[mythtv-users] Trademark Issue with "Packages - MythTV Official Wiki" and the repository is questionable for Debian users

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Chuck Peters <cp at ccil.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Packages shows Debian packages are available
> for MythTV.  However the packages are not officially part of Debian [1],
> and the site which was advertised as Debian Multimedia is known to break
> libraries for Debian users [2].
>
> The MythTV packages page shows the Debian logo and definitely left me
> with the impression that it was officially part of Debian. It was a
> trademark violation and the site owner was asked by Debian's project
> leader Stefano Zacchiroli in 2012 to change the domain name.  I would
> like to see it corrected on MythTV's site. [3]
>
> 1. http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/2012-May/026678.html
> 2. http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/2012-April/025867.html
> 3. https://www.debian.org/trademark
> When You Can Use the Debian Trademarks Without Asking Permission
>   1. You can use Debian trademarks to make true factual statements about Debian or communicate compatibility with your product truthfully.
>
> I would have editid the wiki page, https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Packages,
> but I don't have permission.
>
> Option 1: Remove the entry for the Debian packages.  Then after we have
> some official Debian packages, link to it.  I favor this option.
>
> Option 2: Remove the word Debian, and make it clear it is a third party
> site asking for donations and it may break your Debian libraries or
> worse.
>
> Any comments?
>
>
>
> I am looking into running a MythTV frontend on Debian's stable release
> wheezy with the backend running Mythbuntu's .27 fixes branch from the
> Launchpad PPA.  I'm still looking into how I might do that and
> unfortunately I have more questions like Why isn't MythTV in the
> official Debian archives yet and what do we need to do you get them
> there...  I would think it wouldn't be too much work to use the
> Mythbuntu packages in Debian, but then we would have other trademark
> issues that require a license from Canonical...  Hopefully we can see
> some official Debian MythTV packages by christmas, does anyone want to
> help?

As far as I know, debian does not allow packages that compile an
internal version of an external library. Mythtv imports ffmpeg and
then patches it extensively, and compiles with the internal version of
ffmpeg.

Debian does not allow this in their packages.

That's how I understand it anyway. Same problem in XBMC/Kodi.

Admittedly I haven't been following this list as much as I used to, so
if I have that wrong, someone will undoubtedly tell me.