Can I Distribute This?

erikharrison asks: "LormaLinux is one of several emerging desktop oriented Linux distros. It comes prepackaged with the Flash Plugin, Real Player, and Yahoo IM. Is this legal? The Flash EUL agreement does allow free redistribution, but only of the Mac and Windows version, I can't seem to find a EULA for Linux version of Real Player, and can't even find the Linux version of YIM to check for licence issues. Do these distros know something I don't? And if not, am I only going to cause grief if I go to the software OEM and ask for a redistributable licence for my own project?"

This is why it's a was of time to "Ask Slashdot"

[Anonymous Coward]

"...am I only going to cause grief if I go to the software OEM and ask for a redistributable licence for my own project?"

Jebus! He thought of this already! He's asking for advice before he pursues this because these vendors are known litigous assholes!

Some bonehead will probably mod you up to 5 for feeding something back to the guy he already considered. If you're going to Karma Whore, at least pretent to come up with something original. What benefit have you provided to the person asking the question? None.

Flash: no, Real: no, YIM: no

[Cpyder]

Flash Plugin:
Check: http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/macromedia/ [rutgers.edu]

" This is the official mirror system of Macromedia Linux packages.
With permission from Macromedia we take their software and package
it in Linux friendly ways (RPM, DEB, ebuild). These packages are
made available for manual download, apt-get, urpmi, or emerge.

Macromedia's EULA forbids repackaging and/or redistribution of
their software so please do not mirror this repository.
Please point your apt-get or urpmi to one of these official
mirrors of this site, as they will be permanent."

Apparently you can either try to ask MM for another exception, or you can make your distribution download the packages from this site. It's maintained by Warren Togami of Fedora.us-fame.

Real Player

You might want to ask the folks at helixsupport.org, and read the licenses over there.

Yahoo IM

When you go to messenger.yahoo.com, click on Unix and check the RPM you see that the license is "proprietary". You can contact them at [e-mail], maybe they can give you more info.

As for the distributions which include it, like Lycoris, I suppose they've all gotten permission from the authors/owners of this products.

Simple Answer

[MrResistor]

If you don't have a license that specificly says you can redistrubute, you can't! "Redistribution" is basicly publishing, and so it would be covered by basic copyright law.

Some common sense...

[aulendil]

A crash course in copyright law:
1. Unless stated otherwise, you aren't allowed to copy a copyrighted work!
2. But it says copyrighted!
Yes, the right of making copies granted to the author.

And now, you wouldn't blatantly copy a book giving away free copies. Why would you do otherwise with software.

So, unless clearly stated, you can't redistribute any copyrighted work.

Re:Script It?

[__aafkqj3628]

Sometimes even this violates the license agreement.

For example, when installing the JDK on FreeBSD, you are required to manually download and retrieve several files from the sun and freebsd java (patch) sites.
This is because sun forbids binary redistribution (even a script downloading them would be redistribution because the user in basically unaware of a lot of factors), also, it gives them an opportunity to force you to register and provide the information to hunt you down if you break the agreement.