kernel-libre (hopefully 100% Free) for Fedora 8 and rawhide

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa at redhat.com>
wrote:

> We've turned away other folks who've wanted to have a divergent kernel
> in Fedora (openVZ), so I don't see how we could do this.
>


There's a difference between diverging which add stuff... and diverging by
narrowly removing functionality from our existing kernel, or any upstream
project for that matter, to better meet pre-defined policy requirements.

That being said, I'd like to see this effort integrated into our existing
kernel package if its possible. But after talking with Alexandre pretty
extensively last evening on irc, I'm pretty sure that he's going to need
help if we want his effort integrated.  I'm pretty confident he would have
the ability to maintain a separate kernel-libre package by rebasing off our
existing package as necessary. But integrating the necessary changes in how
we package the existing kernel to meet well defined libre distribution
needs, would I think require a non-trivial commitment from our kernel
maintainers to help Alexandre.  Towards that end I've encouraged Alexandre
to start that conversation with our kernel developers.

I want to stress, that I think the goal Alexandre is attempting to achieve
is important. There is a difference of opinion as to what Fedora as a
project should be required to do with regard to firmware. I personally think
the policy we have right now is the right policy for the project as a whole.
But I think its important that we make room in the project for people like
Alexandre who want to make a personal choice to abstain from using binary
firmware, and to champion the open source ideals even to the level of
firmware or all the way to open hardware if they so desire.  If Alexandre
wants to use and distribute a libre version of Fedora, then as a project we
should help make that possible...without requiring everyone to use it.

-jef
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