Hey guys I am not sure if this is the correct place to post this request but I want like to submit my software to the Manjaro repo. I do packages for various games and other stuff including desktop applications for various web applications/services being what I have been mostly doing and maintaining them for several years, I have them on the AUR but would love to have them officially on the Manjaro repo for people to install without needing the AUR (you know for new users sake)
here is a list of my applications from the AUR I would love to see on the official repo.
I appreciate the offer of contribution, however none of those packages are actually original software. We already have webapp-manager from Linux Mint and @codesardine’s webapp-manager-manjaro (fork that uses his own SDK) in the repos that accomplish a similar thing that can be used for any website. Do we really need a separate package for every web app?
That’s great and useful but the issue with it compared to my applications is my applications are written and more focused on the task as it’s own dedicated desktop application even if it is a more over all template of my own code I make sure it all functions properly with the needed features and maintenance to keep it all working seamlessly with more quality to the app making it more than a web service but a also a nice packaged application with icons, theming to the web app and more.
That was pretty much meant as a hint.
What I’m trying to say is:
You bundle the widevine libs with you application → Not permitted.
You should probably remove the libs from the gitlab repositories and download widevine from the official sources in your PKGBUILD instead.
But even if you do it that way, Manjaro can’t package your stuff because the resulting package would still contain widevine.
it already comes from the official source, what difference would it make if you install it and comes with the same libs that the pkgbuild would download if you did it that way anyways?
You are bundling the libraries in your app, hence you re-distribute them.
With an AUR PKGBUILD, the user is building the package on his/her local machine. So they package it themselves → In this case you do not re-distribute anything.
Because again, if Manjaro builds the package (instead of the user) and delivers it to the users, they re-distribute widevine. So unless they have an agreement with google that allows them to do so, I don’t think they will do this.
Another way could be to download widevine at runtime. Firefox and Chromium are doing it that way, I think. No clue if that requires consent from google as well though.
Widevine cannot be redistributed without a license, the license is individual for each electron app, that is why I have never done a Netflix app for the public.
What if I make a widevine package that downloads it from the official source and only rely on that one package instead of them having their own distribution of it, it would make updating widevine easier and remove this issue while having it as a dependency. Even other users can use it for applications needing Widevine on their applications
No matter how you try to twist it - the end result are the same - distribution of copyrighted material.
Whether you do it indirect or directly the copyright holder(s) will see it as violation of their copyright.
A historic example is the court trial involving PirateBay.
Even given the fact that they only provided the info pointing to addresses where the copyrighted material was accessible - even in tiny bits - on a torrent network - it ended badly for them.
That’s really frustrating especially when the community like me are trying to provide applications for Linux to watch their payed content on their preferred platform…
What it does is to take chrome deb package and extracts the widevine libs. It’s just automating what a user could also do manually.
So as long as you just provide these instructions to the users AND NOT the built package, that should be ok I would assume (but ok, I’m not a lawyer, I might be wrong) since you are not re-distributing anything.
Now, is the user itself allowed to extract the libs from chrome and use them with another piece of software? No clue.
Maybe as a somewhat stupid analogy:
It’s a difference if I give someone instructions at which official store they can buy a gun (PKGBUILD in AUR) vs. I sell them a gun myself (compiled package).
If that someone is licensed to own and operate a gun is a different story.
. I doubt it…
