Non FOSS and Fedora

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 03:51 1/12/2004, you wrote:
>I couldn't help but notice Thomas Chung's tutorials up on fedoranews.org
>which describe how to install Acrobat Reader, Helix, and Macromedia
>Flash.
>
>In light of The Fedora Project's #2 objective being "Build the operating
>system exclusively from open source software.", I must pose this
>question to the list:
>
>Is it appropriate to encourage people to install non-FOSS software on
>Fedora?

Yes. Unqualified yes, with no limitations whatsoever. Fedora is a Free 
operating system, and it is appropriate for anyone to recommend any 
software to any user, so long as that software suits the user's needs and 
is licensed in a manner acceptable to that user.

It would /not/ be appropriate, given Objective #2, to attempt to bundle 
such software /with/ Fedora or to make it a part of the Fedora Project. But 
if such software is out there, and one or more users need it, and those 
users have chosen it over equivalent FOSS solutions or those solutions do 
not yet exist, then by helping the user install it what we have gained is 
another happy Fedora user. That's the user's right to freedom of choice, 
and one more convert for Fedora... win-win for all involved.

Simple.


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com