sidux.com
Anything goes - Goodbye sidux
craigevil - Feb 11, 2007 - 08:47 AM
Post subject: Goodbye sidux
Too many stupid forum rules, if mentioning certain things is such a pain then move the damn forum to a different country. I take it the forum is hosted on a german server where mentioning certain things is a big no no.
Fed up with not being able to tell people what works or how to do things in the forum or in IRC just to have someone jump down my throat.
Every other forum in the Debian community has no problems mentioning the things that are taboo here, so the issue certainly can't be because they have more money.
All of the above plus the fact that people here are so critical of other distros, namely the *buntus, which is just silly. Means it is time for me to move on. I know this will probably get deleted since the mods here like to delete posts.
h2, shame, slh keep up the good work.
Oddball - Feb 11, 2007 - 09:44 AM
Post subject: RE: Goodbye sidux
This will never be the reason for me to leave sidux but I agree that it is a pity that we can't discuss certain things and I also have had the thought before that why not move the server to somewhere where we can have a more free forum, free from stupid laws against what we do anyway. As I have understood before sidux is looking for a new server, please consider to put the server somewhere else.
devil - Feb 11, 2007 - 09:45 AM
Post subject: Goodbye sidux
craigevil,
we dont delete any posts at all here, unless they are discriminating in a way or illegal!
so, please dont spread FUD here. if you have to move on, do that. but dont make big issues out of things that most users just accept.
greetz
devil
slam - Feb 11, 2007 - 10:27 AM
Post subject: Goodbye sidux
?? I really don't get the message:
Someone does not want to use our forums, because we friendly ask him to not link to ONE SINGLE REPOSITORY, which is easy to find anyway. What's the attraction there being so important?
The Microsoft owned codecs? Wow - you think promoting them would be a good thing for supporting free and open source software? Feel free to directly link to the Microsoft download site.
The **multimedia**? That's a fine piece of software, and if you want it you know how to get it.
The DVD-related libraries? Yes, probably it's that one. Do you know the legal risks the owner of the unmentionable repository is taking already for you? You want us to take similar risks? You want us to move servers around, hide like criminals, risk to hole project - just to make it possible for you to link them here? Well, if it's really that what you want, you probably really better find yourself another place, where a big corporation or a billionaire is backing those legal risks. We simply cannot do it - sorry.
And let me add: Freedom of speech is very important to us. That's why we are actually one of the few Linux related forums were topics are almost never closed, definitely never deleted (except duplicates and real illegal stuff), and always friendly moderated. We even allow a lot of controversial political discussion in "Anything Goes" - try that in the forums you love so much more ...
Greetings,
Chris
hschn - Feb 11, 2007 - 10:38 AM
Post subject: Goodbye sidux
Question to craigevil:
Where are the links to "the things that are taboo" on your own homepage?
greetings
hschn
zerkovic - Feb 11, 2007 - 11:00 AM
Post subject: RE: Goodbye sidux
well spoken slam, wellspoken devil,
only thing ye can say is: law is stupid now and then. dont blame sidux for that.
BlueShadow - Feb 11, 2007 - 11:08 AM
Post subject: Goodbye sidux
Quote:
I know this will probably get deleted since the mods here like to delete posts.
How did you come to this strange opinion? Sorry, this was just a boring standard sentence of people that make forum-critic posts. Not really ingenious.
Quote:
All of the above plus the fact that people here are so critical of other distros, namely the *buntus, which is just silly.
Do you now the "Ubuntu Vista" Thread? I guess everyone likes it, no matter of the used distro.
OK, Ubuntu is not the favorite distro of most posters here, but what did you expect? The ones whoose favorite is ubuntu are in the Ubuntu forums. Here is the sidux forum. So what? No one wanted a war between Distros.
