On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 18:06 -0400, Michael Tiemann wrote: > I'm in Porto Alegre attending the FISL (Brazilian Free Software) > conference. Free software gets a lot of play down here in Brazil. > > There's an edited copy of the Ubuntu distribution on the FSF's tabletop, > as well as an edited copy of the Kubuntu distribution. The edits look > like this: > > NOT NOT > This software is free software. You are encouraged to share it > ^ ^ > > The point the FSF is making is that Ubuntu includes non-free software, > like nVidia drivers. I believe that the last go-round on the Fedora > lists about our strong, STRONG commitment to free software suggests that > we can take a strong position, and enlist the free software community to > take a stand for us and with us. > > Today, we have the following packaging guidelines for Fedora: > > The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux > community to build a complete, general purpose operating system > exclusively from open source software. In accordance with that, > all packages included in Fedora must be covered under an open > source license. > > We clarify an open source license in three ways: > > * OSI-approved license. You can find the list of OSI > approved licenses here: > [WWW]http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ > > * GPL-Compatible, Free Software Licenses. You can find the > list here: [WWW]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license- > list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses > > * GPL-Incompatible, Free Software Licenses. You can find > the list here: > [WWW]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license- > list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses > > > If the license of a package isn't covered in one of those lists, > urge the upstream maintainer to seek OSI-approval for their > license here: > [WWW]http://www.opensource.org/docs/certification_mark.php#approval > > Alternately, if code is dual licensed, and one of the licenses > meets the open source license criteria, that code can be > included in Fedora under the open source license. > > Kernel-module packages must use one of the following licenses: > GNU General Public License v2.0, GNU Lesser General Public > License v2, IBM Public License v1.0, Common Public License v0.5, > Q Public License v1.0, Open Software License v1.1, or any open > source license granted by Red Hat. > > Note that any kernel module licensed with any license except GPL > or LGPL will taint the kernel. > > I'm wondering what you guys think about changing the tilt of Fedora from > open source to free software. Namely, saying that the license should > meet the free software definition ( > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html ) and then mentioning that > OSI-certified licenses (with the exception of the Reciprocal Public > License, which we're going to reevaluate) are a good list, as well as > the free software licenses that are listed on the FSF website. > > The goal is to make Fedora a distribution that the FSF can positively > endorse. I think we're really close. Any reason to not try to go all > the way? I was corresponding with RMS earlier after a brief discussion in the earlier advisors list and he brought in the point that the current guidelines allow open source licenses which FSF consider's non-free. A mail to licensing@xxxxxxx will get FSF to evaluate a license an a post will be made to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html on FSF's opinion. There have been apprehensions about getting into political maneuvering which is valid concern to a good extend but this is something worth exploring. Rahul
