On Feb 23, 2007, Thomas M Steenholdt <tmus@xxxxxxx> wrote: > Amusing or not, it does confirm that our current policy of keeping all > the proprietary stuff away from Fedora, is really for the best. Just a small clarification. Patent-encumbered doesn't mean proprietary. Many of the multi-media packages that are kept out of Fedora *are* Free Software, but they can't be shipped from the US because of software patents. Fedora actually helps weaken the software patents system by rejecting even such Free Software packages, and promoting Free Software implementations of Free Standards instead. A wise use of the fifth freedom: http://www.fsfla.org/?q=en/node/139#1 But if it weren't for legal, patent-related reasons, Fedora could include such packages without breaking its vow to not ship non-Free Software (other than policy allowing for non-Free firmware). -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