Regards,
Blue Shadow
and sorry for my bad english
piper - Feb 11, 2007 - 11:40 AM
Post subject: RE: Goodbye sidux
Let me be very Blunt
Code:
No Comment
Oddball - Feb 11, 2007 - 11:49 AM
Post subject: RE: Goodbye sidux
Craigevil is pissed, I'm not, I have also had one thing removed from the forum ones, I don't remember if it was from sidux or Kanotix forum and I have respected that, I respect all the rules from everyone who puts out a forum, your forum=your rules. Can I just get an answer without getting somebody angry? Is the laws in Germany about this things different from other places and is it then not possible to take that under consideration when getting a new server in the future? I don't think anybody want sidux to "move servers around and hide like criminals" For me it's more hiding an suspect to say like "come to the irc and talk about that because we are not aloud to do it open on the forum" instead of doing it on a forum.
I must say that I don't know really what it is not aloud, and why, I would like to know and understand.
piper - Feb 11, 2007 - 12:03 PM
Post subject: RE: Goodbye sidux
Hi oddball 
we don't get angry, after we delete a thread it usually comes with a very nice pm explaining why it was deleted and a thank you for understanding, yes, German law is different, any lawyer in Germany who finds (or actively looks for) such 'violation', can send us a costly dissuasion, which we don't have the money to pay for. That could be the end of the sidux project. After we send a person the same pm a couple times it does raise some eyebrows. It's not very hard to go to irc 
Slam or devil can explain this better than I can.
http://sidux.com/module-Legal.html
x-un-i - Feb 11, 2007 - 12:10 PM
Post subject: RE: Goodbye sidux
next time you sign to a forum please read the legalese as it seems you have not read this one http://sidux.com/module-Legal.html
slam - Feb 11, 2007 - 12:18 PM
Post subject: RE: Goodbye sidux
@Oddball:
The biggest legal risk we are facing, is a very well known library needed for de- and encoding different types of DVDs. It is illegal to distribute this tool in many countries around the world, and even illegal to assist people in installing/using it in some countries. Even private usage might be illegal in some stricter legislations. Our problem is the "assisting people in obtaining/installing/using them" term, because where ever we put our servers, it might still be a legal problem for the user who asked, the person who actually answered here, the project initiators, our developers, .... I hope you get the message now.
Several states in the US and many countries in EU belong to the countries affected by such legislation - so we can never be sure, because most of our users come from one of these countries. We are a small community project without corporate legal backing, and with real people involved here who already are voluntary taking several legal risks for sidux. So, please don't wonder if some of them (including me) get nervous when someone demands from us to intentionally break the law.
There are other - not so critical - legal risks we manage, but most of that is handled fine meanwhile. The sidux Foundation is part of our strategy here, collecting some donations in order to be financially able to fight unjustified blackmailing against us is another one.
Most people understand that - we have discussed the topic so many times @kanotix and here. But twice a year there will always turn again someone starting lengthy discussions about freedom of speech and how he understands his own rights here in our forums. Those people are usually the last to actually overtake responsibility or risks for our community, they just try to provoke and feel better afterwards. Anyway, I am not interested in their intentions - what they do is simply bad for sidux and it's users, so I take care for a fast Goodbye for them.
Thanks for understanding.
Greetings,
Chris
hubi - Feb 11, 2007 - 12:44 PM
Post subject: Re: RE: Goodbye sidux
Oddball wrote:
Is the laws in Germany about this things different from other places and is it then not possible to take that under consideration when getting a new server in the future?
imho it's not the law, it's the interpretation of law, which might become very expensive. That does not only vary between countries, but might also change within one country or depend on the amount of money, a person/company wants to spend to chase somebody legally or sue them.
So precaution might be very important, and when you follow the track record of the last months, patent wars and licence wars are on the way. I say licence wars as well, because outside of the US of A there are no patents, but licences.
Also in the Linux camp things are changing rapidly:
- Novell-Microsoft-pact
- Linspire-Ubuntu-pact
- Mandriva (single registration)
All these moves are about licencing, and in case of the Novell-Microsoft-pact about software patents.
And imho there is a war about market shares from the Linux side as well (Novell, Shuttelbuntu, Mandriva, Linspire):
- you pay, you get the licences
- you don't pay, you don't get them.
