[arch-dev-public] Moonlight in Arch Linux
Hi, I know that this topic was discussed in January this year and we decided to put it to AUR and if it have enough votes to [community]. For all new developers, here is the discussion from January: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2009-January/010029.h... Now it's in community, but it's outdated and which is the real problem, you must build it with a fresh built and installed mono during compilation time. It depends very close to mono and therefor I would like to bring it to [extra], to maintain it with the rest of the mono stack which I already do. Also a bug report was posted because of this issue: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/17573 The maintainer in community seems not be active anymore (Timm Preetz) and moonlight is orphan. Any objections from your side? Cheers, Daniel
2009/12/22, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de>:
Any objections from your side?
+1 to bring it to [extra]. I also can help you, upgrading it if needed. -- Arch Linux Developer http://www.archlinux.org http://www.archlinux.it
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:29:14 -0800 Giovanni Scafora <giovanni@archlinux.org> wrote:
2009/12/22, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de>:
Any objections from your side?
+1 to bring it to [extra]. I also can help you, upgrading it if needed.
Thanks, but I have already a running version of moonlight 2.0 So, that's no problem.
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 6:18 AM, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:29:14 -0800 Giovanni Scafora <giovanni@archlinux.org> wrote:
2009/12/22, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de>:
Any objections from your side?
+1 to bring it to [extra]. I also can help you, upgrading it if needed.
Thanks, but I have already a running version of moonlight 2.0 So, that's no problem.
As long as it's maintained, I don't see a problem with this. However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:44:43 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 6:18 AM, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:29:14 -0800 Giovanni Scafora <giovanni@archlinux.org> wrote:
2009/12/22, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de>:
Any objections from your side?
+1 to bring it to [extra]. I also can help you, upgrading it if needed.
Thanks, but I have already a running version of moonlight 2.0 So, that's no problem.
As long as it's maintained, I don't see a problem with this.
However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
There are no issues as software patents do not exist for us. :P -- Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:44:43 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 6:18 AM, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:29:14 -0800 Giovanni Scafora <giovanni@archlinux.org> wrote:
2009/12/22, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de>:
Any objections from your side?
+1 to bring it to [extra]. I also can help you, upgrading it if needed.
Thanks, but I have already a running version of moonlight 2.0 So, that's no problem.
As long as it's maintained, I don't see a problem with this.
However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
There are no issues as software patents do not exist for us. :P
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:12:30 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
There are no issues as software patents do not exist for us. :P
Moonlight is licensed under the GPL. Who cares what patent problems it might have in the US? Of course this plugin is quite useless anyway (only works with firefox and those few sites using silverlight only seem to support the microsoft implementation). But I am fine with it if Daniel wants to maintain it. -- Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:12:30 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
There are no issues as software patents do not exist for us. :P
Moonlight is licensed under the GPL. Who cares what patent problems it might have in the US?
Of course this plugin is quite useless anyway (only works with firefox and those few sites using silverlight only seem to support the microsoft implementation). But I am fine with it if Daniel wants to maintain it.
Well, there are those of us here in the US and we do have US users and mirrors. From a reading of the Groklaw piece[1], I see it as "Microsoft can sue any users of the software that did not get Moonlight direct from Novell". The "Downstream Recipients" part of the covenant seems to NOT cover mirrors. This says to me that we'd be opening up our mirrors to being sued for redistribution of patented material. As for the "Who care's what patent problems it might have in the US?" part - I care. US users care. US mirrors care. We've already taken steps to specifically appease the German audience (remember: we removed Analytics because of some German law), why doesn't this door swing both ways? 1: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080528133529454
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:40:28 -0600 Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:12:30 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
There are no issues as software patents do not exist for us. :P
Moonlight is licensed under the GPL. Who cares what patent problems it might have in the US?
Of course this plugin is quite useless anyway (only works with firefox and those few sites using silverlight only seem to support the microsoft implementation). But I am fine with it if Daniel wants to maintain it.
Well, there are those of us here in the US and we do have US users and mirrors. From a reading of the Groklaw piece[1], I see it as "Microsoft can sue any users of the software that did not get Moonlight direct from Novell". The "Downstream Recipients" part of the covenant seems to NOT cover mirrors. This says to me that we'd be opening up our mirrors to being sued for redistribution of patented material.
As for the "Who care's what patent problems it might have in the US?" part - I care. US users care. US mirrors care. We've already taken steps to specifically appease the German audience (remember: we removed Analytics because of some German law), why doesn't this door swing both ways?
1: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080528133529454
To fully clear that, I will contact the Moonlight developers. They should give us the right answer for legal issues if we allowed to distribute it without any concerns.
