you would argue for exclusion of BSD-licensed software from the
default installation? What about some country banning Squid because it
is a proxy without mandatory filtering built in?
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