It's still the wee hours of the day, but I think, I see a pattern, and it does not look promising for distributing licenced codecs for free, even if the downloader is entitled to use them, because he has the licences (I have far more valid Windows licences than Computers, no Windows running, so I can use anything from Microsoft's Windows distribution I am licenced to legally on any of my Linux boxes - but may I distribute that stuff?).
Let's see for how long those Hungarians (**multimedia**) and French (vlc) will be able to distribute codecs without being harrassed. Not to mention stuff from some Norvegian.
"War is just a shot away", and I can hear and see armies mobilizing, and they are recruted from the own camp as well against their own people.
And to continue my doomsday-vision: small distributors like Sabayon who provide all you need out of the box regardless the licence situation will be crushed by the time the Novell/Shuttlebuntu/Linspire/Mandriva-camp has settled for the "legal" approach selling nice looking, fully functional Linux desktops with all the closed source multimedia goodies.
hubi
slam - Feb 11, 2007 - 01:14 PM
Post subject: Re: RE: Goodbye sidux
@hubi:
And - what's even more frightening - two more observations:
1) The corporate backed big Linux distros are on their way to implement the closed source codecs crap as a world-wide multimedia standard, and free and open source alternatives will loose attention, users and developers.
2) By respecting each others "intellectual property" software patents and/or related licenses, they become a practical legal blackmailing tool - the more it's used, the more the public & legislators will acknowledge it.
Greetings,
Chris
mylo - Feb 11, 2007 - 01:37 PM
Post subject: Re: Goodbye sidux
craigevil wrote:
? ? ?
CRAIGEVIL,
I do not understand your emotional reaction. I have not followed the discussion that followed up your collection of letters ordered in that way.
I do not focuse on that. But what did bring you to shout around here? Is it a private thing, is it a combination of several circumstances around you? What brings you to dictate people who operate a community how they do it?
I am interested in whether you can do a discussion based on facts and personal respect?
I wish you all the best
Oddball - Feb 11, 2007 - 01:44 PM
Post subject: RE: Re: RE: Goodbye sidux
slam & hubi, thank you very much for the explanation, so now I understand a little more what it is about and I have to write again what I have written before,
THIS IS THE BEST FORUM I HAVE EVER JOINED.
Ola
hubi - Feb 11, 2007 - 01:48 PM
Post subject: Re: RE: Goodbye sidux
@slam,
and it's getting worse, free codecs are not accepted by the market it seems. I like to buy music from the Hamburg based finetunes.net, they offer drm free formats, but they stopped distributing .ogg files, only mp3s. It is a sad sign, sometimes I think I was the only one who bought music in the ogg-vorbis format.
No idea how to promote free formats, even non profit organisations or public institutions usually use non free formats when they are not affiliated to free software philosophy.
Greetings,
hubi
mylo - Feb 11, 2007 - 01:51 PM
Post subject: Re: RE: Re: RE: Goodbye sidux
Oddball wrote:
THIS IS THE BEST FORUM I HAVE EVER JOINED.
same for me in addidion to the kanotix formerly
Oddball - Feb 11, 2007 - 02:02 PM
Post subject: RE: Re: RE: Goodbye sidux
It's a weird world, artists, musicians, programmers and a lot of other people do some work, a program, a picture, a song or a film, artwork, and of course they shall all be able to get paid for that work if it is their living. Then we have all the "others" who want to earn more money on the work somebody else did, and then we have a whole bunch of people to try to stop users to use the products, stop us from listening to the music, stop us from looking at the film. In the future you may not be able to look at "Mona Lisa" if you don't bye a special glasses from "AcmeGlass" to look trough or maybe you can only listen to "Me and Bobby MacGee" if you use headphones from Acme LTD otherwise the police will come and get you.
I do every day a one hour fast walk through the forest outside my house, some day maybe somebody will have a patent on that (doing a forest walk) so I have to by a license to do do my walk. 
