Dave Dykstra wrote:
I see that currently Fedora rawhide gets new geolite2-*-YYYMMDD
packages
(e.g. geolite2-city-20191217) each month in order to distribute the free
maxmind geo IP databases. Unfortunately, Maxmind just greatly tightened
down on the license for these data distributions and I think that Fedora
will no longer be able to distribute them. The databases may still be
downloaded for free, and they may be freely redistributed, but anybody
who does so must ensure that everybody that they distribute to updates
their database within 30 days after Maxmind updates them, and destroys
all old copies. Here's the blog entry where they announced the change,
late in December, effective the end of 2019, saying that they had to do
it because of privacy laws:
https://blog.maxmind.com/2019/12/18/significant-changes-to-accessing-and-...
Anybody may sign up for an account and free license key, but they have to
agree to The new End User License Agreement with the new stipulations.
https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/eula
To me, it looks crystal clear that the new licensing conditions are not
acceptable for Fedora.
I welcome any suggestions for good alternative sources of geo IP
data
that doesn't have these kinds of restrictions and also believes they can
adhere to the privacy laws without requiring a license key.
Would forking the database be an option? But then how do we determine
required changes?
In any case, we should talk to other distros, who will undoubtedly be
running into the same issue. Especially those that really care about
freedom, such as Debian, such as the FSF-endorsed distros, etc.
Kevin Kofler