supporting closed source operating systems?

On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 02:05:06PM -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Axel Thimm <Axel.Thimm@atrpms.net> wrote:
> > In this case I don't see the benefits for Fedora. I just see more Open
> > Source being hijacked for a non Open Source operating system.
>
> Are you saying that applications such as the Fedora liveusb creator
> that runs on windows should not be promoted?

No, obviously not - the liveusb creator's use case is not for
enhancing Windows, it is allowing Windows users to make the switch.

OTOH mingw is allowing Windows users to *not* make the switch. The
need to go Linux gets lower for every app that works under Windows.
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On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 11:51:51PM +0100, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 12:57:57AM +0300, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > But we're beyond the age of this kind of symbiosis, Linux (or
> > GNU/Linux ...) and Fedora in particular doesn't need this anymore.
>
> The actual reality, real stuff in the real world, is that 90%+ of
> users of desktop computer systems run Windows, another 5%+ are running
> Mac OS X, and almost nobody (perhaps 10, 100 people in the whole
> world?) are running a completely free operating system (inc. BIOS
> etc).

No one denies that, but don't we want to keep the fruits of F/LOSS to
encourage more F/LOSS usage? Hijacking F/LOSS solutions back to closed
source will not change the percentages above, on the contrary, you
remove some of the good reasons to go Linux.
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On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 11:51:51PM +0100, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 12:57:57AM +0300, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > But we're beyond the age of this kind of symbiosis, Linux (or
> > GNU/Linux ...) and Fedora in particular doesn't need this anymore.
>
> The actual reality, real stuff in the real world, is that 90%+ of
> users of desktop computer systems run Windows, another 5%+ are running
> Mac OS X, and almost nobody (perhaps 10, 100 people in the whole
> world?) are running a completely free operating system (inc. BIOS
> etc).

No one denies that, but don't we want to keep the fruits of F/LOSS to
encourage more F/LOSS usage? Hijacking F/LOSS solutions back to closed
source will not change the percentages above, on the contrary, you
remove some of the good reasons to go Linux.
--
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net

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On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Axel Thimm <Axel.Thimm@atrpms.net> wrote:
> No, obviously not - the liveusb creator's use case is not for
> enhancing Windows, it is allowing Windows users to make the switch.
>
> OTOH mingw is allowing Windows users to *not* make the switch. The
> need to go Linux gets lower for every app that works under Windows.

And if mingw is being delibrately made available so that people can
use a virtualized linux on top of windows? Is that not a path towards
switching?

What if we wanted to use this tool chain specifically to build a
windows application for Fedora that is meant to provide similar
functionality to what wubi provides for Ubuntu, easing the path
towards switching?

-jef"I guess a Lego Mindstorms cross compiler toolchain in Fedora
would also be extremely objectionable on the same grounds. Even though
I'm using Fedora to write and compile the applications, the
applications will be installed and run on a not-completely free
operating system running on the Lego brick"spaleta

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Axel Thimm wrote:

On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 04:58:20PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/MinGW


What is Fedora's motivation is promoting using Open Source on a closed
source operating system?


Imo, motives don't matter here. If it's license-wise (and otherwise
policy-wise) ok with fedora, then end of story.


-- Rex

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Axel Thimm wrote:

On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 04:58:20PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/MinGW


What is Fedora's motivation is promoting using Open Source on a closed
source operating system?


Imo, motives don't matter here. If it's license-wise (and otherwise
policy-wise) ok with fedora, then end of story.


-- Rex

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On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:17 PM, Rex Dieter <rdieter@math.unl.edu> wrote:
> Imo, motives don't matter here. If it's license-wise (and otherwise
> policy-wise) ok with fedora, then end of story.

Well, some could argue that policy is another word for motive :->

-jef

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Axel Thimm wrote:

On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 02:05:06PM -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Axel Thimm <Axel.Thimm@atrpms.net> wrote:

In this case I don't see the benefits for Fedora. I just see more Open
Source being hijacked for a non Open Source operating system.

Are you saying that applications such as the Fedora liveusb creator
that runs on windows should not be promoted?


No, obviously not - the liveusb creator's use case is not for
enhancing Windows, it is allowing Windows users to make the switch.

OTOH mingw is allowing Windows users to *not* make the switch. The
need to go Linux gets lower for every app that works under Windows.


The "Survival of the Fittest" principle however implies that we are not
necessarily in competition with Windows, and hence there is no motive to
convert it's users to Linux, as it is "soon" to be extinct ;-)


Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen
-kanarip

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On Wed, 9 Jul 2008, Rex Dieter wrote:

> Axel Thimm wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 04:58:20PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> > > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/MinGW
> >
> > What is Fedora's motivation is promoting using Open Source on a closed
> > source operating system?
>
> Imo, motives don't matter here. If it's license-wise (and otherwise
> policy-wise) ok with fedora, then end of story.
>


Perfectly said. Even did it in only two sentences! Props Rex ;-)

-Mike

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On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 02:06:50AM +0300, Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 11:51:51PM +0100, Richard Jones wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 12:57:57AM +0300, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > > But we're beyond the age of this kind of symbiosis, Linux (or
> > > GNU/Linux ...) and Fedora in particular doesn't need this anymore.
> >
> > The actual reality, real stuff in the real world, is that 90%+ of
> > users of desktop computer systems run Windows, another 5%+ are running
> > Mac OS X, and almost nobody (perhaps 10, 100 people in the whole
> > world?) are running a completely free operating system (inc. BIOS
> > etc).
>
> No one denies that, but don't we want to keep the fruits of F/LOSS to
> encourage more F/LOSS usage? Hijacking F/LOSS solutions back to closed
> source will not change the percentages above, on the contrary, you
> remove some of the good reasons to go Linux.

For what we're proposing -- libraries, not programs -- it's good to
encourage programmers on closed systems to use open libraries.

Take libvirt as an example. There are plenty of proprietary /
encumbered competitors to libvirt which run on Windows -- eg. you can
program directly to VMWare's APIs, or XenAPI. It's better though if
we can encourage Windows programmers to program to the libvirt API
instead of those proprietary competitors. It's one less piece of
proprietary lock-in for those programmers, and one less thing to
unscrew when they want to port their software to Linux.

However, actually maintaining the libvirt port to Windows is currently
a huge pain in the nether regions. It involves me having a Windows
box (not a virtual machine, mind you, because Windows really doesn't
run very well when virtualized), and because Windows doesn't adhere to
any sort of standard, I have to copy all the libvirt code by hand to
the Windows box, try to build it using a mix of tools (which have to
be installed and upgraded by hand because there's no reasonable
packaging system for Windows), then fix the libvirt code which has
usually broken (because no one ever routinely compiles it for
Windows), then hand copy the patches back to Linux, check they don't
break anything on the Linux side, and then submit them upstream.

As you can imagine, this is unpleasant, time-consuming, requires me to
use a horrible proprietary system, etc.

What we're proposing is a way to do this entirely within Fedora, so we
use Fedora packages, on a Fedora host, with a Fedora command line, and
Fedora tools. We can do nightly autobuilds to catch problems with the
Windows port early, and automatically generate Windows packages. No
actual use of Windows or other non-free software in sight.

Rich.

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