LadyCuddles - Feb 11, 2007 - 04:23 PM
Post subject: RE: Re: Goodbye sidux
I can speak from experiance here, I have, had one thing, that I posted, *CENSORED* - and, didnt realize that the "word" should not have been said, it was a word for installing a certain "program" that allowed one to encode id3 tags on mp3 files. Funny thing was, it didnt really need to be said, anyone who does this kind of thing, knows the program, knows how to get it, and use it... So, my mentioning it, was redundant, I could have just "refered" to it, but, then again, I'd be mentioning it again.
I have a wonderful document on how to build your own DVD's, complete with making your own menus, but, I know that if someone wants to do it, or needs the info, I can refer them to the document, not have to blatantly post the thing in here. I respect the Forums I use, and the people who not only "sponsor" them, but, take legal risks for having them, for the rest of us to use.
I am a Moderator here, and I have "NEVER" thrown my weight around having any special "powers". In fact, I've been *CENSORED* as a moderator, and I've even removed my own posts because they were a legal risk. Note that I said, I removed my OWN posts.
I think we need to move on, with this, if a person is not willing to respect the legal issues of a Forum, and as Slam posted, is part of the "subscribing" process, we all need to be "adults" here, and move on as well 
Apparently, the original poster of this thread has already "moved on", so, why dont we - not like ANYONE is doing anything illegal, or that "sidux Forums" need to prove anything wasnt done, etc...
Ironwalker - Feb 11, 2007 - 04:43 PM
Post subject: RE: Re: Goodbye sidux
Rules are rules.........weather we like them or not.
So,sidux's forum is a bit different...........wa!
If I had a dime for every........."I am leaveing" posts,I'd be rich.
Just leave then if thats how you feel,posting first is rediculous,it won't change the rules and sounds like one last desperate attempt to do so.
h2 - Feb 11, 2007 - 05:36 PM
Post subject: RE: Re: Goodbye sidux
I want to add just one thing to correct a misperception that craigevil has: if you take a much closer look at the ubuntu forums, you'll notice, or you may in fact not notice, that they have several different hosting locations, probably for different languages. So this means that ubuntu has the luxury of hosting their main forums in I think Great Britain, where they can probably get away with mentioning and linking to the things craigevil wants linked, but on say the German language ones, I would guess that the mods will probably remove those items.
This is a guess, but I guess it would be easy to confirm by joining both and then posting some links and stuff about the items in question. See what happens, don't guess, you'll soon know.
I have never understood, to be honest, why anyone gets annoyed by simple edits made to protect a project against possible unwanted legal action and the ensuing costs. Especially when the reasons for them are clearly explained.
Frankly, I'm somewhat disappointed by craigevil's response, it doesn't seem in tune with his other contributions, most of which have been fairly worthwhile as far as I'm concerned. To me, if you care enough about a project to use it, to contribute input etc on an ongoing basis, you should also care enough to help them avoid any potentially damaging legal problems.
But I guess that concept is just a bit too much for some of our 'I want everything and I want it now' generation. Hopefully craigevil was just having a bad day, and will come to reflect on the absurdity of the notion that a small project with almost no money should take on a potential legal liability just so that craig can be happy about linking or whatever to whatever he feels like whenever he feels like.
As I've said before: if you don't like the damned outcome of the law, then start trying to change the law, not the people who have to suffer to try to work within it. If the law is the problem, fix it.
Donate to the fsf europe, who is working steadily to help get rid of these ridiculous patents that enable the corporations to create these situations in the first place, don't ask a small group of dedicated volunteers to take up that fight for you. If you feel this strongly about this issue, do something about it, don't post this nonsense which does nothing positive to help move the situation forward.
Ironwalker - Feb 11, 2007 - 05:45 PM
Post subject: RE: Re: Goodbye sidux
Quote:
Frankly, I'm somewhat disappointed by craigevil's response, it doesn't seem in tune with his other contributions, most of which have been fairly worthwhile as far as I'm concerned
Exactly why I reacted previously as I did,my apologies Craigevil,as h2 said,I hope it was just a bad day.
shame - Feb 11, 2007 - 11:13 PM
Post subject:
I too was quite suprised by the outburst and at first thought it was a joke.
Personally I haven't really noticed censorship as compared to the kanotix forum where it was quite frequent.
