On Apr 21, 2006, Michael Tiemann <tiemann@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I think the main thing is declaring it to be free software ourselves. > We miss the mark by not actually saying it explicitly. Yes, this is indeed the main point, as far as I understand it. I often tell people that, even though I do believe Fedora contains only Free Software, I cannot promote it, because its policy allows non-free software to go in, even if it's just a theoretical threat. Consider that someone might be aware of the differences between the OSD and the FSD and design a license specifically for the purpose of passing the OSD and not passing the FSD. Fedora, per its current guidelines, might accept such a project, and at that point, it would no longer be free, and any work we (FSFs) might have done promoting Fedora would have to be undone, *if* we noticed the problem, which would be tricky in itself given that it wouldn't require any changes in policy. So, yes, saying it explicitly is probably the most important thing to enable all of us FSFers to realize that Fedora is indeed committed to the same goals as we are, such that we can help Fedora verify that Fedora is already purely Free Software and, if not, help it become, such that we can then endorse it and promote it. I enclose below an e-mail I sent Max Spevack a while ago, when he was drawning in Fedora Foundation work, which is probably why I never got a reply. It probably helps figure out the sort of stuff we're after. Compliance and committment with the FSD is the most important of all; the other issues are still important, but not as important as the main issue. Of course, if Fedora were willing to switch to a Free Software focus, as Michael suggested, that would make the secondary matters much simpler, but if not, we're very close to what I ask below as we stand anyway.
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- Subject: getting Fedora to be promoted by Free Software Foundations?
- From: Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 03:32:53 -0300
- Cc: sopwith@xxxxxxxxxx
- Organization: Red Hat OS Tools Group
- User-agent: Gnus/5.1007 (Gnus v5.10.7) XEmacs/21.4.18 (linux)
- Xref: free.oliva.athome.lsd.ic.unicamp.br redhat.misc:31215
Hello, I hear you're now in charge of Fedora. Elliot tells me I should discuss some matters with you. Let me give you some background first. Besides being a compiler engineer at Red Hat, I'm a free software activist, and one of the founders and current secretary of Free Software Foundation Latin America. These two positions seldom conflict, thanks to Red Hat's favorable stance to Free Software, in spite of the insistence in calling it Open Source Software ;-) I'm writing to you mainly because the various FSFs are planning events for the International Free Software Forum 7.0, to be held this year from April 19-22, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. One of the events we're planning is that of promoting distributions that carry only Free Software, and that have a public commitment to do so. I've talked to Elliot several times in the past about how to make Fedora promotable by the FSFs, and every time we talked we made small steps in this direction, but we still miss some crucial bits, and I'm wondering if there's any chance of our making the necessary changes in time for us to promote Fedora 5 at FISL. What we (FSFs) would need is to make sure that we (Fedora) only carry Free Software, and that we (Fedora) do not intend to carry software that is not Free Software, ever. At this time, we (Fedora) have a stated policy of accepting packages whose licenses are approved by the Open Source Initiative, or listed as GPL-Compatible or GPL-Incompatible Free Software Licenses (this is from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines). That's a good start, but it's a bit of a problem for us FSFs because there are some OSI-approved licenses that do not comply with the Free Software definition. Even though they are rare, and I don't believe there's any such software in Fedora, we (FSFs) would not like to take the risk of recommending people to use something that *might* accept such softwares because its policy allows it. In fact, I'd personally prefer if we (Fedora) made our requirements clear more along the lines of the principles of freedom described in both the Free Software Definition and the Open Source Definition than with a list of licenses maintained by a third party. The lists could be used for confirmation, but appearing in one of them should not be enough; every package would have to satisfy the Free Software Definition requirements for Fedora to be endorsable by us (FSFs). What we're after is that Fedora places Free Software on at least equal footing with Open Source Software, i.e., where we currently say `only open source software´, say `only software that is both free software and open source software´, or `only software whose licenses comply with both the Free Software Definition and the Open Source Definition'. Saying FOSS or FLOSS is not quite enough, because these terms are ambiguous: does the software has to comply with both definitions, or is complying with any single one of them enough? If you define them as meaning it must be both, that would probably be fine, but to avoid confusion the definition of the acronym should be visible wherever the term is used. `free and open source software' is being used very often in the jargon buster / glossary, but that has the same ambiguity. Adding the word `both' in front of that would solve the ambiguity in most cases. In others in which we use `is a free and open source $noun', rewording might be needed, as in `is a $noun that is both free and open-source software´. All that said, I'm coming to think we'd be better off using some invented acronym all over, with a URL pointing to the Jargon file where an explaination of our meaning for it. FF&&OS comes to mind as a nice (if geeky) way to convey the intended meaning: it must be both Free (as in Freedom) and Open Source, and it's an adjective, not a noun like FOSS, so it should work better in our use cases. I thought I'd point out that we (FSFs) do appreciate the relatively recent change to the front page, that very prominently mentions `free software', and the fact that the jargon buster now has the word free next to pretty much every occurrence of open source :-) This got the others I've been in discussion with to believe that there is hope :-), and that we (Fedora) are almost there. Forbidden Items is nice in that it even links to the Free Software definition, but the Glossary on the Wiki only mentions Open Source. If making Fedora promotable by the FSFs by making this kind of minor yet global change to the Fedora web sites and policies is a general direction the Fedora Steering Committee would agree to move to, I'd be happy to start hunting for specific points that could be improved in this regard, and hopefully we'll be able to get to a point in which the FSFs would be happy to endorse and promote Fedora in no time :-) Another issue that is not a must, but that would be nice, would be to avoid spreading the confusion regarding the name Linux. For example, when the Wiki FAQ says what Fedora is, and then proceeds to say what Fedora Core is, it says it is an operating system based on Linux, not making it clear that it means the kernel Linux. It wouldn't make sense for it to be the often-misnamed ``Linux Operating System´´ in that case, although some people might infer support for such incorrect and unfair name. If you feel tempted to not use the term GNU/Linux to describe the Operating System, I will respect that because I know good arguments against that, even though I still find it unfair, but you should then at least prefer Linux-based Operating System, which can be understood as an operating system that has Linux as the kernel, instead of just Linux Operating System, which implies the name of the kernel *is* the name of the operating system. Thank you very much for your attention, and apologies for the length of the e-mail, -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Secretary for FSF Latin America http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
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