Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

[Thomas Cameron]

On Sat, 2008-07-19 at 11:03 -0700, Antonio Olivares wrote:
> > > > > ZFS was included in FreeBSD 7.0 because the
> > BSD
> > > > license is more free than the GPL with that
> > regard.
> > > > 
> > > > And if NetApp win against Sun they can sue
> > FreeBSD now, for
> > > > triple
> > > > damages which would be millions and the end of
> > FreeBSD.
> > > 
> > > That is a big IF, maybe it should be an iff (IF and
> > ONLY IF) like in Mathematics.  :)
> > 
> > A big if but rather a nasty consequence, and unlike FreeBSD
> > the Linux
> > companies have enough money that people do try lawsuits.
> > 
> > > They(FreeBSD) should be protected, the users can get
> > the ports from source, they do not ship binaries(except the
> > installation *.tbz files).  
> > 
> > That makes no difference to US patent law.
> 
> # fsck US Patent law
> fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)

That's got to be the dumbest thing I've heard you say yet.  It is the
height of "head in the sand" syndrome.

To just blithely say "screw the law of the land where the company which
arguably does more for Free/Open Source Software is based" is just,
well, childish.

I, too, hate the patent system here.  I agree that the it needs to be
torn down.  But to spit in the eye of the government of *any* company is
just stupid.

> Sun Microsystems encouraged the ZFS port to FreeBSD, and yes they
> placed the patents in place, now if they encouraged the port to
> FreeBSD(since BSDs* are more relaxed than GPL), they should protect
> FreeBSD.  If not, like you say (FreeBSD should get rid of it and
> protect themselves much like Fedora protects itself from these cr*ppy
> patents and lawuits :)

It's easy for you to say that sun *should* do this or that.  You gonna
pony up the bucks if someone like the FreeBSD group gets sued, though?
Cause nothing says that Sun *has* to.  Your wishes and suppositions !=
fact.