Plan for tomorrows (20080522) FESCO meeting

Peter Jones pjones at redhat.com
Tue May 27 19:20:10 UTC 2008


Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> 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.

I think this is a bit heavy-handed.  If we take the "make it doable 
either as built-in or loaded from userspace at runtime, from a second 
tarball" approach as discussed, I suspect you'll discover that it's less 
"is not interested in achieving" (by which I assume you meant "is 
unwilling") and more "doesn't perceive it as useful goal to work on".

>> 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.

You are largely ignoring the infrastructure around installation and 
upgrades of multiple kernels.  There is more maintenance work than just 
in the kernel package (or packages, in your scenario) itself.  It is not 
insignificant.

Josh Boyer wrote:
> I certainly didn't think you intended to _replace_ the main kernel
> package.  But I don't agree with even providing a completely different
> alternative "kernel-libre" package.  If it can't be built as a flavor
> of the existing kernel package, then I don't see it being approved for
> inclusion.

And I'd still be against that.  If the goal is allowing users to install 
and use a system without any of the non-free firmware (assuming that's 
even plausible for our hypothetical user), then you also need to change 
the package selection code in anaconda, among other things.  As much as 
I wish it were, kernel* is not just another package.

-- 
   Peter




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