Xarchiver 0.5.0rc1 released

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Christoph Wickert wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 29.10.2008, 11:05 -0700 schrieb Brian J. Tarricone:
>> Christoph Wickert wrote:
>>
>>> I will ether patch out the donators menu and/or we will switch to
>>> Squeeze in the Fedora Xfce spin. I'm pretty sure I will get trouble with
>>> fedora-legal if I added the donators menu. Same for other distros I
>>> think.
>> Now this is just silly.  Personally I wouldn't do what Giuseppe wants to 
>> do, but what's wrong with that?
> 
> The main problem I see is that the websites are hardcoded in the app and
> cannot be changed.
> What if the content on the website is changed to something like
> extremist political statements, warez, child porn, or just something we
> can't subscribe to? What if a website gets compromised and turns into a
> source for Trojans and viruses? Once the package is released nether
> Guiseppe nor the maintainers from the distros can withdraw it.

What if xfce.org gets compromised and turns into a source for trojans 
and viruses?  How about gnome.org?  I know they've had server break-ins 
in the past.  Hell, so has RH/Fedora, not too long ago.  Guess you 
shouldn't ship software that has those URLs in them either.

Yes, I know, it's "different" -- it's a smaller number of URLs, they're 
clearly directly related to the software in question, and you in theory 
"trust" them more because they're established projects rather than just 
some random guy's website.

>>   Sounds like he just wants to give extra 
>> recognition to people who have contributed.  
> 
> To me this sounds totally different: "Your name and website here" does
> not sound like a call for participation but like an offer for
> advertisement. IMO it targets sponsors, not contributors. 
> As you said before: If it's about contribution, it should be named that
> way, if it is about donations, then it should be clearly named "Donate"
> too.

And what's wrong with having sponsors?  GNOME wouldn't be where it is 
today without sponsors.  Xfce would be a lot farther along if we had 
sponsors.

> Personally I would not contribute in a project that annoys people with
> an ad-ware like menu.

Well, that's your own personal choice, I suppose, and is irrelevant to 
whether or not shipping a piece of software is a legal risk (or even not 
a legal risk, but just a risk in general for other reasons).

>> Legal problems?  For including a name and a link to someone's webpage in 
>> a piece of software?  Please leave the armchair legal analyses to actual 
>> lawyers.  This is a legitimate mailing list, not Slashdot ^_~.
> 
> Ok ok: From a legal POV you are right. Somebody pointed me to startdict,
> which is already in Fedora and also displays random weblinks and ads. 
> But we are responsible for the software we ship and if something in this
> software links to an arguable website, people will make us hold
> responsible for that too. As a package maintainer I don't want to bear
> that risk.

Sure, I guess I can understand your desire to censor software that might 
link to sites that some of your users might find objectionable (or on 
the fear that those sites may later contain objectionable material). 
But again, please don't confuse the issue with some made-up notion of 
"legal risk."

I may not agree with what Guiseppe wants to put in his UI, but it's his 
baby, and up to him how he wants to recognise 
contributors/donors/sponsors/whatever.  If that's going to cause you to 
drop it from Fedora, that's a shame, but I suppose that's your choice.

	-brian