How is it that Fedora is not on this list?
http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions

gNewsSense just recently came around and they are on the list. What's
up with that?

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Wireless firmware inclusion I'd imagine.

On Sun, 2008-07-13 at 01:24 -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> How is it that Fedora is not on this list?
> http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions
>
> gNewsSense just recently came around and they are on the list. What's
> up with that?
>
> --
> Fedora 7 : sipping some of that moonshine
> ( www.pembo13.com )
>

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On Sun, 13 Jul 2008, Francis Earl wrote:

> Wireless firmware inclusion I'd imagine.
>
> On Sun, 2008-07-13 at 01:24 -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> > How is it that Fedora is not on this list?
> > http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions
> >
> > gNewsSense just recently came around and they are on the list. What's
> > up with that?

(please don't top post, thanks.)

wireless firmware inclusion? in what way? AFAIK, you still have to
download the broadcom drivers after the fact. has that changed while
i wasn't looking?

rday
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"Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> writes:
> wireless firmware inclusion? in what way? AFAIK, you still have to
> download the broadcom drivers after the fact. has that changed while
> i wasn't looking?

i don't know about broadcom but e.g. the firmware for intel wlan devices
is part of Fedora

Here you can find the rules by which non-free firmware is allowed:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/LicensingGuidelines#Binary_Firmware

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Francis Earl wrote:

> On Sun, 2008-07-13 at 01:24 -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
>> How is it that Fedora is not on this list?
>> http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions
>>
>> gNewsSense just recently came around and they are on the list. What's
>> up with that?

> Wireless firmware inclusion I'd imagine.

You mean there are people even more fundamentalist about open source
than Fedora?


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On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:29:04 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Francis Earl wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 2008-07-13 at 01:24 -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
>>> How is it that Fedora is not on this list?
>>> http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions
[...]
>> Wireless firmware inclusion I'd imagine.
>
> You mean there are people even more fundamentalist about open source
> than Fedora?

If you haven't read it, get Sam Williams's Free as in Freedom --
it's a fine biography of RMS, and a good read.


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On Sun, 13 Jul 2008, Robert P. J. Day wrote:


Wireless firmware inclusion I'd imagine.


How is it that Fedora is not on this list?
http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions

gNewsSense just recently came around and they are on the list. What's
up with that?


(please don't top post, thanks.)

wireless firmware inclusion? in what way? AFAIK, you still have to
download the broadcom drivers after the fact. has that changed while i
wasn't looking?


My opinion is that it's political in nature. GNU doesn't like Red
Hat and, by extension, anything that Red Hat contributes to. OC, I have
absolutely no proof nor reason for this opinion. But it's a gut feel.


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> My opinion is that it's political in nature. GNU doesn't like Red
> Hat and, by extension, anything that Red Hat contributes to. OC, I have
> absolutely no proof nor reason for this opinion. But it's a gut feel.

Not the case.

The situation with Fedora and the FSF is, as I understand it:

* Fedora allows some non-free firmware in the distribution, the
policy under which this is allowed was linked to in a previous message
in this thread
* The FSF will not give "free" status to any distribution that
explicitly allows non-free firmware in it
* Fedora people have been in touch to discuss this with them, and
progress has been made.

Rahul Sundaram is the one who's worked on this, and I'm sure he knows
the details so perhaps he might post so we're crystal clear

Best,

Jon

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On Jul 13, 2008, "Arthur Pemberton" <pemboa@gmail.com> wrote:

> How is it that Fedora is not on this list?
> http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions

> gNewsSense just recently came around and they are on the list. What's
> up with that?

Although there is non-Free Software included in Fedora, AFAIK the most
serious issue is a matter of policy ("non-Free Software is
acceptable"; "shipping these non-Free bits are not bugs that need
fixing right away") rather than the actual presence of non-Free
Software. If the right policies were in place, given enough manpower,
all non-Free Software would be eventually shoved out of Fedora. With
the current policies, more and more non-Free Software is being
welcomed into Fedora.

See also:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FedoraFreedom
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=450492
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=450491

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Jonathan Roberts wrote:

My opinion is that it's political in nature. GNU doesn't like Red
Hat and, by extension, anything that Red Hat contributes to. OC, I have
absolutely no proof nor reason for this opinion. But it's a gut feel.


Not the case.


Right.

Many of the GNU projects including GCC, glibc, coreutils etc is either
maintained by Red Hat or has significant Red Hat contributors.


https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions

It is true however that FSF is somewhat reluctant to endorse major
distributions without explicit policy and I think that's understandable.
However FSF's policy itself towards some of more ancillary things in a
distribution such as content, documentation and firmware was earlier
unclear and that has been getting fixed now. See below.



The situation with Fedora and the FSF is, as I understand it:

* Fedora allows some non-free firmware in the distribution, the
policy under which this is allowed was linked to in a previous message
in this thread
* The FSF will not give "free" status to any distribution that
explicitly allows non-free firmware in it
* Fedora people have been in touch to discuss this with them, and
progress has been made.

Rahul Sundaram is the one who's worked on this, and I'm sure he knows
the details so perhaps he might post so we're crystal clear


I described the last status at

http://lwn.net/Articles/282771/

Meanwhile David Woodhouse has been working on patches to make it
possible to separate the firmware that is currently inside the kernel.


http://lwn.net/Articles/284932/

Aside for the legal and philosophical issues, this has several other
practical advantages and there is a kernel summit discussion in the
agenda. If and when that gets done, end users would be able to exclude
the firmware completely and it would also be possible to create a
separate spin more targeted towards meeting FSF's criteria


http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FedoraFreedom

Rahul




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