-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Fedora's Foundations: “Freedom, Friends, Features, First", particularly in relation to some very sticky questions about where certain things fit (such as third-party repositories, free and non-free web services, etc.) Many of these discussions get hung up on wildly different interpretations of what the "Freedom" Foundation means. First, I'll reproduce the exact text of the "Freedom" Foundation[1]: "Freedom represents dedication to free software and content. We believe that advancing software and content freedom is a central goal for the Fedora Project, and that we should accomplish that goal through the use of the software and content we promote. By including free alternatives to proprietary code and content, we can improve the overall state of free and open source software and content, and limit the effects of proprietary or patent encumbered code on the Project. Sometimes this goal prevents us from taking the easy way out by including proprietary or patent encumbered software in Fedora, or using those kinds of products in our other project work. But by concentrating on the free software and content we provide and promote, the end result is that we are able to provide: releases that are predictable and 100% legally redistributable for everyone; innovation in free and open source software that can equal or exceed closed source or proprietary solutions; and, a completely free project that anyone can emulate or copy in whole or in part for their own purposes." The language in this Foundation is sometimes dangerously unclear. For example, it pretty much explicitly forbids the use of non-free components in the creation of Fedora (sorry, folks: you can't use Photoshop to create your package icon!). At the same time, we regularly allow the packaging of software that can interoperate with non-free software; we allow Pidgin and other IM clients to talk to Google and AOL, we allow email clients to connect to Microsoft Exchange, etc. The real problem is that every time a question comes up against the Freedom Foundation, Fedora contributors diverge into two armed camps: the hard-liners who believe that Fedora should never under any circumstances work (interoperate) with proprietary services and the the folks who believe that such a hard-line approach is a path to irrelevance. To make things clear: I'm personally closer to the second camp than the first. In fact, in keeping with the subject of this email, I'd like to suggest a fifth Foundation, one to ultimately supersede all the rest: "Functional". Here's a straw-man phrasing of this proposal: Functional means that the Fedora community recognizes this to be the ultimate truth: the purpose of an operating system is to enable its users to accomplish the set of tasks they need to perform. With this in place, it would admittedly water down the Freedom Foundation slightly. "Freedom" would essentially be reduced to: the tools to reproduce the Fedora Build Environment and all packages (source and binary) shipped from this build system must use a compatible open-source license and not be patent-encumbered. Fedora would strive to always provide and promote open-source alternatives to existing (or emerging) proprietary technologies, but accepts that attracting users means not telling them that they must change all of their tools to do so). The "Functional" Foundation should be placed above the other four and be the goal-post that we measure decisions against: "If we make this change, are we reducing our users' ability to work with the software they want/need to?". Any time the answer to that question would be "yes", we have to recognize that this translates into lost users (or at the very least, users that are working around our intentions). Now, let me be further clear on this: I am not in any way advocating the use of closed-source software or services. I am not suggesting that we start carrying patent-encumbered software. I think it is absolutely the mission of Fedora to show people that FOSS is the better long-term solution. However, in my experience a person who is exposed to open source and allowed to migrate in their own time is one who is more likely to become a lifelong supporter. A person who is told "if you switch to Fedora, you must stop using Application X" is a person who is not running Fedora. [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundations -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNVEOcACgkQeiVVYja6o6OrwACfSp6sS7A4h7EDQ0AKnPcGFfCj GCEAn3R7U8U3PG3slTt4wRX0/GBsr8lJ =tFhY -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
