Alexandre Oliva wrote:
On Apr 30, 2007, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Alexandre Oliva wrote:
Once more time, I'm not talking about the firmware in the kernel.
That's harder to remove, I agree. One has to get out of one's way to
do that.
Just pointing out that you are drawing a line between firmware inside
the kernel and firmware outside of it while Fedora is drawing a line
between firmware and other forms of proprietary software.
i) I'm not. The FSF did, and did it a while ago, before even thinking
about removing stuff from the kernel was thinkable.
It wasn't unthinkable at any point of time. We can claim that Fedora
thinks that a distribution without the firmware we include is
unthinkable. FSF compromised considered the practical aspects just like
Fedora did.
ii) The line is not between what's acceptable and what's not. In time,
all such non-Free firmware will be removed from the 100% Free distros,
because they are committed to Freedom. If not, we'll know they
aren't, and the FSF will likely take them out of the list.
There is no public statement on the FSF website on this and there is no
differentiation between distributions which include firmware in the
kernel and which include them. Why aren't you changing it to educate end
users?
Atleast in Fedora the division is clearly documented in the
packaging guidelines.
Which is and has always been incompatible with the stated goals of the
Fedora project.
Yes, it's called a exception for a reason.
Now, while it was there but wasn't exercised, it was bad but not
terrible. Now that it is exercised, we're basically telling pure Free
Software activists to go away. Is this the goal? To trade each pure
Free Software user for 1048576 freedom-unconcerned users? :-(
FSF already does that by calling the distributions which include binary
firmware inside the kernel as Free software distributions. Arguing that
when FSF comprimises it's ok but when Fedora does it is not is just what
you called
You need to bring this up Fedora 7 launch. Now is too late to be
^after
making changes for this release.
Well, yeah, but is this a frank argument? Was it too late already
when I first brought it up? Was it too late already when I last did
before this time?
Yes it was. It always will be until there is more resources to tackle
this issue.
Rahul
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