[fab] final rough draft

Rahul sundaram at fedoraproject.org
Tue Aug 15 16:10:27 UTC 2006


Max Spevack wrote:

> By choosing not to ship any proprietary or binary drivers, Fedora does 
> differ from other distributions.  Ubuntu is one example, as there is very 
> strong language about freedom, right up until the moment at which they say 
> that they include binary drivers on their CDs and in their repositories.
> 
> http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy
> http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/licensing

non-free or proprietary drivers might be a better choice of words though 
considering the audience this might not be a issue.
> 
> In the past, Red Hat's counsel has been uncomfortable with enabling NTFS 
> support in the kernel due to the fact that the implementation is well 
> patented by Microsoft.

We dont know it is "Well patented". All I heard is that there are 
potential patent issues and the potential is more than other random 
pieces of code but lets not state this as if its a fact and paint 
ourselves into a corner.



   Recently, the kernel has become protected by the
> OIN and the question of NTFS in our kernels has been raised on the Fedora 
> Advisory Board recently (within the last month or two).  When we have an 
> answer regarding that, the analysis and result will also be published 
> transparently for people to comment on and discuss.

A link to OIN please. Might also throw in the point that OIN was the 
reason we decided to include Mono.


Rahul




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