Also compared to certain other forums, in particular suseforums where I had the phrase "I made a booboo" censored. When I asked why it had been censored a mod informed me it was because booboo contains the word "boob" (also censored to b**b) which might be offensive to women.
So I don't really think censorship for legal reasons seems so bad.
As hschn mentioned, there doesn't seem to links to to the censored stuff on your homepage, wouldn't it be simple to post a link and when helping someone here refer to your homepage (not the article itself) where they can "read more"?
sleekmason - Feb 11, 2007 - 11:42 PM
Post subject:
While i understand that you may not link to certain sites for whatever reason, are you also saying that even listing these programs is against the law?? what if I said: The programs we are not aloud to distribute here are blah, and blah and blah, and blah" (blah being the program names). You are telling me that saying what these are is illegal? i find that hard to believe!
If sidux itself does not advocate these items, there should be no legal problem. sidux can easily write it's own disclaimer disavowing itself from the forum as totality.
As a side note, those who replied to Craigevil with such anger should be ashamed of yourselves. he has certainly put a lot of effort into helping others on this forum and others. Just because he is opinionated and chooses to leave sidux, this is not justification for saying good riddance with such hatred. Quite poor behavior.
zulu9 - Feb 12, 2007 - 12:27 AM
Post subject:
sleekmason wrote:
While i understand that you may not link to certain sites for whatever reason, are you also saying that even listing these programs is against the law?? what if I said: The programs we are not aloud to distribute here are blah, and blah and blah, and blah" (blah being the program names). You are telling me that saying what these are is illegal? i find that hard to believe!
there seem to be some lawyers crawling the web for certain keywords and then threat to sue any site that contains such words (esp. in germany, google for "Abmahnung" or "Abmahnwelle". so even a simple list of the programs would trigger such a nasty lawyer.
of course this could often not stand in court but it is always risky and expensive to fight such stuff to the end, not to mention that the people here sure have better things to do.
I am not a lawyer myself, these are just my 2ct. I've seen many other forums die because of similar issues and it would be really sad if this happened to sidux.
Maybe one little thing could actually be changed: Instead of *CENSORED* use a more accurate term like *EDITED DUE TO LEGAL ISSUES*.
The term cernsored/censorship scares people away before they might know why stuff is censored.
piper - Feb 12, 2007 - 01:04 AM
Post subject:
sleekmason wrote:
While i understand that you may not link to certain sites for whatever reason, are you also saying that even listing these programs is against the law?? what if I said: The programs we are not aloud to distribute here are blah, and blah and blah, and blah" (blah being the program names). You are telling me that saying what these are is illegal? i find that hard to believe!
If sidux itself does not advocate these items, there should be no legal problem. sidux can easily write it's own disclaimer disavowing itself from the forum as totality.
As a side note, those who replied to Craigevil with such anger should be ashamed of yourselves. he has certainly put a lot of effort into helping others on this forum and others. Just because he is opinionated and chooses to leave sidux, this is not justification for saying good riddance with such hatred. Quite poor behavior.
You live in Arkansas (USA) Do you know German Law ?
I believe Rev.Craig has been warned a few times about this in the past and I don't feel ashamed that a reverend acted like this on a forum and does not follow the rules (does he follow his own rules at his church)
It's kind of like a little kid does something and the mother slaps his wrist or fanny (bun in england) forr not doing what he is told and having a temper tantrum because of it, and does it again and again and each time has a tantrum, it gets old
JackieBrown - Feb 12, 2007 - 01:38 AM
Post subject: Re: Goodbye sidux
BlueShadow wrote:
No one wanted a war between Distros.
Speak for yourself, I always enjoy Ubuntu bashing 
mikhail - Feb 12, 2007 - 02:10 AM
Post subject: Re: RE: Re: Goodbye sidux
h2 wrote:
Donate to the fsf europe, who is working steadily to help get rid of these ridiculous patents that enable the corporations to create these situations in the first place, don't ask a small group of dedicated volunteers to take up that fight for you. If you feel this strongly about this issue, do something about it, don't post this nonsense which does nothing positive to help move the situation forward.