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:40:28 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
Moonlight is licensed under the GPL. Who cares what patent problems it might have in the US?
Of course this plugin is quite useless anyway (only works with firefox and those few sites using silverlight only seem to support the microsoft implementation). But I am fine with it if Daniel wants to maintain it.
Well, there are those of us here in the US and we do have US users and mirrors. From a reading of the Groklaw piece[1], I see it as "Microsoft can sue any users of the software that did not get Moonlight direct from Novell". The "Downstream Recipients" part of the covenant seems to NOT cover mirrors. This says to me that we'd be opening up our mirrors to being sued for redistribution of patented material.
OK, my response shouldn't have been taken too seriously. (I'll add more smilies next time)
As for the "Who care's what patent problems it might have in the US?" part - I care. US users care. US mirrors care.
The point is that once we care about patents we'll have to remove a lot of packages like openssl, mpeg/mp4 stuff, libdvdcss and who knows what else. It's virtually impossible to distribute software without patent issues. But there concern sound very much like we only care about patents when its from the evil microsoft company. So we should either care about patents with all its consequences or we should simply ignore them.
We've already taken steps to specifically appease the German audience (remember: we removed Analytics because of some German law), why doesn't this door swing both ways?
That's another story and you are wrong here. German law does not apply to al.org. These discussion about google analytics were about privacy not laws. But let's forget about this as it's offtopic anyway. -- Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:40:28 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
As for the "Who care's what patent problems it might have in the US?" part - I care. US users care. US mirrors care.
The point is that once we care about patents we'll have to remove a lot of packages like openssl, mpeg/mp4 stuff, libdvdcss and who knows what else. It's virtually impossible to distribute software without patent issues. But there concern sound very much like we only care about patents when its from the evil microsoft company. So we should either care about patents with all its consequences or we should simply ignore them.
Well, it's always a razor's edge with this stuff. Considering moonlight is NOT currently in the repos, and really only covers a handful of users, the added issues due to potential legal action is too much. If we're balancing the cost/benefit thing here, I don't think the benefit is enough, especially considering it's downloadble from Novell without the potential of legal action.
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:40:28 -0600 Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:12:30 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
There are no issues as software patents do not exist for us. :P
Moonlight is licensed under the GPL. Who cares what patent problems it might have in the US?
Of course this plugin is quite useless anyway (only works with firefox and those few sites using silverlight only seem to support the microsoft implementation). But I am fine with it if Daniel wants to maintain it.
Well, there are those of us here in the US and we do have US users and mirrors. From a reading of the Groklaw piece[1], I see it as "Microsoft can sue any users of the software that did not get Moonlight direct from Novell". The "Downstream Recipients" part of the covenant seems to NOT cover mirrors. This says to me that we'd be opening up our mirrors to being sued for redistribution of patented material.
As for the "Who care's what patent problems it might have in the US?" part - I care. US users care. US mirrors care. We've already taken steps to specifically appease the German audience (remember: we removed Analytics because of some German law), why doesn't this door swing both ways?
1: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080528133529454
I have talked to the moonlight developers. The posted covenant on the Microsoft website is the old one. This has been updated some days ago and it's now safe for everyone to use/distribute moonlight without any fear to be sued by Microsoft. Miguel has blogged about it some days ago: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Dec-17.html "Microsoft has an updated patent covenant that will covers third party distributions." Another linked article from Miguel is here which clears the situation even more: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6932/1/ (Novell Moonlight 2.0 Gets Microsoft's Blessing / Moonlight for all Linux Users): ----snip---- "They can take the source, do any patches they need to do to make sure it integrates with their system, and redistribute the binaries," De Icaza told InternetNews.com. "Anyone can take Moonlight and run it on any platform that they want and they can even modify it without Novell involvement and without the fear that Microsoft might not like that." While Moonlight itself is open source and now covered by the extended Microsoft patent covenant, the media codecs necessary for audio and video will continue to be treated differently. Moonlight includes the Microsoft Media Pack, which is a set of proprietary codecs that Microsoft has licensed from their own patent holders and makes available to Moonlight users, free of charge. ---snip---- So we should be safe to distribute it and do what we want with the package. @Aaron: You were right with the old covenant, but with the new one we have nothing to worry about. I will wait with the packaging after they updated the website with the new one. Daniel
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:40:28 -0600 Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:12:30 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
There are no issues as software patents do not exist for us. :P
Moonlight is licensed under the GPL. Who cares what patent problems it might have in the US?
