Fedora not "free" enough for GNU?

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Sun Sep 21 18:44:39 UTC 2008


On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 1:52 AM, Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat.com> wrote:
> Not trying to be flamy, but...
>
> - there's a 100% Free kernel source alternate upstream that tracks
> kernel.org very closely, that's identical except for the removal of
> non-Free firmware, and that's been available for quite a while
> (linux-libre)

I think the suggestion that we move to an alternate source for the
kernel, is short sighted and not in the long term best interests of
this project.

>
> - there's a viable alternate source for firmware, both Free and
> non-Free, and it has been available for quite a while (dwmw2's
> firwmare git repo)

Define "quite a while now".    By Woodhouse's own words in this
thread, he feels we are "close" to offering a solution. Perhaps he's
got a better feel for the timescales involved than you do.  Is it in
time for F10?  no. Is that ultimately so important? no. People are
working on it. If David feels things are "close" then we will
hopefully see this land for reals in the development tree in time for
spins to take advantage of for the F11 release process.

>
> - the removal of firmware upstream won't take place in linux-2.6.27,
> which pretty much means kernel.org linux sources won't be stripped off
> of non-Free bits in time for Fedora 10

Timescales are not my primary concern, process is. Is there an
upstream process in place now on how do deal with the movement of
firmware out of the kernel source into a separate source collection?
If so, are things now in a state where people interested in our
community could choose to actively participate to accelerate the rate
at which fireware is moved out of the main kernel source tarball,
using the upstream process as part of the F11 Feature scoping?


>
> - Fedora still prefers to ship the encumbered bits, making it
> impossible to distribute 100% Free spins of Fedora 10 without
> distributing or committing to distributing the non-Free bits in the
> corresponding sources of the kernel
>
> Care to help me understand how that is responsive or makes sense from
> the project's point of view?  I'm quite puzzled at that.

Honestly, no.  I personally do not care to help you specifically
understand what I consider to be the established project's pov. I've
personally come to the point where I don't think its worth anyone's
time to try to talk to you specifically. Your views are quite
entrenched. Even for people who are sympathetic to your points of
view, and it seems to be there are many such people, its difficult to
discuss things with you and feel like it was worth the time. So
honestly why bother.  If progress is going to be made, its quite
doubtful that it will be done with further consultation with you.
Hopefully, you'll eventually benefit from the end result, even if you
don't appreciate the means by which other people make it happen.

But for anyone else still paying attention to this I'll say this.  I
believe that the project's stance on firmware policy is well
documented and has been in place for so long that to call it
controversial would be a stretch. In light of that standing project
policy, I believe the right way forward, and the way that maximizes
benefit everyone is to work directly with upstream to make working
with firmware more flexible for everyone...regardless of the timescale
that it takes. The question I care about the most is this. Is our
involvement as a project, even indirectly, helping upstream make
progress on the issue of increasing the flexibility of firmware
distribution options and firmware distribution usage.

-jef"AFK for the next 10 hours...doing yard work"spaleta




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