ati or nvidia cards in documentation

[Karsten 'quaid' Wade]

On Fri, 2008-05-30 at 10:59 +0200, Valent Turkovic wrote:
> > We don't usually document proprietary software. Also refer
> >
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/F9Common#Proprietary_.28third-party.29_video_drivers
> >
> > Rahul
> 
> I'm aware of Fedora Project and proprietary software but I'm just
> trying to say that we need to at least say that somewhere and although
> common bugs page is really nice I would expect it also in release
> notes. 

I just sent a flippant reply to this, but it is worth taking a moment to
respond with more detail.

There are *many* good reasons not to document the use of closed source
software.  Perhaps it is worth writing this up into a short essay on a
wiki page so we can refer to it always.

At the same time, it can be very painful to not be able to help someone
with their problem, especially when "all you have to do is ..."  It is
very human to want to take away their hurt.  In Fedora, we know that if
we try to take away short term hurt, we have to be careful that we are
not perpetuating the long term hurt.

Is this something that is unclear to other people?  The reasons why we
only document software that is provided in Fedora?

Earlier today I removed instructions that Valent put on the
ForbiddenItems page.  The instructions pointed to a bug in Firefox that
prevented Firefox's plugin finder from working with installing Adobe's
Flash player.  In addition, a link was included to a page describing how
to install Adobe's Flash player.  This was all in replacement of a
previous statement that one could use Firefox to install the Flash
plugin.  Valent was correcting that original "how-to install" statement
with the bug report et al.  In consideration, I think the original
statement was incorrect being there.

I'm calling this out because this content is a blatant violation of the
very reason that page exists.  Just as it is blatantly obvious to me why
we do not document software Fedora does not and/or cannot ship.

I'm going to answer my own question and say, yes, it is unclear for
people, dangerously so.  As we invite more end-user helpers to use the
fedoraproject.org/wiki, it needs to be crystal clear to them what is and
is not permitted for content.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, Sr. Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
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