[arch-dev-public] steam in our repos?

[Pierre Schmitz]

Am 15.11.2012 06:27, schrieb Gaetan Bisson:
> [2012-11-15 00:04:43 -0500] Daniel Wallace:
>> I read through the entire license.  It seemed ok to me but as I am not
>> a lawyer I emailed them to request permission first to redistribute the
>> package in community/multilib.
> 
> I am not a lawyer either but I understand sentences such as:
> 
> 	"You may not, in whole or in part: copy, photocopy, reproduce,
> 	[...] the Program; [...] You may not [...] transfer
> 	reproductions of the Program to other parties in any way [...]
> 	without the prior written consent of Valve."
> 
> Note that there is a huge difference between written and express consent
> (the latter is what I believe you have obtained by email). So as best as
> I understand we do not have legal right to distribute this program.

After reading the mail you got from some engineer at Valve I have to
agree with Gaetan. This mail is not enough and not specific at all. We
would more need a written distribution license from their legal
apartment. Their programmers might be OK with it, but that does not mean
their lawyers wont sue us. And the current license seems pretty clear
that copying and modifing is not allowed.

To be clear: we need permissions to redistribute this steam package in
a possible modified version (atm we alter some shell scripts). (e.g. we
have a lengthy "Flash Distribution Agreement" document from Adobe which
explicitly allows us (named Arch Linux) to distribute their Flash
player.) Of course the most ideal solution would be a new genral license
that would allo redistribution for everyone.

Therefore I would suggest to remove the steam package for now. Of
course I would be glad to be able to re-add it once Valve solves these
licensing issues. But for now this seems to be too risky. It's also not
worth it as this package is pretty useless to most people atm. (As we
have now all the needed deps in the repos building from the AUR PKGBUILD
is easy enough)

Greetings,

Pierre

-- 
Pierre Schmitz, https://pierre-schmitz.com