Are packages w/o necessary kernel modules allowed?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 05:29:13PM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 10/14/2009 03:04 PM, Peter Lemenkov wrote:
>> Hello All!
>>
>> Imagine an application, which relies on a specific kernel module. This
>> module is not a part of stock Fedora kernel (at least, yet), and we
>> don't allow stand-alone kernel modules.
>>
>> Whether or not this package can be allowed?
>>
> IMO: no.
>
> Packages in Fedora should "just work" and therefore must not rely on  
> anything which is not in Fedora.

Well I don't think this should be a hard and fast rule.

If it was something like Firefox that needed a proprietary kernel
extension, then yes that would be really bad.  But a small, obscure
package used to configure a specialized piece of hardware, and that
comes with adequate documentation, why not let it in?

  # config-foo
  Error: This requires a non-free kernel module 'foo.ko' which
  can't be shipped in Fedora.

Rich.

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