On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Jonathan Dieter <jdieter@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 16:45 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Juan Rodriguez wrote on 18.11.2009 16:32:
> > My name is Juan Rodriguez, and I currently maintain a pair of packages
> > for Fedora 10, 11 and 12.
> >
> > One of those packages I maintain is gnome-do, (and gnome-do-plugins),
> > with gnome-do-docklets along the way. However, it has come to my
> > attention that gnome-do's "docky" interface violates US Patent
> > 7434177 [1], which in turn, crippled gnome-do by removing docky from the
> > Fedora's package.
> >
> > I'd like to request for it to join the RPMFusion repositories instead.
>
> As mentioned on IRC: We iirc allow  packages that got removed from
> Fedora to enter RPM Fusion without additional review. If my memory
> serves me correct (e.g. if nobody yells over the next 2 days) then file
> a CVS reqeuest for gnome-do and gnome-do-plugins and apply for
> membership in FAS. You'll find details how to do that on
> http://rpmfusion.org/Contributors

Just seeking clarification: does gnome-do check its plugins at runtime?
If so, could we just have a gnome-do-docky package instead of having an
RPM Fusion package conflict with the Fedora one?

Jonathan

Alright, I started poking people around, and here's the current status: 
gnome-do will remove "docky" from their package in a future release, though not due to patents. They had already planned this before the situation arose. 

I talked with the gnome-do developers, and they wrote us a patch to remove Zoom functionality, which is what's mentioned in that particular patent. 

With that, we can continue shipping gnome-do 0.8.2 and its plugins  in Fedora, and once 'Docky' is ready, we can ship that, and docklets, with full functionality, in RPMFusion instead, and Docky will be gone from gnome-do anyways. 

--
Ing. Juan M. Rodriguez Moreno
Desarrollador de Sistemas Abiertos
Sitio: http://proyectofedora.org/mexico