For a long time, Debian has made available the Adobe Flash Player plugin to its users via the flashplugin-nonfree package, in the contrib section. This package does not contain the actual plugin, but a script which downloads same from adobe.com and installs it. This is due to Adobe's license for Flash not allowing redistribution [1], at least not without applying for a distribution license [2].
[1] http://www.adobe.com/products/eulas/pdfs/PlatformClients_PC_WWEULA-MULTI-20110809_1357.pdf (page 88, clause 3.3) [2] http://www.adobe.com/products/players/flash-player-distribution.html However, the situation may have changed with recent versions of Flash. 11.3 and later no longer support the old-as-dirt Netscape plugin interface (NPAPI), and are instead written against a new plugin interface developed by collaboration between Adobe and Google: PPAPI, code-named "Pepper" [3]. At this time, only Chrome/Chromium support PPAPI (notably, Mozilla is out [4]). Presumably due to the narrow browser support, and ongoing development of PPAPI, newer "Pepper" versions of Flash are distributed only with Chrome---they are no longer available as a separate download. [3] http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google-partnering-for-flash-player-on-linux.html [4] https://wiki.mozilla.org/NPAPI:Pepper The EULA of Chrome [5] has, under a "Google Chrome Additional Terms of Service" header, an "Adobe" section with what appear to be terms permitting the redistribution of "Adobe Software." In particular, subsections 3 ("EULA and Distribution Terms") and 4 ("Opensource") describe requirements on the redistribution of the Flash Player, like ensuring the EULA terms are present and not misrepresenting the software as OSS, rather than a default prohibition. [5] https://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html With that noted, my question to this list is, what should a package providing the "Pepper" Flash plugin legally be able to do? The options I'm aware of, in order of decreasing desirability, would be as follows: 1. A package which includes the proprietary/binary-only Flash plugin files (that have been copied out of a Google Chrome package), and is distributed via non-free. No additional files then need to be downloaded at install time. 2. A non-free package which includes the Chrome .deb file, from which the Flash plugin files are extracted and put into place when the package is installed. (This would address uncertainty in distributing Flash separately from Chrome, in case that's an issue.) Likewise, no extra downloads at install time. 3. A contrib package which downloads the Flash files from a third-party server associated with Debian, superficially similar to what Canonical does with older versions of Flash [6]. (In case this is any easier than option #1, this would be preferable to option #4.) [6] http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/ 4. A contrib package which downloads the Chrome .deb directly from Google's servers, extracts the Flash files, and puts those in. Google only makes available the latest version of Chrome---if version N is out, version $((N - 1)) will 404---which makes this approach difficult from a release-engineering perspective. I make this inquiry after having implemented option #4 for Ubuntu in a Launchpad PPA [7], the experience of which left me wanting a better approach--- for both distributions. [7] https://launchpad.net/~skunk/+archive/pepper-flash (Please Cc: me on any replies, as I am not subscribed to this list.) --Daniel -- Daniel Richard G. || sk...@iskunk.org My ASCII-art .sig got a bad case of Times New Roman. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1360009929.2378.140661186715397.65313...@webmail.messagingengine.com