"Chromium" removed from maemo.org repositories
This is a joint statement from Nokia and the Maemo Community Council.
A few weeks ago we received a letter requesting that maemo.org cease distribution of Chromium, due to ongoing litigation involving the software.
The Community Council, the package maintainer of Chromium on maemo.org and Nokia legal were contacted.
As you are aware, it is Nokia's policy to respect the intellectual property rights of third parties. Thus, we suggested that Chromium be removed from maemo.org while the situation was clarified.
Nokia legal will be taking a look on the roles and responsibilities of maemo.org. This work should clarify the roles on maemo.org so the process would be clear if we were to receive any future requirements as the one from Red Bend.
Comments:
Chromium is not owned by anyone, Chrome is. Just like WebKit is not owned, Safari is, or Fedora is not owned, RedHat EL is.
maemo.org extras is a community repository... it's not owned by Nokia, and as such, Nokia interests do not matter. We are not talking about Apple Store.
Or is Nokia going to remove MPlayer, console emulators, and other kinds of software that might infringe patents?
I want to install Chromium on my device, Nokia should not prevent that.
Zachary, thoughts specifically about your points can be found here: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=708941&postcount=20
"As you are aware, it is Nokia's policy to respect the intellectual property rights of third parties. Thus, we suggested that Chromium be removed from maemo.org while the situation was clarified."
If it was a fact that chromium violated somebody's IP I would have no problem with the execution of this policy here. However the IP invovled is still in question and not yet decided, so I would think that Nokia/Maemo would have no obligation to remove the software until it was. Any thoughts?
Open source doesn't mean that a company can't sue you for (allegedly) violating its patents.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/28/red_bend_sues_google/
Hopefully this situation can be resolved relatively quickly (lawyers are never quick), and Chromium can go back into the repos.
could you, please, write more about the problem / litigation?
i don't know the situation and others probably too.
thanks.
btw: the link [1] is not working for me
Huh. Isn't Chromium open source? Isn't that the point? Isn't Chromium the open source bits from Chrome?
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