Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

Kevin Kofler kevin.kofler at chello.at
Mon Jul 14 10:47:47 UTC 2008


Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 <at> yahoo.com> writes:
> A Because Fedora includes Firmware and those guys don't.   

Bullsh*t!

BLAG 70000 ships:
* the original Fedora 7 kernels as the default and kernel-libre only as an 
option,
* the following firmwares: asterisk-firmware, atmel-firmware, ivtv-firmware, 
iwl3945-firmware, iwl4965-firmware, iwlwifi-firmware (old version of 
iwl3945-firmware), ql2100-firmware, ql2200-firmware, ql23xx-firmware and 
ql2400-firmware, all with "License: Redistributable, no modification permitted"
* zd1211-firmware which claims to be GPLv2, but with no source available.

So the only difference between Fedora and BLAG in their current state is that 
BLAG is 2 releases out of date, which also implies there are no security 
updates from Fedora anymore for the software they ship, and I wouldn't rely on 
BLAG for security updates if I were you. For example, there is no bind update 
for the recent DNS security issue, nor any other updates since June 13. I 
consider it completely irresponsible to recommend a distribution whose "current 
release" has not received ANY security updates for a month!

        Kevin Kofler




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