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

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Mar 25, 2008, Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> wrote:

> Forks are *bad*. Maintaining them is *bad*.

Nobody's talking about forks here.  It's just removing (automatically)
a bunch of files from regular releases.  No biggie.  Especially once
the tools I'm working on are finished.  Then it will be a breeze.

>> > That's why were telling you to work in the upstream
>> 
>> That won't work.  Upstream doesn't value freedom like we do,

> 'We'? Excuse me?

> You do not speak for me. You do not speak for Fedora.

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Do you mean you don't value freedom?

Do you mean Fedora doesn't value freedom?

Do you mean you're not one of 'us' Free radicals?

Sorry, the 'we' was indeed ambiguous.  And indeed I don't speak for
anyone, not even myself ;-)

> - no alternative kernels or kernel modules allowed in Fedora

Except for kernel-xen, eh?

> Regardless of the politics that stand behind your proposal, those still apply.

Well, I guess then the only course of action is for Fedora to decide
whether it wants to accomplish its mission WRT the kernel, or it wants
to keep on shipping non-Free Software in the kernel, since the option
of doing both has been ruled out.  Maybe this could be reversed?

> You don't get to randomly override them with a simple 'Oh, but this
> agrees with the Fedora mission!'

Because the mission is just a bold statement, to be ignored when it's
convenient? :-)

>> Fedora spin built exclusively out of Free Software, and instead
>> setting me off into an impossible mission as a pre-condition, that's
>> quite surprising and saddening.

> Another contributor!

... lost?

> Seriously, those that maintain or help to maintain the Fedora kernel have
> told you *exactly* how this should be worked to be done, and make it
> acceptable for both you and for Fedora.

As I've said, it's not work I'm skilled to do, and it's work that's
not compatible with my personal mission.

Any other suggestions?

> I'm sorry the work might take slightly longer.

What's 'forever' between friends? ;-)

Not going to happen.  And not just because I can't work on that.

> But that is not really the problem of Fedora. I'd like to think we
> hold things to a somewhat higher standard than the cheap broken fix.

Sure you can.  But it looks like you don't want to, or you're talking
about a different problem.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}