Plan for tomorrows (20080522) FESCO meeting

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May 21, 2008, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at gmail.com> wrote:

> So work with upstream to get them removed or pushed to separate
> firmware packages.

It's been tried before.  I gather upstream is not interested in
achieving a 100% Free Software kernel tarball.  It's in conflict with
our stated mission.  Where do we go from that point, when upstream is
not cooperative and there is a drop-in alternative.

> Given your preference to not work in a manner which would be compatible
> with Fedora Engineering practices,

This is a very unfair assumption.  I just have had access to facts
that you apparently didn't.  Either that or you're being intentionally
obnoxious in sending me down this wild goose chase.

> I'm not sure there is a way out.  However perhaps you can enlist
> some help from someone that would be willing to do that.

Finding someone else to do it might enable more patches to be posted,
but it wouldn't make it possible to achieve the goal.

>> One of us is missing something.  How would a comps group prevent the
>> accidental installation of say non-Free kernel or firmware packages
>> brought in through unintended dependencies, for a user who wants to
>> make sure no such software is installed, for example?

> Fine, a fair point.  Create a Free spin via a kickstart file.

Still no use, unless the spin comes with its own separate repository,
never contaminated by non-Free Software.  At which point users might
as well switch to BLAG.

> Having that virtual package is more pain to maintain than a ks file

Err...  The only person I know who has volunteered to maintain this
package disagrees with this assessment, especially because the ks file
does not even begin to address the longer-term goal of enabling a user
to avoid the installation of non-Free Software on his system (install
time and updates over time), rather than a short-term goal of avoiding
the inclusion of non-Free Software in one particular spin.

>> And largely misunderstood while at that.  Not by everyone who objected
>> to it, for sure.

> I don't think there's been a large misunderstanding.  Simply two
> differing opinions on the matter.

Like, a number of people vehemently objected to the idea of replacing
the current kernel with linux-libre.  I hadn't proposed anything even
close to it.  That's a large misunderstanding to me.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}