Adam Moreland wrote:
I am for such a thing. Also can i ask for some verification, as as far
as i know, fedora dfoes ship with supports for some wireless NIC's and
ndiswrapper is an open source program. In fact can i ask for
clarification on the definition of wireless ebing restricted and
prohibited.
The usage of ndiswrapper is to allow proprietry software to intergrate
into the kernel, but this seems not to be an issue in other distros
and in fact fedora ships with support for some Intel wireless cards
already. Surely for the sake of fedora this type of distinction (of
wireless being forbidden) is rediculous.
Wireless is not forbidden. Ndiswrapper is.
After all it is an open source solution, using open source materials,
to allow the open surce communtiy to have legal access to the drivers
they already paid for once they purchased the wireless NIC.
I cannot see how a guide on the usage of ndiswrapper (which is open
source) cannot be achieved, so long as the guide doesnt explicitly
promote the proprietry software. After all isnt this the point?? To
intergrate the open source to merge the experience into one community
solution?? Wireless is still a massive problem for Linux users, but i
have guides for both SUSE 9.x/10.x and FC5.
Please can i have clarification as to the reasons that ndiswrapper
cannot be used in the fedora etras repo, and why the use of
ndiswrapper contradicts the policy of fedora-docs on the use of
proprietry means. I read the policy as meaning that you cannot use
nVidia, as they make it, but ndiswrapper is a middle man, and is open
source. We (linux community) have used the same workarounds to get
Logitech keybaords, HP devices, most printers, laptops, speakers,
sound cards, and other methods. The user need not support proprietry
means, because by using the open source ndiswrapper, they are surely
curcumventing the need to be protected by the policy on forbidding
proprietry terms.
I can see the huge gap caused by the lack of clarification from fedora
on the use of such means like wireless, and also NTFS. The confusion
is unwarrented surely. Cant there be a solution where the NTFS modules
can be brought into fedora extras, and a guide be used accordingly.
FAT32 is supported, and other forms and file systems, so why not NTFS,
which has had a long history with fedora and is clearly completly open
source.
The explanation is given here at
http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-beta-list/2006-March/msg00395.html.
There are other technical reasons such as the issue of 4k stacks being
the default (http://lwn.net/Articles/160138/). Many of the windows
drivers would not work with Ndiswrapper since they require more than 16
k stacks in the kernel. The only purpose of ndiswrapper is to enable the
loading of binary only modules within the kernel from a different
platform. Fedora will not formally support or endorse such efforts.
If you the read the forbidden items page you would know that Fedora does
not provide any software that is patent encumbered. Merely having the
source does not satisfy all our requirements for inclusion.
Rahul
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