----- Original Message ----- > From: "Bill Nottingham" <notting@xxxxxxxxxx> > To: "Fedora community advisory board" <advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 8:51:26 PM > Subject: Re: Proposal: Revision of policy surrounding 3rd party and non-free software > > Christian Schaller (cschalle@xxxxxxxxxx) said: > > While we might want to update some of the pages you mention, for most of > > them there is no need. They are just general statements about wishing to > > support free software, which we do. And as I mentioned in the original > > email, we need to have users to achieve that. There are some issues > > driving users away from Fedora that we can't fix (ie. software patent > > mess), but we should try to fix the things we can. > > You mention patents... but that's not the only kind of contributory > infringement that can exist. Can't help but notice the inclusion of > the nVidia driver in the examples and in the discussion. Is this stating > that Fedora and its primary sponsor considers the act of facilitating the > use of non-GPL modules in kernel space is completely OK from a copyright > perspective? > > Because that would actually be a fairly large change for both Fedora and > others. > > > Our influence with the rest of the world and promoting freedom rests on us > > having users and obviously the way we have been building Fedora and the > > policies around Fedora used so far is not giving us that. > > In terms of userbase, Fedora can definitely say that, and it's up to the > project > to consider whether that's due to: > > - high rate of change and instability in updates > - short lifecycle of releases > - project's inability to work with those that embed it for actual product > uses > - large changes in major functional areas (desktop, init, etc.) > - lack of preinstalls on common hardware > - inability to install non-Free software in the GUI without manual work > - inability to install patent-concerned software without manual work/ > inability to play popular media > - thanks, I'll just use my tablet and I don't need another OS > - Windows or Mac now 'good enough' for their client use > - lack of focus on a particular use case (such as developers!) > > Admittedly, Fedora doesn't have necessarily the time or the mechanism to do > isolated testing on any of these axes, so the plan appears to be a shotgun > approach to whichever areas managers feel like targeting? That's not > inherently wrong, I'm just curious why this one was chosen as one, and if > it's as simple as "it's pretty easy to do technically." (As opposed to > "work with those that embed Fedora", which can't be done in three lines of > code somewhere.) I think most of the items you list here make sense as things we need to work on and which I hope to contribute on working on. But as you say some of them are more effort/more long term than others and solving one of them doesn't preclude solving others. > > So we have decided to change, both in technical terms with the Fedora Next > > plan, but we also need to revisit how we practice our policies, which is > > what this proposal is about. > > 'we'? We as in the Fedora project _______________________________________________ advisory-board mailing list advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board