Well said. I agree.
mikhail - Feb 12, 2007 - 02:12 AM
Post subject: Re: Goodbye sidux
JackieBrown wrote:
Speak for yourself, I always enjoy Ubuntu bashing
Well, that made the evening.
DeepDayze - Feb 12, 2007 - 04:14 AM
Post subject: Re: Goodbye sidux
Sites have to abide by the law of the hosting country...in the case of sidux.com (hosted in germany I believe)..would have to follow German law. While I am no lawyer, and from what I read here and elsewhere that Germany has some very tough laws regarding copyrights. As Zulu9 noted above, the authorities in Germany do monitor sites for illegal activity and that has consequences. I also suppose that US interests can also be looking for violations as well. Best that we all abide by the site owner's wishes on this subject.
slam - Feb 12, 2007 - 07:32 AM
Post subject: Re: Goodbye sidux
Quote:
Maybe one little thing could actually be changed: Instead of *CENSORED* use a more accurate term like *EDITED DUE TO LEGAL ISSUES*.
The term cernsored/censorship scares people away before they might know why stuff is censored.
Thanks for the constructive suggestion - actually in this forum we never used *CENSORED*. If you see it somewhere, people have used it intentionally. Since sidux started we use *MULTIMEDIA*. We use it to automatically overwrite the name of the DVD-related library, and of a famous repository where a Debian package if it is offered for download. That's all, folks - so, why all the discussion?
I everybody kindly ask to stop the legal discussion, because such discussions usually lead to more - and finally will do nothing else than feed again the specialized law firms' search engines with key words.
If you are a law person yourself and actually want to help, please contact me in private. We will hold elections for board positions in the sidux Foundation shortly (info on that will be posted in our news), and all of you who are eager to overtake responsibility feel free to be a candidate.
Just a few points for better understanding the legal situation:
1) The location where a site is hosted might be relevant for some legal questions, but it's definitely not very important for the discussed one.
2) We are an international community with people from all around the world and have to follow different legislations, depending on the single case discussed. So, it's not as easy as people here might think. And yes, I am a lawyer.
3) The sidux foundation itself is a Nevada non-profit corporation, just in case someone cares for that.
4) We don't just have to prevent illegalities, we also must take care for sidux not becoming a target for legal blackmailing - because we have not the funds to fight even stupid and obvious ones. So it's useless to speculate about what might be legal and what might be not. I really hope everybody got the point now.
Please move forward to enjoying sidux - there is nothing interesting to watch here anymore.
Greetings,
Chris
eco2geek - Feb 12, 2007 - 08:34 AM
Post subject: PCLinuxOS
There are definitely differences in the ways different distros and their user base deal with this issue. Take PCLinuxOS, for exmple, which includes software that allows you to play your store-bought DVDs "out of the box."
In this thread from October 2006, someone questions the legality of including certain DVD-playing software and gets called a troll and shouted down.
PCLinuxOS also includes other software in their repository that would be considered bad to discuss here.
PCLinuxOS's devs are based in Texas, USA; its main repo is hosted by Ibiblio in North Carolina.
slam - Feb 12, 2007 - 09:22 AM
Post subject: PCLinuxOS
Quote:
Take PCLinuxOS, for exmple, which includes software that allows you to play your store-bought DVDs "out of the box."
Well, almost every distro I tried the last 2 years was able to play DVDs out of the box - there is nothing special with that. Also sidux does of course.
Quote:
PCLinuxOS also includes other software in their repository that would be considered bad to discuss here.
Texstar will be happy to hear how hard you fight to advertise his distro on other distros' boards.
Anyway, what "software" are you talking about? I did a fast check into their repos without finding anything questionable.
Greetings,
Chris
cleary - Feb 12, 2007 - 09:51 AM
Post subject: RE: PCLinuxOS
maybe time to lock this thread slam - I think it's run it's course
@craigevil - it's a shame to see you go, but sidux isn't heading in the direction you would like it to, so good luck wherever you end up.