laura@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Q1, taking into account Fedoras political and legal worries about patents
and codecs, the stuff thats commonly used by everyone who don't care about
and are not subject to U.S laws, will Fedora versions in the future offer
something like Ubuntu, where as there is a "restricted" installed by
default repo, to get codecs like playing a MP3 or movie, or automatically
get and install wireless firmware/drivers, detecting whats needed, and
popping up a warning that it might be illegal to use this where you live
blah blah blah do you accept risks click OK and it goes and gets and
installs whatever it is, just like ubuntu does?
Claiming it might be illegal and trying to pass off responsibility to
end users doesn't work in US. Doing that would amount to contributory
infringement. Users may not care but Fedora is legally based in US and
doesn't operate in the same environment that Canonical (legal and
commercial) entity behind Ubuntu) works. So it is not legally possible
to do many of the things you have indicated for a US based distribution.
Even otherwise, Fedora has explicitly no interest in supporting
proprietary or patent encumbered software.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems
There are variants of Fedora which do some of this.
http://lwn.net/Articles/311650/
Q2, Will Fedora release a LTS (long term support) version that is
supported for 3 years or so, just like Ubuntu.
You might consider using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (which is derived from
Fedora) or one of the free rebuilds where every release supported upto
7-10 years.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle
There is some community interest in extending the lifecycle of Fedora
itself post EOL but nothing you can use at the moment.
Rahul
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