Of course this plugin is quite useless anyway (only works with firefox and those few sites using silverlight only seem to support the microsoft implementation). But I am fine with it if Daniel wants to maintain it.
Well, there are those of us here in the US and we do have US users and mirrors. From a reading of the Groklaw piece[1], I see it as "Microsoft can sue any users of the software that did not get Moonlight direct from Novell". The "Downstream Recipients" part of the covenant seems to NOT cover mirrors. This says to me that we'd be opening up our mirrors to being sued for redistribution of patented material.
As for the "Who care's what patent problems it might have in the US?" part - I care. US users care. US mirrors care. We've already taken steps to specifically appease the German audience (remember: we removed Analytics because of some German law), why doesn't this door swing both ways?
1: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080528133529454
I have talked to the moonlight developers. The posted covenant on the Microsoft website is the old one. This has been updated some days ago and it's now safe for everyone to use/distribute moonlight without any fear to be sued by Microsoft.
Miguel has blogged about it some days ago: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Dec-17.html
"Microsoft has an updated patent covenant that will covers third party distributions."
Another linked article from Miguel is here which clears the situation even more: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6932/1/ (Novell Moonlight 2.0 Gets Microsoft's Blessing / Moonlight for all Linux Users):
----snip---- "They can take the source, do any patches they need to do to make sure it integrates with their system, and redistribute the binaries," De Icaza told InternetNews.com. "Anyone can take Moonlight and run it on any platform that they want and they can even modify it without Novell involvement and without the fear that Microsoft might not like that."
While Moonlight itself is open source and now covered by the extended Microsoft patent covenant, the media codecs necessary for audio and video will continue to be treated differently. Moonlight includes the Microsoft Media Pack, which is a set of proprietary codecs that Microsoft has licensed from their own patent holders and makes available to Moonlight users, free of charge. ---snip----
So we should be safe to distribute it and do what we want with the package.
@Aaron: You were right with the old covenant, but with the new one we have nothing to worry about. I will wait with the packaging after they updated the website with the new one.
Well then, my only issue is assuaged. :)
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:28:01 +0100 Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:12:30 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
There are no issues as software patents do not exist for us. :P
Moonlight is licensed under the GPL. Who cares what patent problems it might have in the US?
Of course this plugin is quite useless anyway (only works with firefox and those few sites using silverlight only seem to support the microsoft implementation). But I am fine with it if Daniel wants to maintain it.
Pierre is right on this point. It's distributed under GNU LGPL and the MIT X11 licenses. It's compiled against ffmpeg to support more codecs. But it's wrong what you said, Pierre. If you go to the showcase website of Microsoft for Silverlight, nearly all demos are working with moonlight. Otherwise to avoid some legal issues (which I don't believe that there are one) we can say to our users that they can install it through this website: http://go-mono.com/moonlight/download.aspx Otherwise if someone want to develop silverlight/moonlight application under Arch Linux he can't because of the missing SDK which comes with the package I would build from source. About the "Covenant..." thing, I don't really understand it, it's too much "high" english for me. Daniel
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Daniel Isenmann <daniel.isenmann@gmx.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:28:01 +0100 Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:12:30 -0600, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
However, isn't there some legal issues with Moonlight? I saw recently that Microsoft "pledged" not to sue Moonlight users....
There are no issues as software patents do not exist for us. :P
Moonlight is licensed under the GPL. Who cares what patent problems it might have in the US?
Of course this plugin is quite useless anyway (only works with firefox and those few sites using silverlight only seem to support the microsoft implementation). But I am fine with it if Daniel wants to maintain it.
Pierre is right on this point. It's distributed under GNU LGPL and the MIT X11 licenses. It's compiled against ffmpeg to support more codecs.
To be clear, GPL and other license cover copyright. This is about patents. (Those stupid, stupid software patents).
On 12/22/2009 12:01 PM, Daniel Isenmann wrote:
Hi,
I know that this topic was discussed in January this year and we decided to put it to AUR and if it have enough votes to [community].
For all new developers, here is the discussion from January: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2009-January/010029.h...
Now it's in community, but it's outdated and which is the real problem, you must build it with a fresh built and installed mono during compilation time. It depends very close to mono and therefor I would like to bring it to [extra], to maintain it with the rest of the mono stack which I already do.
Also a bug report was posted because of this issue: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/17573
The maintainer in community seems not be active anymore (Timm Preetz) and moonlight is orphan.
Any objections from your side?
Cheers, Daniel
+1 -- Ionut
participants (5)
-
Aaron Griffin
-
Daniel Isenmann
-
Giovanni Scafora
-
Ionut Biru
-
Pierre Schmitz