On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

This post is to open a dialogue about what is and isn't acceptable in the repository. It is an issue that has been touched on somewhat before e.g. the Nintendo emulator saber-rattling incident, and was brought up in a thread in Games.

While that particular invocation of the topic had ulterior motives, the point is still a valid one, and it is this:

If we have a strict anti-piracy policy, why do the repos contain "plenty of copyrighted home computer rom images", proprietary calculator ROM images, &tc?

I remember reading that we're not going for complete DFSG compliance, but what, then?

Re: On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

It was my understanding ROMs should not be in maemo.org repositories.

Re: On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

Maybe we could list the suspected packages to make a revision with the developers.

Re: On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

We do.

They shouldn't. If they do (sorry, I haven't installed any emulators) the packages should be removed until they comply with the QA policy. Please also bring it to the testsquad's attention because it would mean they are not testing properly.

That's orthogonal to this. Closed-source in extras (non-free) may be fine, copyright infringement isn't.

Re: On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

It's better to describe these as "proprietary home computer rom images" instead of "copyrighted home computer rom images".

Most of the software in the repository is copyrighted, but it's legal to distribute it when it's open-source licensed rather than proprietary. Terminology matters.

Re: On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

Yes, i'm familiar with that but understandably confused due to some very popular exceptions by well known developers.

Anyway, as a point of curiosity, if an app fails to pass testing because of this particular point, does it in actual practice get removed from the repository?

That is part of it:
- Free redistribution.

But obviously not the part that was considered optional here. :)

Yes, it was a third-party quote.

Re: On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

There are proprietary/copyrighted ROMs in the repos?!? I wasn't aware of that. If yes, they should be, of course, removed. However emulators do not break any law out there (as long as their copyright holder has nothing against them being in the repos) so those should stay.

Re: On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

We could probably do with details/examples on exactly what packages are breaking the rules here - There are plenty of emulators in the repos, which are perfectly fine to be there, but to my knowledge none of them actually come with the ROMs included?

Re: On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

If that's a quote from somewhere, where? Apparently somebody has a list of packages, which packages are the problem here?

Re: On the distribution of copyrighted material
 

Edited above post but for visibility but here's the reason i came to think perhaps our policy was a bit permissive:

And it really doesn't take too much digging in games to find other offenders. Here's the example given by the person cited above: