Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 04/22/2014 12:15 PM, Nikos Roussos wrote: There is also a third group, somewhere in between, who believe that's ok to ship Free Software that connects and interops with proprietary services (gtalk, aws, etc), but it's not ok to ship proprietary software, metadata about proprietary software or advertise proprietary services through our main UI tools. I think there is something completely missing from the discussion: the wishes (expressed in terms of service agreements) of the proprietary service providers. In many cases, these terms require users to access the service through official interfaces only: a web browser, or published APIs (with API keys). The data available over APIs is typically more limited than what is accessible in a web browser (e.g., no content, only metadata, or no write access) and not suitable for a general-purpose client users would want to use. Furthermore, distribution of the API key in free software is problematic as well. I don't know how serious service providers are about restricting such alternative clients. In the IM market, there have been past efforts which seemed to be designed to block out alternative clients, presumably after they gained sufficient market share. What I wonder is this: Will these clients work only as long as Fedora is sufficiently unpopular? How will we respond once we are blocked? Where is the Freedom in telling users to access services in ways presumably not approved by the service provider? (This concern does not apply to showing a website running proprietary software in a web browser, but this is not always what our clients do.) -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
Well my point is I spoke to Red Hat legal before I even posted the original proposal to open up to more 3rd party repositories some Months ago. There are a lot of repositories that it is perfectly fine for Fedora to include from a legal perspective. But they will need to be reviewed by legal on a case to case basis, going to legal up front and saying 'hey can I include a hypothetical repository' will only yield you the answer 'depends on the repository'. So decisions need to be general to allow us to look for a variety of options to fulfill them. Lets say Fedora decided we want to make it easier for our users to get more multimedia codecs. We would not get the go ahead from legal to include a repository which contains ffmpeg for instance, but legal would probably be perfectly fine with including a repository containing the Cisco H264 package or the Fluendo Mp3 plugin. So in the end this is not a legal question which needs the involvement of the lawyers at this point, but a question of the overall goals and values of Fedora, and how we best achieve those goals and values. Basically we first need to agree on the 'design' before distracting ourselves with 'implementation'. Christian - Original Message - From: drago01 drag...@gmail.com To: Development discussions related to Fedora devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2014 4:37:40 PM Subject: Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smo...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 April 2014 02:29, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com wrote: Hi Mairin, Not sure exactly where you are coming from in terms of wanting legal to weigh in, but in general I don't think legals opinion is very relevant and this point. The first step here should always be us as a project deciding what user experience we want to offer our users, then once that is done go to legal and try to work with them to figure out how it can be done. The reason was that Legal was the big reason the rules are in place in the first place. They are not just in place because of software patents. They are in place because of different national laws on copyright, what is considered to be infringement or redistribution by even linking, trademark use (also dependent on nation etc), competition rules, and a probably another dozen other factors. All of this applies to any software regardless whether it is free or not (as I said in the other mail). Copyright law does not differentiate between free and non free software. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 4/24/14, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com wrote: So decisions need to be general to allow us to look for a variety of options to fulfill them. Lets say Fedora decided we want to make it easier for our users to get more multimedia codecs. We would not get the go ahead from legal to include a repository which contains ffmpeg for instance, but legal would probably be perfectly fine with including a repository containing the Cisco H264 package or the Fluendo Mp3 plugin. Which, long story short, isn't really what users want (they want all that codecs). So in the end this is not a legal question which needs the involvement of the lawyers at this point, but a question of the overall goals and values of Fedora, and how we best achieve those goals and values. Basically we first need to agree on the 'design' before distracting ourselves with 'implementation'. Agreed. And as far as I can see, the current design with the Fedora core repos + rpmfusion + COPR add-ons is a good design, given that US law is applicable to core Fedora and COPR. That said, these add-ons should IMHO be a fundamental part of the vision. To lijmit our thought to a user with just Fedora repos is, well, to limit our thoughts. Let's recognize the fact that users have needs which in many cases will make them use additional repos. We do provide a lot of hooks for this, but could be better. Partly, it's a question how we present things. Personally, I think Fedora core repos + rpmfusion should be a one-stop shop for most things. There's some work to be done on the rpmfusion side to for this, though. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 24 April 2014 02:49, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com wrote: Well my point is I spoke to Red Hat legal before I even posted the original proposal to open up to more 3rd party repositories some Months ago. There are a lot of repositories that it is perfectly fine for Fedora to include from a legal perspective. But they will need to be reviewed by legal on a case to case basis, going to legal up front and saying 'hey can I include a hypothetical repository' will only yield you the answer 'depends on the repository'. OK cool. What is the plan for when repositories change what they are carrying and add stuff that may be legal for them but not for others? Will there be periodic reviews to make sure that this hasn't happened or some way that we roll back what repositories we recommend? -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/24/2014 11:01 AM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: On 24 April 2014 02:49, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com mailto:cscha...@redhat.com wrote: Well my point is I spoke to Red Hat legal before I even posted the original proposal to open up to more 3rd party repositories some Months ago. There are a lot of repositories that it is perfectly fine for Fedora to include from a legal perspective. But they will need to be reviewed by legal on a case to case basis, going to legal up front and saying 'hey can I include a hypothetical repository' will only yield you the answer 'depends on the repository'. OK cool. What is the plan for when repositories change what they are carrying and add stuff that may be legal for them but not for others? Will there be periodic reviews to make sure that this hasn't happened or some way that we roll back what repositories we recommend? At the risk of being glib: What's the plan for periodically re-reviewing every package in Fedora to make sure that its sources always remain legal? It's the same problem and it can only realistically be dealt with by If someone notices, deal with it then. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNZNCwACgkQeiVVYja6o6O76gCcC/QdnvusmdalnbqV/X2Bftw/ 8L4AoKtkgQGO4EhVGNlfXhgWe6GDgpBd =Gx5v -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/24/2014 11:01 AM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: On 24 April 2014 02:49, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com mailto:cscha...@redhat.com wrote: Well my point is I spoke to Red Hat legal before I even posted the original proposal to open up to more 3rd party repositories some Months ago. There are a lot of repositories that it is perfectly fine for Fedora to include from a legal perspective. But they will need to be reviewed by legal on a case to case basis, going to legal up front and saying 'hey can I include a hypothetical repository' will only yield you the answer 'depends on the repository'. OK cool. What is the plan for when repositories change what they are carrying and add stuff that may be legal for them but not for others? Will there be periodic reviews to make sure that this hasn't happened or some way that we roll back what repositories we recommend? At the risk of being glib: What's the plan for periodically re-reviewing every package in Fedora to make sure that its sources always remain legal? It's the same problem and it can only realistically be dealt with by If someone notices, deal with it then. IIRC, the original discussion was framed around specific repositories with specific pieces of software. So a repository carrying e.g. Chrome and only Chrome. Not something like rpmfusion which carries a multitude of varied packages. So in that case, the audit becomes easier. josh -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: OK cool. What is the plan for when repositories change what they are carrying and add stuff that may be legal for them but not for others? Will there be periodic reviews to make sure that this hasn't happened or some way that we roll back what repositories we recommend? At the risk of being glib: What's the plan for periodically re-reviewing every package in Fedora to make sure that its sources always remain legal? It's the same problem and it can only realistically be dealt with by If someone notices, deal with it then. One practical difference is that there's no bug trackers for individual COPRs. At least when a package is in Fedora, communication can happen in a central place (Bugzilla), and there's an FE-LEGAL blocker mechanism, etc. That tooling is much easier than trying to handle things over private email, and none of that tooling exists outside the distro. I've looked through COPR's features and roadmap and I've not seen plans to add it, unfortunately. - Ken -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 10:04:41 -0600 Ken Dreyer ktdre...@ktdreyer.com wrote: One practical difference is that there's no bug trackers for individual COPRs. At least when a package is in Fedora, communication can happen in a central place (Bugzilla), and there's an FE-LEGAL blocker mechanism, etc. That tooling is much easier than trying to handle things over private email, and none of that tooling exists outside the distro. I've looked through COPR's features and roadmap and I've not seen plans to add it, unfortunately. Well, copr does have a 'legal flag' checkbox... when you check this on a copr, it sends email to a bunch of people who can look at the thing and see if it really has an issue and can mail the copr maintainer about it. Not as easy, but should be workable for things noticed... kevin signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 10:07 AM, Kevin Fenzi ke...@scrye.com wrote: On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 10:04:41 -0600 Ken Dreyer ktdre...@ktdreyer.com wrote: One practical difference is that there's no bug trackers for individual COPRs. At least when a package is in Fedora, communication can happen in a central place (Bugzilla), and there's an FE-LEGAL blocker mechanism, etc. That tooling is much easier than trying to handle things over private email, and none of that tooling exists outside the distro. I've looked through COPR's features and roadmap and I've not seen plans to add it, unfortunately. Well, copr does have a 'legal flag' checkbox... when you check this on a copr, it sends email to a bunch of people who can look at the thing and see if it really has an issue and can mail the copr maintainer about it. Not as easy, but should be workable for things noticed... That's a good start at least. Thanks for pointing it out. - Ken -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 24 April 2014 09:56, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/24/2014 11:01 AM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: On 24 April 2014 02:49, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com mailto:cscha...@redhat.com wrote: Well my point is I spoke to Red Hat legal before I even posted the original proposal to open up to more 3rd party repositories some Months ago. There are a lot of repositories that it is perfectly fine for Fedora to include from a legal perspective. But they will need to be reviewed by legal on a case to case basis, going to legal up front and saying 'hey can I include a hypothetical repository' will only yield you the answer 'depends on the repository'. OK cool. What is the plan for when repositories change what they are carrying and add stuff that may be legal for them but not for others? Will there be periodic reviews to make sure that this hasn't happened or some way that we roll back what repositories we recommend? At the risk of being glib: What's the plan for periodically re-reviewing every package in Fedora to make sure that its sources always remain legal? It's the same problem and it can only realistically be dealt with by If someone notices, deal with it then. There are a couple of differences. If we find that dvdcss was added to a package, we can rip out that package, put an update in the repository and people who do updates get a package without dvdcss. A third party repository is one we don't have any control over. If code that the 3rd party has no legal right to ship or fill in problem here, what is our remediation to our users? Are we in contributary infringement because we gave the users a way access to pirated software that we never intended in the first place? Is there an agreement between us and the third party that they are to be offering X, that they are legally able to offer X, and that if they are not they are to take all liability of offering X? These were things that people were wondering when this came up in the past. -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
- Original Message - From: Stephen John Smoogen smo...@gmail.com To: Development discussions related to Fedora devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 6:46:03 PM Subject: Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations On 24 April 2014 09:56, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/24/2014 11:01 AM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: On 24 April 2014 02:49, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com mailto: cscha...@redhat.com wrote: Well my point is I spoke to Red Hat legal before I even posted the original proposal to open up to more 3rd party repositories some Months ago. There are a lot of repositories that it is perfectly fine for Fedora to include from a legal perspective. But they will need to be reviewed by legal on a case to case basis, going to legal up front and saying 'hey can I include a hypothetical repository' will only yield you the answer 'depends on the repository'. OK cool. What is the plan for when repositories change what they are carrying and add stuff that may be legal for them but not for others? Will there be periodic reviews to make sure that this hasn't happened or some way that we roll back what repositories we recommend? At the risk of being glib: What's the plan for periodically re-reviewing every package in Fedora to make sure that its sources always remain legal? It's the same problem and it can only realistically be dealt with by If someone notices, deal with it then. There are a couple of differences. If we find that dvdcss was added to a package, we can rip out that package, put an update in the repository and people who do updates get a package without dvdcss. A third party repository is one we don't have any control over. If code that the 3rd party has no legal right to ship or fill in problem here, what is our remediation to our users? Are we in contributary infringement because we gave the users a way access to pirated software that we never intended in the first place? Is there an agreement between us and the third party that they are to be offering X, that they are legally able to offer X, and that if they are not they are to take all liability of offering X? These were things that people were wondering when this came up in the past. Once again this is becoming a debate about hypotheticals which rarely leads anywhere constructive. To take a concrete case instead. Are you really worried about Google starting to ship dvdcss as part of their Chrome repository? Do you really think that is a question keeping our lawyers up at night? Are there repositories out there where we can not trust the person or company behind it enough to include it by default for legal reasons? Sure there is, but you can't say that just because we would not want to risk shipping the rpm-warez.tor.net repo by default all 3rd party repos are high risk and something our lawyers would be concerned about. Because that is the argument you in practice is making when you are posing hypothetical questions about the risk of 3rd party repos. Christian -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 24 April 2014 16:06, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com wrote: These were things that people were wondering when this came up in the past. Once again this is becoming a debate about hypotheticals which rarely leads anywhere constructive. It actually isn't hypothetical. I have had to deal with a lot of problems with 3rd party repositories at previous jobs. The easiest and most common one is where the 3rd party later ships something that conflicts with the main repository. The weirder ones are where a clean package got stuff added to it where it backdoored the desktop or where it added a P2P service which set off all kinds of emails from the RIAA to the universities legal. To take a concrete case instead. Are you really worried about Google starting to ship dvdcss as part of their Chrome repository? Do you really think that is a question keeping our lawyers up at night? I am more worried about the criteria we are using for choosing these repositories, how they are chosen, vetted and added and a basic How we plan to deal with problems when they occur versus the standard OMG THE SKY IS FALLING AND ITS ALL FILL-IN-BLANK FAULT. Because problems will occur and they will be at various very inconvenient times so having at least a We will contact X, we will turn off Y in package Z, we will then push an update with who to contact to deal with them. Are there repositories out there where we can not trust the person or company behind it enough to include it by default for legal reasons? Sure there is, but you can't say that just because we would not want to risk shipping the rpm-warez.tor.netrepo by default all 3rd party repos are high risk and something our lawyers would be concerned about. Because that is the argument you in practice is making when you are posing hypothetical questions about the risk of 3rd party repos. You seem to have completely misread me so it is clear we are talking past each other. Since I am not communicating clearly in a way you or others understand, I will stop and withdrawal until I can better do so. Christian -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
Hi Mairin, Not sure exactly where you are coming from in terms of wanting legal to weigh in, but in general I don't think legals opinion is very relevant and this point. The first step here should always be us as a project deciding what user experience we want to offer our users, then once that is done go to legal and try to work with them to figure out how it can be done. A lawyers job is to worry, so if we make lawyers not being worried at all a pre-requisite to even thinking about something we should probably not be doing software at all. The brokenness of the US patent system combined with more brokenness in how the US legal system handles software patents probably means a lawyer would advice you to not be involved with software making at all due to the legal risks :) Christian - Original Message - From: Máirín Duffy du...@fedoraproject.org To: Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com, devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 4:10:49 PM Subject: Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations On 04/22/2014 09:13 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: So one of the key questions here is whether the current policy on essentially hiding (protecting?) the user from these external software sources is truly in keeping with our Foundations, Mission and general project health. To be honest, I'm fairly uncomfortable discussing this without Fedora Legal weighing in. I don't see any problem with re-visiting the decisions made along this path, but I also am pretty confident the folks who decided things had to be this way are really smart and had good reasons. ~m -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 4/22/14, Przemek Klosowski przemek.klosow...@nist.gov wrote: [cut] Everything in our repos is free, so putting the choice in the installer seems off to me. Our policy (which is complex and obviously driven by things stronger than the UX) generally leaves it to users post-install to add encumbered software. I don't actually see the advantage to the user in changing that. PackageKit's UI used to have filters I think some were based on license. Maybe the GNOME software devs would be interested in having some kind of selection for the type of software offered to you. Similarly to how some Android app stores work - e.g. show me only free apps, or you can show me paid apps too. Even if everything in our repos is free, should we assume that everything in the user's repos is free? What if user installs e. g., the rpmfusion repos? What we could do is to recognize the fact that many (most?) users adds repositories with all sorts of software, rpmfusion being an example. And let this be part of the vision forming our tools, instead of a strict fedora-only approach. There are some aspects on this: - I don't think Fedora is able add non-free, patent-encumbered sw in e. g., in the way Ubuntu does - it fails on the fact that US law is applicable (Ubuntu and rpmfusion are in the EU). Which makes solutions like rpmfusion the way to go. - rpmfusion could be improved to be a 'one-stop' shop for most non-free/patent encumbered sw. - When developing new tools like the Software Installer it would be nice if there is cooperation so that some external repo content was visible from an early stage as a proof of concept. Just my 5 öre, --alec -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 10:45 AM, Alec Leamas leamas.a...@gmail.com wrote: There are some aspects on this: - I don't think Fedora is able add non-free, patent-encumbered sw in e. g., in the way Ubuntu does - it fails on the fact that US law is applicable [...] This has been repeated multiple times recently but that is still wrong. For patent-encumbered sure we cannot ship them without a patent license but there is no legal reason why we couldn't ship non free software (assuming the license allows redistribution) ... not saying that we should but claiming we can't for legal reasons is just plain wrong. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 4/23/14, drago01 drag...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 10:45 AM, Alec Leamas leamas.a...@gmail.com wrote: There are some aspects on this: - I don't think Fedora is able add non-free, patent-encumbered sw in e. g., in the way Ubuntu does - it fails on the fact that US law is applicable [...] This has been repeated multiple times recently but that is still wrong. For patent-encumbered sure we cannot ship them without a patent license but there is no legal reason why we couldn't ship non free software (assuming the license allows redistribution) ... not saying that we should but claiming we can't for legal reasons is just plain wrong. Agreed (sloppy argumentation from my side). That said, being able to distribute non-free sw but not patent-encumbered is just a half-baked solution which isn't that interesting. You'd need something like rpmfusion anyway. --alec -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 23 April 2014 02:29, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com wrote: Hi Mairin, Not sure exactly where you are coming from in terms of wanting legal to weigh in, but in general I don't think legals opinion is very relevant and this point. The first step here should always be us as a project deciding what user experience we want to offer our users, then once that is done go to legal and try to work with them to figure out how it can be done. The reason was that Legal was the big reason the rules are in place in the first place. They are not just in place because of software patents. They are in place because of different national laws on copyright, what is considered to be infringement or redistribution by even linking, trademark use (also dependent on nation etc), competition rules, and a probably another dozen other factors. Trying to ignore that and say we will try and work with legal after we have decided what we want to do is taking a long walk on a short pier.. you end up getting wet. -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smo...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 April 2014 02:29, Christian Schaller cscha...@redhat.com wrote: Hi Mairin, Not sure exactly where you are coming from in terms of wanting legal to weigh in, but in general I don't think legals opinion is very relevant and this point. The first step here should always be us as a project deciding what user experience we want to offer our users, then once that is done go to legal and try to work with them to figure out how it can be done. The reason was that Legal was the big reason the rules are in place in the first place. They are not just in place because of software patents. They are in place because of different national laws on copyright, what is considered to be infringement or redistribution by even linking, trademark use (also dependent on nation etc), competition rules, and a probably another dozen other factors. All of this applies to any software regardless whether it is free or not (as I said in the other mail). Copyright law does not differentiate between free and non free software. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, 2014-04-21 at 08:36 -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: 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. There is also a third group, somewhere in between, who believe that's ok to ship Free Software that connects and interops with proprietary services (gtalk, aws, etc), but it's not ok to ship proprietary software, metadata about proprietary software or advertise proprietary services through our main UI tools. You should also keep in mind that Functional is very subjective and I don't see how it can walk through such debates. People will still align the Functional foundation to align with their point of view ;) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
- Original Message - From: Nikos Roussos comzer...@fedoraproject.org There is also a third group, somewhere in between, who believe that's ok to ship Free Software that connects and interops with proprietary services (gtalk, aws, etc), but it's not ok to ship proprietary software, metadata about proprietary software or advertise proprietary services through our main UI tools. You should also keep in mind that Functional is very subjective and I don't see how it can walk through such debates. People will still align the Functional foundation to align with their point of view ;) So this group believes it is ok to ship an open source twitter client in Fedora as long as the client doesn't know how to connect to twitter or has any metadata mentioning it can be used to connect to twitter? ;) Christian -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 06:46 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote: - Original Message - From: Nikos Roussos comzer...@fedoraproject.org There is also a third group, somewhere in between, who believe that's ok to ship Free Software that connects and interops with proprietary services (gtalk, aws, etc), but it's not ok to ship proprietary software, metadata about proprietary software or advertise proprietary services through our main UI tools. You should also keep in mind that Functional is very subjective and I don't see how it can walk through such debates. People will still align the Functional foundation to align with their point of view ;) So this group believes it is ok to ship an open source twitter client in Fedora as long as the client doesn't know how to connect to twitter or has any metadata mentioning it can be used to connect to twitter? ;) With metadata about proprietary software I mean metadata used to *install* proprietary software. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 06:23 PM, Przemek Klosowski wrote: On 04/21/2014 01:27 PM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: On 04/21/2014 01:07 PM, Haïkel Guémar wrote: We should think on how we could improve collaboration with third-party repos, fedmsg/copr might be part of the technical solution. How about a Fedora Partnership Program ? We could open up at a certain extent our infrastructure and collaborate with software editors to make sure that their products have some support in Fedora. I love this idea and I think we should probably start another thread on it when this one starts to die down, assuming that the general sense is that the community wants to improve our third-party/non-FOSS relationships. The choices we make are determined by the possibilities we are presented with. While we all agree that it's neither possible nor desirable to prevent installation of whatever tools the end user wants, the Freedom absolutists would like to put up a barrier against non-Free software, or at least want Fedora to abstain from helping. I personally prefer that choice to be given to the users, who should be able to indicate what they want on their systems. Now, these abstract choices take shape during software installation, so it seems to me that they should be entered as user preferences in the software installer to shape the results of software search. In other words, ask the user what they want to see, and then let them choose from the results. We've discussed several such values-based choices: - the license conditions (Free vs. encumbered vs. non-Free and commercial) - tolerance for gritty old commandline tools vs. polished apps only - choice between full functionality vs. small size and/or speed I think they all can be seen as user preferences in the software installer discovery process, making the installer central to how the resulting system is put together. This is consistent with how Droid and iOS make software 'stores' and installation a central point of interaction for configuring their systems. I'd like to summon Máirín Duffy into this conversation here, if she's willing. She's done a fair amount of research into exactly how many and what kind of questions are reasonable to ask a user in startup before scaring them off or confusing them. If this is something we're interested in following up with, it would be good to have the interaction designers involved. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNWVeoACgkQeiVVYja6o6P39ACfSzLZxvhNpsSeA/oJFBQ2+KQ7 HGIAoLGOCgXXKMeuzYZRytAhcfKOp5w+ =f0mB -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 04/22/2014 11:43 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: I'd like to summon Máirín Duffy into this conversation here, if she's willing. She's done a fair amount of research into exactly how many and what kind of questions are reasonable to ask a user in startup before scaring them off or confusing them. If this is something we're interested in following up with, it would be good to have the interaction designers involved. Is it safe to assume that research is backup by public usability tests? JBG -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 05:31 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: On 21 April 2014 11:19, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com mailto:sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 01:08 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57 -0400, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com mailto:sgall...@redhat.com wrote: Does Fedora need to be that gateway OS? Maybe Ubuntu would be a better intermediate step? If Fedora isn't that gateway OS, why are we bothering? What makes it likely that any user would switch to us if they've entered the FOSS community via Ubuntu? (Don't get me wrong, this is a question we also need to answer, but I don't think it's wise of us to be recommending that Ubuntu handles gathering our new users for us.) It is an interesting question... why are we bothering? When people bother because they need to be THE gateway.. they are setting themselves for a lifetime of disappointment. That ship sails completely with little to no control. Maybe I should have phrased that differently. If we aren't trying to be that gateway, why are we bothering?. Without users, we can't grow our contributor pool. Without growing our contributor pool, we won't innovate as fast as other distributions, which in turn will further reduce our user and contributor base. I have found that if you are going to bother.. do it because it is making something better for you, for something you care about. That is I'm certainly not trying to rule that out (it's why I'm here after all). But it's not *enough* (in my opinion). stuff you can control and not items left to the fact that people choose to use what everyone else uses or by the fact its name sounds exotic or they like Orange over Blue. Of course there will always be people who make frivolous choices, and I'm not expecting to cater to them. You're right, that way lies disappointment. I do think we *can* improve our appeal, though. We just need to agree that this is a real target and go after it. Maybe some real ideas now instead of me just spewing platitudes? :) I've argued for quite some time that the path to code contributions would be best paved by making Fedora the first Linux distribution with a fully-integrated development environment. Take something like Eclipse and Red Hat Developer Toolset and build our Microsoft Visual Studio with a public API. With a basic recompile of RHDTS for Fedora, we can carry backwards-compatible support for three years, making it actually possible to do development for Fedora (and as a bonus, stuff that will also run on RHEL with RHDTS). I'd also love to see such an environment designed from the beginning to integrate well with OpenShift/Docker for Continuous Deployment. If we can produce a cohesive project that's comparable to Visual Studio or Apple's Xcode, we can make a strong argument for application developers to want to use Fedora as their development platform. Once we've hooked them with Fedora as an operating environment, some at least will also turn into development contributors as well. Ambitious? Probably. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNWWC4ACgkQeiVVYja6o6MYgwCdFjNIrgcLZyOg1QyMZo6eg+15 gy0AoKvNYi7MYdrv0r+oI4LHZdyqfZLk =mZ3X -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/22/2014 07:40 AM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote: On 04/22/2014 11:43 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: I'd like to summon Máirín Duffy into this conversation here, if she's willing. She's done a fair amount of research into exactly how many and what kind of questions are reasonable to ask a user in startup before scaring them off or confusing them. If this is something we're interested in following up with, it would be good to have the interaction designers involved. Is it safe to assume that research is backup by public usability tests? When I invoke Máirín, I usually find it safe to make that assumption, but I'll let her speak for herself on the matter. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNWWMEACgkQeiVVYja6o6PjnwCfRjegU7gX+A0Ii2+6eY7b9S9v UW4An0/9eV3qHzr19e0ylkLXvru7HEsZ =Ct+r -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
Hi folks, On 04/22/2014 07:40 AM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote: Is it safe to assume that research is backup by public usability tests? On 04/22/2014 07:55 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: When I invoke Máirín, I usually find it safe to make that assumption, but I'll let her speak for herself on the matter. We did tests at Red Hat's office in Boston for RHEL 7. Those tests were with experienced system administrators looking to install server targets. They were not looking to install workstations, and as they stated their typical install process is automated and involves kickstart; they do not perform attended installs frequently at all. The summary of results from that test are available here: https://www.redhat.com/archives/anaconda-devel-list/2013-April/msg00011.html (posted to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/UX_Redesign) I'm fairly certain based on experience (if you want to question *that*, we can talk about that in more depth too) that this class of users: - Do not care about the license conditions. They trust that Red Hat has handled that appropriately for them. - Probably do have a preference for command line vs polished apps, but do not care about this when installing a server. (Generally the experienced admins favor command line whereas junior admins or admins that also work on Windows machines prefer polished apps) - Do care about full functionality vs. small size / speed. They make this selection interactively using the software selection / comps screen in the new anaconda; for day-to-day this is controlled via the selection of particular kickstarts or recipes in their automated provisioning systems. We also did tests at DevConf.cz last year. My OPW intern Stephanie Manuel designed the test with me and Jiri Eischmann, Jaroslav Reznik, and Filip Kosik among others, did an excellent job running the tests on-site. I have the videos but I do not have release forms for the testers who took that test, so I don't think I can post them - but it is a lot of data and I'm not sure how useful it would be to post or where I could post it. These users for the most part had a technical background, but were more workstation-oriented in installation although they only interacted with the installer itself. Filip provided the data and the analysis of the results on that test: https://www.redhat.com/archives/anaconda-devel-list/2013-April/msg00018.html All of the results from the tests were collated into one long issue list here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/UX_Redesign/Usability_Test_Suggestions Some of the choices Przemek suggested don't make sense depending on the context. E.g., full functionality vs. small size / speed I think has a different meaning depending on whether you have a workstation target (which, either way, will include X) or a server target (which might not necessarily include X.) Same with command line vs polished apps. Everything in our repos is free, so putting the choice in the installer seems off to me. Our policy (which is complex and obviously driven by things stronger than the UX) generally leaves it to users post-install to add encumbered software. I don't actually see the advantage to the user in changing that. PackageKit's UI used to have filters I think some were based on license. Maybe the GNOME software devs would be interested in having some kind of selection for the type of software offered to you. Similarly to how some Android app stores work - e.g. show me only free apps, or you can show me paid apps too. So to back this up, a lot - what install target are we talking about, exactly? And what type of users are we talking about? My guidance as an IXD would be completely different depending on these things. ~m -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/22/2014 08:55 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote: Hi folks, On 04/22/2014 07:40 AM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote: Is it safe to assume that research is backup by public usability tests? On 04/22/2014 07:55 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: When I invoke Máirín, I usually find it safe to make that assumption, but I'll let her speak for herself on the matter. We did tests at Red Hat's office in Boston for RHEL 7. Those tests were with experienced system administrators looking to install server targets. They were not looking to install workstations, and as they stated their typical install process is automated and involves kickstart; they do not perform attended installs frequently at all. The summary of results from that test are available here: https://www.redhat.com/archives/anaconda-devel-list/2013-April/msg00011.html (posted to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/UX_Redesign) I'm fairly certain based on experience (if you want to question *that*, we can talk about that in more depth too) that this class of users: - Do not care about the license conditions. They trust that Red Hat has handled that appropriately for them. - Probably do have a preference for command line vs polished apps, but do not care about this when installing a server. (Generally the experienced admins favor command line whereas junior admins or admins that also work on Windows machines prefer polished apps) - Do care about full functionality vs. small size / speed. They make this selection interactively using the software selection / comps screen in the new anaconda; for day-to-day this is controlled via the selection of particular kickstarts or recipes in their automated provisioning systems. We also did tests at DevConf.cz last year. My OPW intern Stephanie Manuel designed the test with me and Jiri Eischmann, Jaroslav Reznik, and Filip Kosik among others, did an excellent job running the tests on-site. I have the videos but I do not have release forms for the testers who took that test, so I don't think I can post them - but it is a lot of data and I'm not sure how useful it would be to post or where I could post it. These users for the most part had a technical background, but were more workstation-oriented in installation although they only interacted with the installer itself. Filip provided the data and the analysis of the results on that test: https://www.redhat.com/archives/anaconda-devel-list/2013-April/msg00018.html All of the results from the tests were collated into one long issue list here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/UX_Redesign/Usability_Test_Suggestions Some of the choices Przemek suggested don't make sense depending on the context. E.g., full functionality vs. small size / speed I think has a different meaning depending on whether you have a workstation target (which, either way, will include X) or a server target (which might not necessarily include X.) Same with command line vs polished apps. Everything in our repos is free, so putting the choice in the installer seems off to me. Our policy (which is complex and obviously driven by things stronger than the UX) generally leaves it to users post-install to add encumbered software. I don't actually see the advantage to the user in changing that. PackageKit's UI used to have filters I think some were based on license. Maybe the GNOME software devs would be interested in having some kind of selection for the type of software offered to you. Similarly to how some Android app stores work - e.g. show me only free apps, or you can show me paid apps too. So to back this up, a lot - what install target are we talking about, exactly? And what type of users are we talking about? My guidance as an IXD would be completely different depending on these things. Thanks for the detailed response, Máirín! What I think we're looking for is answers to some of the questions that keep coming up in Fedora Workstation and GNOME. Specifically, there's a contingent of people (myself included) that feels that our existing policy introduces arbitrary difficulty on the part of our users when trying to install software (free or non-free) that is not part of our standard repositories. There are many specific cases here, from the obvious apps/appstores like Chome, Steam, etc. to the less obvious: browser-based web apps. And then of course there are things like the proposed Playground repository and COPR, as well as the potential for other third-party repositories. So one of the key questions here is whether the current policy on essentially hiding (protecting?) the user from these external software sources is truly in keeping with our Foundations, Mission and general project health. If it is not, how do we address the problem in a way that doesn't sacrifice our core commitment to FOSS? One suggestion that came up was to allow people
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
- Original Message - Le lundi 21 avril 2014 à 11:17 -0400, Stephen Gallagher a écrit : I'm trying to assert with this proposal that the best way for us to advance free and open source software is to continue shipping only open-source software, while making it easy for users to *transition*. By setting a hard-line on our users and saying You can only use FOSS, unless you jump through these fourteen poorly-documented hoops, we're discouraging our user-base (and ultimately, contributor base) from growing. I simply cannot see any way that we are satisfying our Mission by discouraging users from operating the way that they want to. Please excuse the reductio ad absurdum ( and my display of Lati^W Wikipedia ) But if we look at the current way, I think a high percentage of people want to run windows and download movies for free out on the internet, mostly because non technical people are motivated to do that. So if we really want to satisfy them, we should do that. The fact we don't prove that we will always do something that discourage people from operating how they want ( ie, without caring about license, copyright, etc ) for a variety of reasons. And so that we have to balance the various factors. Well, one thing (and I'll repeat myself) - we tell our users you can't play mp3, you can play your movies in MPEG 4 format unless you do something, we can't tell you about. But we do not offer any option and we have that option available and it really goes very well with our values, our mission - free culture. And we should go beyond free software. Is there any reason why the installer does not work for free content? Connect it (and partner) for example with Jamendo. Show Blender foundation movies, many smaller clips around the internet, free shows... Yes, it's not as huge as non free culture. But last few years it'd becoming trend. We will never grow to the world dominance with our values but we can cover our-values-friendly communities and I really think there's a still pretty huge user base we can grow to. Or if we want world dominance, and seems like quite a big movement within project, maybe let's not pretend being something even our contributors do not believe. We can be second Ubuntu... Jaroslav -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
2014-04-22 16:10 GMT+02:00 Máirín Duffy du...@fedoraproject.org: To be honest, I'm fairly uncomfortable discussing this without Fedora Legal weighing in. I don't see any problem with re-visiting the decisions made along this path, but I also am pretty confident the folks who decided things had to be this way are really smart and had good reasons. ~m Well, we may end up lawyered by Legal, but I think it's good we try to realign ourselves and clear up few misunderstandings. H. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 04/22/2014 09:13 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: So one of the key questions here is whether the current policy on essentially hiding (protecting?) the user from these external software sources is truly in keeping with our Foundations, Mission and general project health. To be honest, I'm fairly uncomfortable discussing this without Fedora Legal weighing in. I don't see any problem with re-visiting the decisions made along this path, but I also am pretty confident the folks who decided things had to be this way are really smart and had good reasons. ~m -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
Hi, On 04/22/2014 10:14 AM, H. Guémar wrote: Well, we may end up lawyered by Legal, but I think it's good we try to realign ourselves and clear up few misunderstandings. How do you propose we do that? ~m -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 05:50:20PM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote: Board seats should absolutely keep in mind various aspects of the entire project, but we need less partisanship and more open-mindedness at this level. We need people willing to work together to find out what is best for the Project as a whole, not argue on behalf of certain pieces of it. Compromise and cooperation are what will wind up getting us moving again. In other words, if we're going to have one foundation over the others, let's make it Friends. :) -- Matthew Miller-- Fedora Project--mat...@fedoraproject.org Tepid change for the somewhat better! -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/22/2014 11:17 AM, Matthew Miller wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 05:50:20PM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote: Board seats should absolutely keep in mind various aspects of the entire project, but we need less partisanship and more open-mindedness at this level. We need people willing to work together to find out what is best for the Project as a whole, not argue on behalf of certain pieces of it. Compromise and cooperation are what will wind up getting us moving again. In other words, if we're going to have one foundation over the others, let's make it Friends. :) I can certainly get behind that. At this point, I formally withdraw the request to add Functional to the Foundations. This thread has convinced me that the real problem here is that we've been treating Freedom as more important than the others, and that we probably need to be rebalancing rather than superseding. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNWiNkACgkQeiVVYja6o6OnjwCeP7/LutNbd1B8CHucnQP7Z4Rw NXwAn1FU34j5KRAAnPEHSw4DVPaeDVkw =CsTS -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 04/22/2014 08:55 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote: Some of the choices Przemek suggested don't make sense depending on the context. E.g., full functionality vs. small size / speed I think has a different meaning depending on whether you have a workstation target (which, either way, will include X) or a server target (which might not necessarily include X.) Same with command line vs polished apps. Everything in our repos is free, so putting the choice in the installer seems off to me. Our policy (which is complex and obviously driven by things stronger than the UX) generally leaves it to users post-install to add encumbered software. I don't actually see the advantage to the user in changing that. PackageKit's UI used to have filters I think some were based on license. Maybe the GNOME software devs would be interested in having some kind of selection for the type of software offered to you. Similarly to how some Android app stores work - e.g. show me only free apps, or you can show me paid apps too. Thanks for bringing some data into this. I do realize that this is a difficult and multifaceted topic, and I don't have a solution to it. I just want to point out that our current practice is very fragmented and low level, and therefore difficult for end users. Taking the Free/non-Free issue, the real question is whether the user can tolerate somehow diminished functionality in exchange for a more open and standard-based system. We're not asking that question, however---we're talking about .repo files and RPMfusion URLs. /etc/yum.repos.d just is not the vocabulary that should be used to speak to new users. I am concerned that the ideas being offered attempt to elevate these choices to a higher level of abstraction but still are fragmented: a separate mechanism for GNOME, another one for OS install, different one for apps and non-apps(*). I am trying to see a commonality centered around the fact that all these are just special cases of a software installation / deinstallation workflow, i.e. selecting search parameters, obtaining and evaluating the results, and loading or removing the software. So to back this up, a lot - what install target are we talking about, exactly? And what type of users are we talking about? My guidance as an IXD would be completely different depending on these things. I hear you about the IXD but do you think that the cases are so different as to have no common workflow? For instance, I liked your insight that the experienced sysadmins aren't interested in licensing questions and rely on RedHat to make a reasonable choice. My suggestion, however, is to present a reasonable default but also provide a well-explained option to override it. This would be my preference in all cases you brought up: both OS installation and subsequent software maintenance; all types of install targets; and both beginner and advanced users. The specific UI might be different of course---I do get that too many spokes on install are confusing and hard to test, so maybe OS install should defer the choice to an already running system. Ceterum censeo, it's all about a well-oiled, flexible software installation/removal mechanism at the center of the OS administration. Greetings przemek klosowski (*) It reminds me of the sinking feeling I have when I have to use the alternatives (CPAN, npm, PIP, octave pkg) on package-based systems (RPM, deb): I feel I am doing the expedient thing that is agains my long term interests (It's the life little pleasures that make life miserable:) -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 11:17 AM, Matthew Miller mat...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 05:50:20PM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote: Board seats should absolutely keep in mind various aspects of the entire project, but we need less partisanship and more open-mindedness at this level. We need people willing to work together to find out what is best for the Project as a whole, not argue on behalf of certain pieces of it. Compromise and cooperation are what will wind up getting us moving again. In other words, if we're going to have one foundation over the others, let's make it Friends. :) Well, I was talking on a tangent of representation there. In the context of Board level member composition and priorities, maybe. It should certainly have equal footing with Freedom anyway. Features doesn't make a ton of sense at the Board level. The Board is very clearly never First in anything we do. The primary guiding Foundation(s) are going to differ from group to group though. Take FESCo and the FPC for example. In FESCo, Freedom is very seldom even in play because it is almost always a given, so Features and First tend to be the main Foundations in play. The FPC, on the other hand, often has to deal with Freedom due to content and licensing. I doubt they're making many Friends with all the packaging rules they come up with though ;). Anyway, overall I do think we as a Project need to keep Friends more in mind than we have been. I don't think we need to be literal friends with everyone, but we do need to consider how we can cooperate and compromise on things as they come up. josh -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 22 April 2014 05:53, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 05:31 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: On 21 April 2014 11:19, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com mailto:sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 01:08 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57 -0400, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com mailto:sgall...@redhat.com wrote: Does Fedora need to be that gateway OS? Maybe Ubuntu would be a better intermediate step? If Fedora isn't that gateway OS, why are we bothering? What makes it likely that any user would switch to us if they've entered the FOSS community via Ubuntu? (Don't get me wrong, this is a question we also need to answer, but I don't think it's wise of us to be recommending that Ubuntu handles gathering our new users for us.) It is an interesting question... why are we bothering? When people bother because they need to be THE gateway.. they are setting themselves for a lifetime of disappointment. That ship sails completely with little to no control. Maybe I should have phrased that differently. If we aren't trying to be that gateway, why are we bothering?. Without users, we can't grow our contributor pool. Without growing our contributor pool, we won't innovate as fast as other distributions, which in turn will further reduce our user and contributor base. Actually you will find out that while having a healthy contributor pool is needed, having a large contributor base will inhibit development at times because so many people rely on old stuff that you tend towards only conservative changes if any at all. Debian is a pretty good example of this in action. Making medium to deep changes make our flamewars seem tame. If you want to be the keystone for innovation, you need to focus on the people who are looking for that which is a small segment of the population of users. I have found that if you are going to bother.. do it because it is making something better for you, for something you care about. That is I'm certainly not trying to rule that out (it's why I'm here after all). But it's not *enough* (in my opinion). stuff you can control and not items left to the fact that people choose to use what everyone else uses or by the fact its name sounds exotic or they like Orange over Blue. Of course there will always be people who make frivolous choices, and I'm not expecting to cater to them. You're right, that way lies disappointment. I do think we *can* improve our appeal, though. We just need to agree that this is a real target and go after it. The majority of people make choices due to frivolous choices. They usually come up with some sort of rational reason afterwords but the initial choice is 'frivolous'. [Humans are not rational creatures, we are creatures who use rationality to justify our stupidity later.. ] Maybe some real ideas now instead of me just spewing platitudes? :) I've argued for quite some time that the path to code contributions would be best paved by making Fedora the first Linux distribution with a fully-integrated development environment. Take something like Eclipse and Red Hat Developer Toolset and build our Microsoft Visual Studio with a public API. With a basic recompile of RHDTS for Fedora, we can carry backwards-compatible support for three years, making it actually possible to do development for Fedora (and as a bonus, stuff that will also run on RHEL with RHDTS). I'd also love to see such an environment designed from the beginning to integrate well with OpenShift/Docker for Continuous Deployment. Good idea, First we will need to interest the developers who want to scratch that itch to agree (either through payment or magic) to agree to work on one set of existing tools versus everyone building another set from scratch. Developers seem to be a very egotistical bunch who tend to think that they are the only ones who can do something right... and then reimplement LISP and emacs (or Algol and vi) poorly. -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
2014-04-21 17:56 GMT+02:00 Eric H. Christensen spa...@fedoraproject.org: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:36:55AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: ...I'd like to suggest a fifth Foundation, one to ultimately supersede all the rest: Functional. I think anytime anyone suggests a new foundation that supersedes all of what the project and community has stood for for many years then they are doing it wrong. Well... I'd *much* rather have a honest discussion about the values like this than just committing code without any discussions, and then arguing that we've been doing this for years at a small scale so it's fine to do it on larger scale. These things *should* be discussed mostly top-down, not bottom-up. And the recet-ish discussions have revealed that the practice and the literal wording of the foundations *has* slightly diverged over time (both First, and, at least in your view, WRT Google search, Freedom), so revisiting, re-discussing, and re-affirming might be in order. I mean, Fedora has traditionally been very strong in upholding the values of FOSS. We live it, feed it, and use it. Does this mean that Fedora isn't always great when dealing with proprietary solutions later on (like Flash)? Sure, but that also means that there is more of a push to get FOSS solutions in place that remedy those issues. Fedora has never forebade a user to install third-party software (proprietary or otherwise) after the fact. The fact that many (most?) users don't have to do such things is a testiment to how well FOSS has been developed and meets the needs of our users. I find it difficult to believe that most users [don't have Flash installed]. AFAIK there is no data to say either way, and anecdotal evidence from around here isn't supportive. Mirek -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
2014-04-21 19:07 GMT+02:00 Haïkel Guémar hgue...@fedoraproject.org: Le 21/04/2014 18:37, Stephen Gallagher a écrit : I spoke too strongly there, I think. We do however give a *very* strong impression that using non-FOSS solutions for anything at all is unwelcome at best. Consider the recent discussions around GNOME Software where we have 1) Forbidden it from automatically looking up software from non-Fedora repositories, even FOSS ones 2) Asserted that it must consider web apps (either FOSS or not) to be second-class citizens (and call it out as such) They actually are second-class citizens, we can't fix proprietary apps as we actually do with FOSS applications. That's not actually *exclusive* to proprietary applications; there seem to be quite a few Fedora packages where the maintainer can, or does, only forward bug reports upstream without trying to fix the code. *In theory*there's a difference, *in practice* there isn't. But if we were to consider them first-class citizens, without the editors cooperation, we would be bind to their willing which is against our mission statement. Unlike CentOS, we can't provide a stable base suitable to proprietary SW editors, all we can do is best effort. This is not true: the OS, not the applications, has the authority to define what is a stable base for applications to rely on, and the OS even has technical capability (via SELinux permissions or (nm -D) checks within installers) to enforce that they don't rely on anything else. Yes, we would have to commit to a set of useful stable ABIs; but that's not the same as freezing every interface in the system. And useful stable ABIs would be *equally beneficial* for the open-source projects, ensuring that the two-sided market of users/programmers is not losing programs just because somebody decided an API needs to be improved. Mirek -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
2014-04-21 19:37 GMT+02:00 Eric H. Christensen spa...@fedoraproject.org: And how are these contributors going to contribute to their proprietary solutions that we now provide for them? They aren't; isn't that a *benefit* for the open solutions? How do we support something that is simply provided to us as a binary and has no upstream bug tracking or support (outside of a support contract)? We don't; why would we be required to? How are these users going to react when all the software they know and love (that we provide) breaks due to no fault of our own? Blame the provide of the software, naturally. Are we going to hold back bug or security fix because it breaks a proprietary program but fixes it for everything else? No, we should instead improve our technology so that this doesn't need to happen. This is a *technically solved problem* at the very least since Windows 95, i.e for about 20 years; we have only not solved it because it's less work to say proprietary software is bad, go use Windows—but then we shouldn't be surprised if users do. Mirek -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 08:33:55PM +0200, Miloslav Trmač wrote: I find it difficult to believe that most users [don't have Flash installed]. AFAIK there is no data to say either way, and anecdotal evidence from around here isn't supportive. Well, since we're talking about Flash, Adobe has decided to not support the Linux version of Flash. In fact, updates have happened to Flash and the existing Flash package available through Adobe hasn't been updated. This means that users who are still using Adobe Flash are now vulnerable to known security issues and bugs. Gnash, the FOSS Flash solution, is still being developed and is probably a better solution. I just hope that HTML5 becomes the standard soon. - -- Eric - -- Eric Sparks Christensen Fedora Project spa...@fedoraproject.org - spa...@redhat.com 097C 82C3 52DF C64A 50C2 E3A3 8076 ABDE 024B B3D1 - -- -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iQGcBAEBCgAGBQJTVsN8AAoJEB/kgVGp2CYvxoEL/2emzjmEfjbA5i2/bit2LN4Q 8iCb9SPwD0ZKV0lEg0NaS4lhfvNxVoGGh+cINBG+fA0/4jHc1ZiQAByEuEQoo1QB JOPvB3j9kFDtpe81YZs+OwIoVifKwgQr4DfMxX876I73pcYukvj4/03VmQqrboF5 GEa7Z7wxDuGZX2ujrySVNF/n7WKz6LB3MkohVIm0ROHB8rUOPldennNBBzO0QLK9 465+seYwF7RfMtlameSdyjWEjm7ppoKwsJJ42C8ZX73cYdM3ZuYbDEbHrKWRl9r7 EcZPKfF1vQYGwDG4uLBxdz430XONJkuwuTtXymNlY7Q5HjusEY/xfQRjknBXx4MO NE5KNEm0XhNWsmpBrlTFVctJp8VAapM9dxyr6EE/o4sm1RVhgJaxiuNSlW5kYTz0 LiRquMl3YErZsbo8T53GzumyWUJDXbVQ4a1BSxYLOHdoYNGc/N3c6qCQ/DuLZug+ 1+1DNgxIxPxJ4Ouq9MpBaKg8G78Pehh1YBOqLEIGpw== =i/RH -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
2014-04-22 21:31 GMT+02:00 Eric H. Christensen spa...@fedoraproject.org: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 08:33:55PM +0200, Miloslav Trmač wrote: I find it difficult to believe that most users [don't have Flash installed]. AFAIK there is no data to say either way, and anecdotal evidence from around here isn't supportive. Well, since we're talking about Flash, Adobe has decided to not support the Linux version of Flash. In fact, updates have happened to Flash and the existing Flash package available through Adobe hasn't been updated. Citation please? http://helpx.adobe.com/en/flash-player/release-note/fp_13_air_13_release_notes.htmlshows the latest security update has been released in the 11.2 Linux desktop version at the same day as the 13 non-Linux version. And even if it were true, I *still* think that most users have it installed—vulnerable or not; it's just so valuable for many users that the question of security update availability doesn't even arise.[1] Mirek [1] ... which may quickly change if there were a media-worthy worm using it to propagate. Don't expect perfect rationaliy... -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:31:11 -0400 Eric H. Christensen spa...@fedoraproject.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 08:33:55PM +0200, Miloslav Trmač wrote: I find it difficult to believe that most users [don't have Flash installed]. AFAIK there is no data to say either way, and anecdotal evidence from around here isn't supportive. Well, since we're talking about Flash, Adobe has decided to not support the Linux version of Flash. In fact, updates have happened to Flash and the existing Flash package available through Adobe hasn't been updated. This means that users who are still using Adobe Flash are now vulnerable to known security issues and bugs. Gnash, the FOSS Flash solution, is still being developed and is probably a better solution. I just hope that HTML5 becomes the standard soon. Actually they have said they aren't going to update it to newer versions/add features, but will continue to provide security updates: Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release. There have been 3 updates this year so far. Of course there's little way to see whats in those updates as they don't add changelog entries to their rpm or otherwise note what they did, and since we don't have source no one else can tell. ;) kevin signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
I agree with this completely. Functional capability matters quite a lot and we seem to forget this a lot lately. On Apr 21, 2014 7:35 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -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
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
Le 21/04/2014 14:36, Stephen Gallagher a écrit : -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- Interoperability is and has always been a key value in the FOSS community. Freedom also means freedom not to use FOSS software, off course, we ought to favor FOSS alternatives, but we must respect end-users choice. But above the 4 Foundation, there is
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 09:08 AM, Haïkel Guémar wrote: Le 21/04/2014 14:36, Stephen Gallagher a écrit : 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 Interoperability is and has always been a key value in the FOSS community. Freedom also means freedom not to use FOSS software, off course, we ought to favor FOSS alternatives, but we must respect end-users choice. But above the 4 Foundation, there is our mission statement which is to lead the advancement of open source software and content (...). I agree that
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
...snip... IMHO, it feels wrong to call this it's own foundation. A foundation is a core value of our community, and this seems like a harsh reality we have to live with. I guess I would prefer to have the 'freedom' foundation clarified some rather than adding this as a foundation. I guess it depends on where we draw the line how we clarify too. Is it anything remote is allowed to be nonfree? Or anything thats a client that interacts with something non free? kevin signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, 2014-04-21 at 08:36 -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: 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. I do like the sound of a Functional pillar -- independently of all else, it's a good word that starts with F and describes Fedora's mission -- but elevating it above the other pillars? If Functional was to be more important than Freedom, then shouldn't Fedora host a nonfree repository and install Adobe Flash by default? It would remiss not to do so, yet that would contradict our community's rough consensus that Fedora should not ship any nonfree software, so that can't be right. The current questions are mostly with regards to what can be displayed in GNOME Software, and boil down to two distinct points: 1) Is it permissible to promote nonfree desktop software in response to a user's search (i.e. software from non-Fedora repositories) by default? 2) Is it permissible to promote proprietary web applications (web pages that run in a chromeless web browser) in response to a user's search? The board has already decided that (1) is unacceptable, and this seems to have been (more or less) accepted by all parties. (2) is the topic currently under discussion. I should note that *even Richard Stallman* is fine with using proprietary web services; [1] is a good (short) read. I just do not think that displaying websites the user might be interested in conflicts with the Freedom pillar. Fedora has already proved that a fully-free desktop can be (relatively) successful, but a crusade against proprietary network services seems unlikely to succeed. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-or-nonfree.html signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
sgallagh wrote: [...] 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. [...] 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!). Aren't you over-reading the quoted sentence? ISTM one can use any tool one wants to to produce the artifacts, as long as those artifacts do not mandate proprietary widgets for further use. In other words, draw the logo with any tool - just export it in forms that FOSS can render/edit. [...] 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. 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?. [...] Some examples of what you're thinking about would be useful. It's not too hard to reduce it to absurdity with a user wanting to work with MSIE 8 on his workstation, or run MacOSX Safari, or ios angry birds or such; what would be your idea of an appropriate or inappropriate Fedora response to that kind of user desire? - FChE -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:36:55AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: 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: I think the idea of a functional foundation is worth talking about, but I'd like to walk it _way_ back from this one ring to rule the rest idea before we even have that conversation. The four foundations represent our _core values_, and while we might disagree about their relative balance and particularly about the wording used in their descriptions, I think they *do* represent who we are and what we strive to be. In fact, I think what you are proposing is a stronger wording of the existing features foundation. (Features represents our commitment to excellence.) Putting friends, features, and first in servitude to that doesn't feel right. I'd rather strengthen the wording around features to clarify that this means functional too, and isn't just another way of saying first, which of course has its own foundation. We can improve the wording around freedom as well, but, actually, I think most important is to clarify the understanding that sometimes these features pull in different directions, and that Fedora overall is a balance. -- Matthew Miller-- Fedora Project--mat...@fedoraproject.org Tepid change for the somewhat better! -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 10:52:24AM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: existing features foundation. (Features represents our commitment to excellence.) Putting friends, features, and first in servitude to that doesn't feel right. Errr, friends, freedom, and first. *drinks more coffee* -- Matthew Miller-- Fedora Project--mat...@fedoraproject.org Tepid change for the somewhat better! -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 7:36 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: 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.) Sure but also understand that no matter what precise words are written down on a piece of paper at a given point in time they will suffer from sticky questions over time as the world we fit into changes. 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. I'm not really seeing what is unclear or dangerous about the quoted statement. To me it says clearly that we make Fedora using free software and free content and the product we hand to you is free software and free content that you can use and modify for whatever purpose you choose. Interoperability with non-free software and services has always been allowed in free software and Fedora. Our choice to make Fedora from free software and content is our choice and I doubt it has always been that way although I can't say for certain. I suspect early Fedora artwork might very well have been made using non-free software. But once the Fedora community began making it they made the choice to use only free software and content in the creation process. Good for them. 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. Well, I don't think I agree with this on several levels. There are a lot of users, they want to do a lot of different things. We can't enable everything they want to do. What we can do is provide them with free software that they can modify to do what they want to do if what we provide doesn't quite do it for them out of the box. We will always be guessing what users want, we will always be making choices based on incomplete information, and we will always be wrong in a lot of cases. The Fedora Project has a mission and the ultimate truth as I see it is that the products the Fedora Project produces should first and foremost be responsible for furthering the mission of the Fedora Project. While you choose to single out the Freedom foundation here there are others and they are equally important. One that doesn't begin with an F but that falls into both the First and Features foundations is Innovation. Driving innovative new technologies in Fedora often comes with the short term expense of reduced or impaired usability. Driving these new technologies is way more important to
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 10:52 AM, Matthew Miller wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:36:55AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: 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: I think the idea of a functional foundation is worth talking about, but I'd like to walk it _way_ back from this one ring to rule the rest idea before we even have that conversation. The four foundations represent our _core values_, and while we might disagree about their relative balance and particularly about the wording used in their descriptions, I think they *do* represent who we are and what we strive to be. In fact, I think what you are proposing is a stronger wording of the existing features foundation. (Features represents our commitment to excellence.) Putting friends, features, and first in servitude to that doesn't feel right. I'd rather strengthen the wording around features to clarify that this means functional too, and isn't just another way of saying first, which of course has its own foundation. We can improve the wording around freedom as well, but, actually, I think most important is to clarify the understanding that sometimes these features pull in different directions, and that Fedora overall is a balance. Well, the problem I have with the Foundations is that by the way we have defined them, we've very clearly identified them as equal to one another. I'm not sure that this is sensible, particularly with regards to the Freedom Foundation. It's very clear that there exist in our community some hard-liners who will never be satisfied with a product that in any way allows the use of proprietary apps (I've seen proposals in the past to disallow Fedora from booting if the kernel is tainted, for example). By having Features and Freedom at the same level, it strongly implies only free features (and that is how it is being interpreted, particularly by some Board members). I'd argue that while this is the letter of the law, it violates both the spirit of the law and the potential for growth in the Fedora Project. I was forced to ask a question the other week in a Board meeting that went unfortunately without response (rephrased): At what point did freedom start meaning you have no right to choose a proprietary solution? I am trying to have this conversation without specifically calling out any individuals. I believe everyone on the Board is trying to do their best with their own interpretation of the Foundations. However, I think we need to take a look at Fedora's Mission: The Fedora Project's mission is to lead the advancement of free and open source software and content as a collaborative community. I'm trying to assert with this proposal that the best way for us to advance free and open source software is to continue shipping only open-source software, while making it easy for users to *transition*. By setting a hard-line on our users and saying You can only use FOSS, unless you jump through these fourteen poorly-documented hoops, we're discouraging our user-base (and ultimately, contributor base) from growing. I simply cannot see any way that we are satisfying our Mission by discouraging users from operating the way that they want to. All it does is ensure a positive feedback loop such that Fedora will eventually be used only by the limited set of people that are comfortable operating under strict restrictions on their behavior[1]. [1] Hmm... that sounds an awful lot like the way Apple behaves... except they can afford marketing. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNVNpUACgkQeiVVYja6o6NK6wCgnVWiIPGxhFrMlUdsuWBhnd0t T9EAnjmth5EGqoALJ0kw04iPIKywYFRz =zMWP -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 11:02 AM, inode0 wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 7:36 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: 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.) Sure but also understand that no matter what precise words are written down on a piece of paper at a given point in time they will suffer from sticky questions over time as the world we fit into changes. 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. I'm not really seeing what is unclear or dangerous about the quoted statement. To me it says clearly that we make Fedora using free software and free content and the product we hand to you is free software and free content that you can use and modify for whatever purpose you choose. Right, that's also the way I choose to read it (and believe is the spirit in which it was written). However, there are many people who believe that this description specifically asserts that even allowing access to proprietary code in ANY WAY (even by search engine) is in violation. This interpretation is held by some Board members, which is why I think it's dangerously unclear. Furthermore, we've had it claimed that even talking to proprietary web services by public, open APIs should be considered non-free. These interpretations seem very isolationist to me and discouraging to new users. Interoperability with non-free software and services has always been allowed in free software and Fedora. Our choice to make Fedora from free software and content is our choice and I doubt it has always been that way although I can't say for certain. I suspect early Fedora artwork might very well have been made using non-free software. But once the Fedora community began making it they made the choice to use only free software and content in the creation process. Good for them. 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. Well, I don't think I agree with this on several levels. There are a lot of users, they want to do a lot of different things. We can't enable everything they want to do. What we can do is provide them with free software that they can modify to do what they want to do if what we provide doesn't quite do it for them out of the box. We will always be guessing what
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 11:17:41AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: Well, the problem I have with the Foundations is that by the way we have defined them, we've very clearly identified them as equal to one another. I'm not sure that this is sensible, particularly with regards to the Freedom Foundation. It's very clear that there exist in our community some hard-liners who will never be satisfied with a product that in any way allows the use of proprietary apps (I've seen proposals in the past to disallow Fedora from booting if the kernel is tainted, for example). And those proposals haven't gone anywhere, because we *do* consider the balance. There are also people in our community who think we *should* be shipping Adobe Flash and the Nvidia drivers and whatever else. I don't agree, just like I don't agree with the people who think we need to strip out binary firmware. But we've got a foundation for that too -- Like any friends, we occasionally disagree on details, but we believe in finding an acceptable consensus to serve the interests of advancing free software. -- Matthew Miller-- Fedora Project--mat...@fedoraproject.org Tepid change for the somewhat better! -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:36:55AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: ...I'd like to suggest a fifth Foundation, one to ultimately supersede all the rest: Functional. I think anytime anyone suggests a new foundation that supersedes all of what the project and community has stood for for many years then they are doing it wrong. I mean, Fedora has traditionally been very strong in upholding the values of FOSS. We live it, feed it, and use it. Does this mean that Fedora isn't always great when dealing with proprietary solutions later on (like Flash)? Sure, but that also means that there is more of a push to get FOSS solutions in place that remedy those issues. Fedora has never forebade a user to install third-party software (proprietary or otherwise) after the fact. The fact that many (most?) users don't have to do such things is a testiment to how well FOSS has been developed and meets the needs of our users. I'm also concerned over the word functional. I've seen some disturbing trends in Fedora that points to an all-out attack on FOSS in the name of functionality. To me, this lowers the value of Fedora and makes me question not only the operating system I use on a daily basis but also the number of hours I spend supporting the project that used to have strong values towards FOSS. One person's functional is another person's disfunctional. 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. I'm confused here. No one is telling anyone that they can't use Application X. Users are, and have always been, free to install and use whatever software they choose. That said, Fedora shouldn't be packaging or otherwise making it easier for one to choose proprietary software. When we start pushing proprietary solutions in our software store right along side FOSS solutions we are devaluing our FOSS and making it easier for people to ignore the software we hope they'll migrate to. If you aren't advocating close-source solutions then why are you advocating a new foundation that supersedes the foundation of freedom? - -- Eric - -- Eric Sparks Christensen Fedora Project spa...@fedoraproject.org - spa...@redhat.com 097C 82C3 52DF C64A 50C2 E3A3 8076 ABDE 024B B3D1 - -- -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iQGcBAEBCgAGBQJTVT+oAAoJEB/kgVGp2CYvwCAMAIN6DR90Hcw3fM+K0fCkZYk0 3MakgCXbaHWTbdDuoNYuV2CInDS3/rM0vmdAtZlcBNfuIuuYBxMwnLX+XLFJA4qx RETXl5fm1z47acbKJq87XEoF46ucoX2oy2XVlyWLE/fLrtlBeal+0HYwb3duR7mJ rftYXZwX61jt9SbSbwBVUfxLM2RSgfTyKfmZ9uSEh5ltD4kRxOkZV6DG5f+TS0Jg T+sKpKDVy3s+Q9BKzkhOEwIWAEypM5Ksc6D/pw6/ausDtORWQUa+wCzesGIK41fk EZXl8qrJ1dFoMUjIiwwDP0oL5426yOp23316WEthw2L8R9IABEnqSyVG2h7bkYJP m3QUeYizLX4n4l9Mpg47ddJQX8S0TTQVKLzQBJ+LzBRgPeolFD1Vh3Is38zBxaGn ZHnpbObHzuj2dxS52HYV8LWXBZf99u/00U77zkO67bc12r5GHQy6mT6SEEMnphcx K3EpTTYmCu/IhnGctpR8XY1uJ0ZZoDJZF0pbw1n4bg== =y9Yo -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:40:03AM -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote: ...snip... IMHO, it feels wrong to call this it's own foundation. A foundation is a core value of our community, and this seems like a harsh reality we have to live with. I also have a hard time envisioning functionality at the level of the other core values. But I certainly think it's important. Fedora has carved out specific space for functionality in areas like kernel firmware in the past. Those were the right decisions to ensure users can make use of the platform in a world we don't control (e.g. where firmware is an increasingly key part of OEM TTM strategy). I guess I would prefer to have the 'freedom' foundation clarified some rather than adding this as a foundation. +1. I guess it depends on where we draw the line how we clarify too. Is it anything remote is allowed to be nonfree? Or anything thats a client that interacts with something non free? I think forcing our users to eschew nonfree web services increasingly sidelines the Fedora platform. For example, making it harder for developers to use preferred services like github (operational) or Twitter (social/advertising) doesn't help Fedora improve as a hospitable platform. -- Paul W. Frieldshttp://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ The open source story continues to grow: http://opensource.com -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 11:56 AM, Eric H. Christensen wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:36:55AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: ...I'd like to suggest a fifth Foundation, one to ultimately supersede all the rest: Functional. I think anytime anyone suggests a new foundation that supersedes all of what the project and community has stood for for many years then they are doing it wrong. I mean, Fedora has traditionally been very strong in upholding the values of FOSS. We live it, feed it, and use it. Does this mean that Fedora isn't always great when dealing with proprietary solutions later on (like Flash)? Sure, but that also means that there is more of a push to get FOSS solutions in place that remedy those issues. Fedora has never forebade a user to install third-party software (proprietary or otherwise) after the I spoke too strongly there, I think. We do however give a *very* strong impression that using non-FOSS solutions for anything at all is unwelcome at best. Consider the recent discussions around GNOME Software where we have 1) Forbidden it from automatically looking up software from non-Fedora repositories, even FOSS ones 2) Asserted that it must consider web apps (either FOSS or not) to be second-class citizens (and call it out as such) fact. The fact that many (most?) users don't have to do such things is a testiment to how well FOSS has been developed and meets the needs of our users. Please understand, I'm as much a proponent of FOSS as anyone here. I believe it to be the best way to develop software. However, I also feel that actively discouraging users from using the tools with which they are most comfortable on our platform is harmful to our long-term strategy of converting them. Microsoft had great success with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and I think that FOSS can enjoy very similar results (probably without Extinguish, except in cases where user interest in the original wanes) as long as we make it approachable. I don't see that as the case today. I'm also concerned over the word functional. I've seen some disturbing trends in Fedora that points to an all-out attack on FOSS in the name of functionality. To me, this lowers the value of Fedora and makes me question not only the operating system I use on a daily basis but also the number of hours I spend supporting the project that used to have strong values towards FOSS. One person's functional is another person's disfunctional. Eric, I'm not trying to start a flame-war with you. I do, however, feel that the best way to convert people to the Open Source Way is to do so gradually, coaching them on why it's a better choice. Right now, what we're building is a system that caters only to those who have already drunk the Kool-Aid(TM) on every level. It offers no ramp-up and no path to enlightenment. In effect, we're an exclusive club that you can only join if you happen to have exactly the right beliefs. 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. I'm confused here. No one is telling anyone that they can't use Application X. Users are, and have always been, free to install and use whatever software they choose. That said, Fedora shouldn't be No, they haven't. At least, not without finding workarounds to things that should be very simple. packaging or otherwise making it easier for one to choose proprietary software. When we start pushing proprietary solutions in our software store right along side FOSS solutions we are devaluing our FOSS and making it easier for people to ignore the software we hope they'll migrate to. This is a key point that I disagree with entirely. I think we could attract many more users if we were the easiest way for them to get a free, open-source friendly operating system that also allowed them to continue using the tools they want to use. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to allow them to use Chrome from the Google repository. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow them to use Steam from the Valve repository. Device drivers get into hazy territory, but I think it's a conversation worth having. What about solutions that have no useful FOSS analog? Are you expecting that someone who uses Adobe Lightroom all the time should switch to Fedora and write a brand-new post-processing engine themselves? If you aren't advocating close-source solutions then why are you
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 12:37 PM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: What about solutions that have no useful FOSS analog? Are you expecting that someone who uses Adobe Lightroom all the time should switch to Fedora and write a brand-new post-processing engine themselves? I meant Adobe After Effects here. Mea culpa. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNVTZQACgkQeiVVYja6o6MlTwCgsC/lHcVDrBCAlrivUprP54Nk GoUAn1//1MUPsr6pYaxr5eIUg3cAMaHX =wNqz -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
Le lundi 21 avril 2014 à 11:56 -0400, Eric H. Christensen a écrit : On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:36:55AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: 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. I'm confused here. No one is telling anyone that they can't use Application X. In fact, we do ( or rather, I do ). When I tell to people that Starcraft II and Eve Online do not run on Linux. When I tell that Office and Photoshop do not run on Linux. When I tell that their Iphone is not gonna work and I cannot be sure that the printer they just bought from Samsung is maybe not supported. -- Michael Scherer -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
Le lundi 21 avril 2014 à 11:17 -0400, Stephen Gallagher a écrit : I'm trying to assert with this proposal that the best way for us to advance free and open source software is to continue shipping only open-source software, while making it easy for users to *transition*. By setting a hard-line on our users and saying You can only use FOSS, unless you jump through these fourteen poorly-documented hoops, we're discouraging our user-base (and ultimately, contributor base) from growing. I simply cannot see any way that we are satisfying our Mission by discouraging users from operating the way that they want to. Please excuse the reductio ad absurdum ( and my display of Lati^W Wikipedia ) But if we look at the current way, I think a high percentage of people want to run windows and download movies for free out on the internet, mostly because non technical people are motivated to do that. So if we really want to satisfy them, we should do that. The fact we don't prove that we will always do something that discourage people from operating how they want ( ie, without caring about license, copyright, etc ) for a variety of reasons. And so that we have to balance the various factors. So the question is more up to what point do we have to balance user requests for some value of users versus all others factors. The good part of working in free software is that lots of people do try various things, and it turn out that we are not operating in a vacuum. And there is distributions that do operate of the premise of functionality for users is more important than complete adherence of freedom ideals , mint is a fine example, ubuntu would be another one, mageia would be a 3rd one. So we can see if they did grow their contributors basis by taking this path ( especially given years have passed since they start ). And therefore, if the ultimate goal is to grow our own contributors basis, if this worked. I am not exactly sure it worked fine, but I do not have much data to back it up, more my own experience ( especially on Mageia side ). ( here, I should insert my theory on the stigma of beginners and how more complex distributions have more contribution, but too long for today ) All it does is ensure a positive feedback loop such that Fedora will eventually be used only by the limited set of people that are comfortable operating under strict restrictions on their behavior[1]. [1] Hmm... that sounds an awful lot like the way Apple behaves... except they can afford marketing. And lawyers, lots of them :) And they really limit people, which is not something we do, so the analogy is a bit disturbing. -- Michael Scherer -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 11:37 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: On 04/21/2014 11:56 AM, Eric H. Christensen wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:36:55AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: ...I'd like to suggest a fifth Foundation, one to ultimately supersede all the rest: Functional. I think anytime anyone suggests a new foundation that supersedes all of what the project and community has stood for for many years then they are doing it wrong. I mean, Fedora has traditionally been very strong in upholding the values of FOSS. We live it, feed it, and use it. Does this mean that Fedora isn't always great when dealing with proprietary solutions later on (like Flash)? Sure, but that also means that there is more of a push to get FOSS solutions in place that remedy those issues. Fedora has never forebade a user to install third-party software (proprietary or otherwise) after the I spoke too strongly there, I think. We do however give a *very* strong impression that using non-FOSS solutions for anything at all is unwelcome at best. Consider the recent discussions around GNOME Software where we have 1) Forbidden it from automatically looking up software from non-Fedora repositories, even FOSS ones In the exact same way yum has always been forbidden from doing the same thing. 2) Asserted that it must consider web apps (either FOSS or not) to be second-class citizens (and call it out as such) You can call them second-class citizens if you want to be negative but no one has before. They are different from applications that users install on their systems, which is what users understand things in this context to be. Upstream was simply asked to make the distinction clear to users. It has nothing to do with a class system and it really did not seem all that controversial. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57 -0400, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: I don't think it's unreasonable for us to allow them to use Chrome from the Google repository. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow them to use Steam from the Valve repository. Device drivers get into hazy territory, but I think it's a conversation worth having. I think there is a difference between allow and promote. I would be especially wary of promoting something like steam without some strong warnings as steam is going to be doing some amount of spying on you to enforce their DRM and is going to be significantly modifying the graphics system and breakage in that area is not going to be supportable by Fedora. But I think that trying to actively discourage (read: prevent) users from installing such software is harmful to our Mission of advancing Free Software. In my view, it's okay to occasionally embrace closed-source as a means to expose more people to open-source. Failing to do so has a tendency to leave us labeled as zealots, which are often ignored. Does Fedora need to be that gateway OS? Maybe Ubuntu would be a better intermediate step? -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
Le 21/04/2014 18:37, Stephen Gallagher a écrit : I spoke too strongly there, I think. We do however give a *very* strong impression that using non-FOSS solutions for anything at all is unwelcome at best. Consider the recent discussions around GNOME Software where we have 1) Forbidden it from automatically looking up software from non-Fedora repositories, even FOSS ones 2) Asserted that it must consider web apps (either FOSS or not) to be second-class citizens (and call it out as such) They actually are second-class citizens, we can't fix proprietary apps as we actually do with FOSS applications. The one thing we could do is augmenting our QA to check the compatibility with non-free apps and file a ticket upstream so we could help them to fix it. And I personally wouldn't mind if we delay non-security fixes to give them enough time to update their applications. We could even think of allowing editors to plug to our infrastructure message bus on some conditions. But if we were to consider them first-class citizens, without the editors cooperation, we would be bind to their willing which is against our mission statement. Unlike CentOS, we can't provide a stable base suitable to proprietary SW editors, all we can do is best effort. Please understand, I'm as much a proponent of FOSS as anyone here. I believe it to be the best way to develop software. However, I also feel that actively discouraging users from using the tools with which they are most comfortable on our platform is harmful to our long-term strategy of converting them. Microsoft had great success with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and I think that FOSS can enjoy very similar results (probably without Extinguish, except in cases where user interest in the original wanes) as long as we make it approachable. I don't see that as the case today. +1 and you were right to start this discussion. This is a key point that I disagree with entirely. I think we could attract many more users if we were the easiest way for them to get a free, open-source friendly operating system that also allowed them to continue using the tools they want to use. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to allow them to use Chrome from the Google repository. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow them to use Steam from the Valve repository. Device drivers get into hazy territory, but I think it's a conversation worth having. What about solutions that have no useful FOSS analog? Are you expecting that someone who uses Adobe Lightroom all the time should switch to Fedora and write a brand-new post-processing engine themselves? We should think on how we could improve collaboration with third-party repos, fedmsg/copr might be part of the technical solution. How about a Fedora Partnership Program ? We could open up at a certain extent our infrastructure and collaborate with software editors to make sure that their products have some support in Fedora. I'm advocating that they should have a place at the table. I don't advocate placing them above FOSS solutions (and I'm perfectly happy with requiring that any tool that provides access to them clearly identify them as such and ideally recommend a FOSS alternative instead). But I think that trying to actively discourage (read: prevent) users from installing such software is harmful to our Mission of advancing Free Software. In my view, it's okay to occasionally embrace closed-source as a means to expose more people to open-source. Failing to do so has a tendency to leave us labeled as zealots, which are often ignored. That's the point, I think most of us agree with you :) regards, H. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 01:08 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57 -0400, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: I don't think it's unreasonable for us to allow them to use Chrome from the Google repository. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow them to use Steam from the Valve repository. Device drivers get into hazy territory, but I think it's a conversation worth having. I think there is a difference between allow and promote. I would be especially wary of promoting something like steam without some strong warnings as steam is going to be doing some amount of spying on you to enforce their DRM and is going to be significantly modifying the graphics system and breakage in that area is not going to be supportable by Fedora. Yeah, I agree. I think warning people is a more reasonable compromise than assuming people will want to use Fedora so badly that they'll Google workarounds. This is basically the point I'm trying to make. But I think that trying to actively discourage (read: prevent) users from installing such software is harmful to our Mission of advancing Free Software. In my view, it's okay to occasionally embrace closed-source as a means to expose more people to open-source. Failing to do so has a tendency to leave us labeled as zealots, which are often ignored. Does Fedora need to be that gateway OS? Maybe Ubuntu would be a better intermediate step? If Fedora isn't that gateway OS, why are we bothering? What makes it likely that any user would switch to us if they've entered the FOSS community via Ubuntu? (Don't get me wrong, this is a question we also need to answer, but I don't think it's wise of us to be recommending that Ubuntu handles gathering our new users for us.) So yes, if we want Fedora to have any mindshare at all (and therefore users) I assert that we /do/ need to be the gateway OS. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNVUx0ACgkQeiVVYja6o6MJCgCbBSbQXji+6mHzcqkq3d0KRZi7 s9kAn2bam9gftlBm9QqntuMKOeHGGbp6 =gjeJ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 07:04:03PM +0200, Michael Scherer wrote: Le lundi 21 avril 2014 à 11:56 -0400, Eric H. Christensen a écrit : On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:36:55AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: 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. I'm confused here. No one is telling anyone that they can't use Application X. In fact, we do ( or rather, I do ). When I tell to people that Starcraft II and Eve Online do not run on Linux. When I tell that Office and Photoshop do not run on Linux. When I tell that their Iphone is not gonna work and I cannot be sure that the printer they just bought from Samsung is maybe not supported. Well, there is a line of which you have blurred here. Because your examples are all proprietary and haven't been compiled for Linux you won't find them on Fedora or *any* Linux OS. More than that we already have solutions for people that use Office and Photoshop that are FOSS. Your other examples are fine examples of why proprietary solutions suck. They either lock you in to where you lose the freedom to access your data or you end up wasting time and money trying to shoehorn a proprietary solution that was poorly engineered into your existing infrastructure. Those are reasons to use Linux and not a proprietary solution. - -- Eric - -- Eric Sparks Christensen Fedora Project spa...@fedoraproject.org - spa...@redhat.com 097C 82C3 52DF C64A 50C2 E3A3 8076 ABDE 024B B3D1 - -- -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iQGcBAEBCgAGBQJTVVQYAAoJEB/kgVGp2CYvR3QL/jxrjbAfJtJtrMKgIYiORSMb NJ4K8FoxIANgXFr0Na+WXImYcD5Jdii5aVBvMiYeMAH9NPFvbbQQBKsJvL5bvfC6 WLx8fA4WzvdGnOX7is6BMnwfDYKc1S8+lWr2GU5KmhnwVatStnvAJoeHwR5FZpNW uyXET4/99KKDNB9SlKZ20ijgSI16aV4tYzEJBw1UQj4FcjqGl8dsXzQH7xFbLDY7 nhZnGQdr0b9x4s/SsPubNfym8Oy//g2mf8uCsHOW3OYFHKhd8m2sYLbEWRjC1pc3 +aiokq/4cEh2yOm0mhhR+U4YaGNwTRxsIrm7VfvlUcD7pc2O8HkefzaiWasE8yr+ 19Ia86CBBx4yMlC5KvpanLUFZtVFJTK7CSokQ1FydL6KXNszmeXqFhTRJHQmWYY+ LM7A8V4QA04WWAc39UUo+iT5p8CuJGCD46Pa2K9pg4zR5ugY3iG4+tmtTVnRG9oL TEktQiIu8+M5fkg6umTTAtmYDHSanUVKvI+TERipQw== =nGQq -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 01:07 PM, Haïkel Guémar wrote: Le 21/04/2014 18:37, Stephen Gallagher a écrit : I spoke too strongly there, I think. We do however give a *very* strong impression that using non-FOSS solutions for anything at all is unwelcome at best. Consider the recent discussions around GNOME Software where we have 1) Forbidden it from automatically looking up software from non-Fedora repositories, even FOSS ones 2) Asserted that it must consider web apps (either FOSS or not) to be second-class citizens (and call it out as such) They actually are second-class citizens, we can't fix proprietary apps as we actually do with FOSS applications. Sure, that was maybe poorly phrased. I was mostly just stating that the impression given is that we discourage their use. The one thing we could do is augmenting our QA to check the compatibility with non-free apps and file a ticket upstream so we could help them to fix it. And I personally wouldn't mind if we delay non-security fixes to give them enough time to update their applications. We could even think of allowing editors to plug to our infrastructure message bus on some conditions. This would certainly be nice. I know QA resources are strapped, so maybe a better choice would be your suggestion below about a partnership program. Hopefully the applications would help contribute some testing. But if we were to consider them first-class citizens, without the editors cooperation, we would be bind to their willing which is against our mission statement. Unlike CentOS, we can't provide a stable base suitable to proprietary SW editors, all we can do is best effort. Not /entirely/ true. One option would be for Fedora to be willing to carry the three-year-supported Developer Toolset from RHEL. Since it's pretty much isolated versions of the build tools, we could probably tell apps that if they use it to build, we can support it for three years (which is longer than our release cycle anyway). Please understand, I'm as much a proponent of FOSS as anyone here. I believe it to be the best way to develop software. However, I also feel that actively discouraging users from using the tools with which they are most comfortable on our platform is harmful to our long-term strategy of converting them. Microsoft had great success with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and I think that FOSS can enjoy very similar results (probably without Extinguish, except in cases where user interest in the original wanes) as long as we make it approachable. I don't see that as the case today. +1 and you were right to start this discussion. Thanks, I was starting to get nervous :) This is a key point that I disagree with entirely. I think we could attract many more users if we were the easiest way for them to get a free, open-source friendly operating system that also allowed them to continue using the tools they want to use. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to allow them to use Chrome from the Google repository. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow them to use Steam from the Valve repository. Device drivers get into hazy territory, but I think it's a conversation worth having. What about solutions that have no useful FOSS analog? Are you expecting that someone who uses Adobe Lightroom all the time should switch to Fedora and write a brand-new post-processing engine themselves? We should think on how we could improve collaboration with third-party repos, fedmsg/copr might be part of the technical solution. How about a Fedora Partnership Program ? We could open up at a certain extent our infrastructure and collaborate with software editors to make sure that their products have some support in Fedora. I love this idea and I think we should probably start another thread on it when this one starts to die down, assuming that the general sense is that the community wants to improve our third-party/non-FOSS relationships. Of course, if most people stick to the Nothing but FOSS shall we ever indulge! approach, then so be it. I think it's still valuable to have this discussion every once in a while, though. Of course, a small part of me is worried that we've gone down this path so long that nearly all of the dissenting voices will have already left. I'm advocating that they should have a place at the table. I don't advocate placing them above FOSS solutions (and I'm perfectly happy with requiring that any tool that provides access to them clearly identify them as such and ideally recommend a FOSS alternative instead). But I think that trying to actively discourage (read: prevent) users from installing such software is harmful to our Mission of advancing Free Software. In my view, it's okay to occasionally embrace closed-source as a means to expose more people to open-source. Failing to do so has a tendency to leave us labeled as zealots, which are
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57PM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: On 04/21/2014 11:56 AM, Eric H. Christensen wrote: i packaging or otherwise making it easier for one to choose proprietary software. When we start pushing proprietary solutions in our software store right along side FOSS solutions we are devaluing our FOSS and making it easier for people to ignore the software we hope they'll migrate to. This is a key point that I disagree with entirely. I think we could attract many more users if we were the easiest way for them to get a free, open-source friendly operating system that also allowed them to continue using the tools they want to use. Well, that largely won't happen anyway if they are coming from a Microsoft Windows environment. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to allow them to use Chrome from the Google repository. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow them to use Steam from the Valve repository. Device drivers get into hazy territory, but I think it's a conversation worth having. Again, no one is preventing the user from installing all these things. We shouldn't be expected to provide every last bit on a silver plater, either. That's a game in futility with many legal and privacy issues added to the technical nightmare. But I think that trying to actively discourage (read: prevent) users from installing such software is harmful to our Mission of advancing Free Software. What, specifically, are we preventing users from installing? Exactly what's your mission here? More users or more contributors? Users are good but contributors are better. And how are these contributors going to contribute to their proprietary solutions that we now provide for them? How do we support something that is simply provided to us as a binary and has no upstream bug tracking or support (outside of a support contract)? How are these users going to react when all the software they know and love (that we provide) breaks due to no fault of our own? Are we going to hold back bug or security fix because it breaks a proprietary program but fixes it for everything else? There are many reasons to say that supporting/shipping/supporting proprietary solutions is a bad idea. - -- Eric - -- Eric Sparks Christensen Fedora Project spa...@fedoraproject.org - spa...@redhat.com 097C 82C3 52DF C64A 50C2 E3A3 8076 ABDE 024B B3D1 - -- -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iQGcBAEBCgAGBQJTVVcmAAoJEB/kgVGp2CYvYr0L/jM8Tbgid7wI9lL2A59Mrcxl Vm+cEAIpfoAb9w4uq7IjgEGkHLu4K7OeoSmIkC+cimR7SNd6xDjJlUfq3RcDc4rJ Ffs9w6CxGxmGIeJ+2GjRCxjYT2w2GkHC4a/nvCQhP5OPOR2LpVuKk53qlyqilzQB GW/HhuM3puijpIj1zYggemLxKEDxmtgAh9kGjPkFe1khTkOErAkUZYjw41Z7HGJr b6hgb27HQohtUNx70VeWOIDYv+ciAUTBNnDnfoGg0cdnJUgguoO4i0lOIXnuYmK/ Y9cKx71G1Mv/NAqrtmH/VDne8+EofrjuG44fSvplKXiS2C+oElx9cQLuxM+p9fRi 12bY1Sae5lEsf89bDb3xNxJ4jIzo+gQTEge4YI7eWXlJb8H1A8ugYmvjyLI83aem 9JcajzKg+XD0pCFDTTbIk6qWyi9EG1EdTkAQ88xcAAgYFG3YJavcSREKdFFU17tZ mVQ3Wnwk0GQjXxLZNI14NHbaixQMs9P7Ig1FKkw7Qw== =DI7m -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 01:37 PM, Eric H. Christensen wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57PM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: On 04/21/2014 11:56 AM, Eric H. Christensen wrote: i packaging or otherwise making it easier for one to choose proprietary software. When we start pushing proprietary solutions in our software store right along side FOSS solutions we are devaluing our FOSS and making it easier for people to ignore the software we hope they'll migrate to. This is a key point that I disagree with entirely. I think we could attract many more users if we were the easiest way for them to get a free, open-source friendly operating system that also allowed them to continue using the tools they want to use. Well, that largely won't happen anyway if they are coming from a Microsoft Windows environment. I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. While the plural of anecdote is not data, I can point to a half-dozen people that I've personally converted over to Fedora by way of: 1) IE - Firefox or Chrome 2) Windows Mail - Thunderbird 3) MS Office-LibreOffice 4) Windows XP - Fedora It took multiple steps, but once I got them comfortable with the cross-platform versions of the stuff they used all the time, the switch between OSes was tolerable. I think that's an approach that we should be attempting more of. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to allow them to use Chrome from the Google repository. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow them to use Steam from the Valve repository. Device drivers get into hazy territory, but I think it's a conversation worth having. Again, no one is preventing the user from installing all these things. We shouldn't be expected to provide every last bit on a silver plater, either. That's a game in futility with many legal and privacy issues added to the technical nightmare. Well, I think we are using slightly different versions of preventing here. Your version is that it's not preventing them as long as some workaround exists (regardless of difficulty). Mine is that I consider it preventing if they have to do significantly more than they currently do on other operating systems (which is usually: 1) go to website, 2) download installer, 3) run installer). Of all the third-party apps I've seen out there, Google Chrome is the least painful, and that's still not very approachable. But I think that trying to actively discourage (read: prevent) users from installing such software is harmful to our Mission of advancing Free Software. What, specifically, are we preventing users from installing? See definition above. Exactly what's your mission here? More users or more contributors? Both. I've never met a contributor that wasn't a user first. Also, remember that contributors aren't just coders but bug reporters, documentation editors, translators, etc. With advances in ABRT, even our casual users are providing us with valuable feedback, so I wouldn't draw the line nearly as solidly as we used to. Users are good but contributors are better. And how are these contributors going to contribute to their proprietary solutions that we now provide for them? How do we support something that is simply provided to us as a binary and has no upstream bug tracking or support (outside of a support contract)? How are these users going to react when all the software they know and love (that we provide) breaks due to no fault of our own? Are we going to hold back bug or This is where I think you're mixing two very different users into one. The traditional Fedora user would think as you do: that if I'm running it on Fedora, it's part of Fedora. So of course that user would be concerned with reporting it to Fedora. However, the user coming to Fedora for the first time tends to still have a mindset from other platforms. When running Adobe Premier on Windows, most users aren't going to call Microsoft for support when something breaks: they'll call Adobe. I think something like what Haïkel Guémar suggested in the other thread is a good idea: start a Fedora Partnership Program where we make it easier to collaborate with third-parties. That idea needs fleshing out, of course. security fix because it breaks a proprietary program but fixes it for everything else? There are many reasons to say that supporting/shipping/supporting proprietary solutions is a bad idea. I think there are ways to work around some of this. Part of the solution might be to recommend that third-party solutions build atop of the Red Hat Developer Toolset releases, which we could pretty much drop into Fedora without much hassle and maintain them for the same three-year period. They'd have a stable base and our users would have access to those apps. All without a huge additional effort (since DTS is being supported by RHEL anyway). -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 7:08 PM, Bruno Wolff III br...@wolff.to wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57 -0400, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: I don't think it's unreasonable for us to allow them to use Chrome from the Google repository. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow them to use Steam from the Valve repository. Device drivers get into hazy territory, but I think it's a conversation worth having. I think there is a difference between allow and promote. I would be especially wary of promoting something like steam without some strong warnings as steam is going to be doing some amount of spying on you to enforce their DRM and is going to be significantly modifying the graphics system and breakage in that area is not going to be supportable by Fedora. going to be significantly modifying the graphics system ... what does that even mean? afaik it does not do any such a thing. It is just an X / SDL2 + OpenGL application like any other (just closed source). -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 20:08:06 +0200, drago01 drag...@gmail.com wrote: going to be significantly modifying the graphics system ... what does that even mean? afaik it does not do any such a thing. It is just an X / SDL2 + OpenGL application like any other (just closed source). It does look like it only needs the patented s3tc stuff. While the proprietary drivers seem to be recommended, they don't seem to be required. I had thought it needed the proprietary drivers to work (along with some of the mangling they do), but I was mistaken. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
Le lundi 21 avril 2014 à 13:19 -0400, Stephen Gallagher a écrit : On 04/21/2014 01:08 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57 -0400, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: But I think that trying to actively discourage (read: prevent) users from installing such software is harmful to our Mission of advancing Free Software. In my view, it's okay to occasionally embrace closed-source as a means to expose more people to open-source. Failing to do so has a tendency to leave us labeled as zealots, which are often ignored. Does Fedora need to be that gateway OS? Maybe Ubuntu would be a better intermediate step? If Fedora isn't that gateway OS, why are we bothering? What makes it likely that any user would switch to us if they've entered the FOSS community via Ubuntu? (Don't get me wrong, this is a question we also need to answer, but I don't think it's wise of us to be recommending that Ubuntu handles gathering our new users for us.) So yes, if we want Fedora to have any mindshare at all (and therefore users) I assert that we /do/ need to be the gateway OS. Following your pattern of switching people to cross platform software then to Fedora, why not then start to invest into that, with for example : - distributing software for Windows in the same version that can be found for Fedora, following the same release schedule. Potentially having a updater. - have some easy way to switch back and forth ( something like anaconda creating a specific sharing partition, with software using it by defaults ) - partnership with user group for that, shipping them on the DVD we distribute. I am sure we can find lots of way, and that some of them have been already tried. And that seems perfectly aligned with Fedora mission and much closer to the way people convert users. -- Michael Scherer -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 11:02 AM, inode0 ino...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 7:36 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: 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.) Sure but also understand that no matter what precise words are written down on a piece of paper at a given point in time they will suffer from sticky questions over time as the world we fit into changes. This is a good insight. I think the problem I have with this well-intentioned thread is that it's a broad reaction to a specific issue we're trying to sort out right now. Webapps aren't new, the fact that a large portion of them aren't FOSS isn't new, and their usage in and interoperability with Fedora is not new. The new item here is displaying them as options in the software center. I think it's a fair question to address whether or not displaying non-Free web applications in the software center (or other similar applications) is within our Foundations. I don't think we need to add an entirely new Foundation or significantly reword the existing ones in order to answer that question. A statement from the Board on this seems perfectly reasonable. josh -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 04:35 PM, Josh Boyer wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 11:02 AM, inode0 ino...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 7:36 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: 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.) Sure but also understand that no matter what precise words are written down on a piece of paper at a given point in time they will suffer from sticky questions over time as the world we fit into changes. This is a good insight. I think the problem I have with this well-intentioned thread is that it's a broad reaction to a specific issue we're trying to sort out right now. Webapps aren't new, the fact that a large portion of them aren't FOSS isn't new, and their usage in and interoperability with Fedora is not new. The new item here is displaying them as options in the software center. I think it's a fair question to address whether or not displaying non-Free web applications in the software center (or other similar applications) is within our Foundations. I don't think we need to add an entirely new Foundation or significantly reword the existing ones in order to answer that question. A statement from the Board on this seems perfectly reasonable. Well, the current Board discussion (and the one prior to it regarding third-party repos) certainly catalyzed this discussion, but I still think it's one that's worth having every few years. Ultimately, I don't think we as a group have consensus about what exactly the best interpretation of our Foundations are in terms of how they further our Mission. To boil it down: Is the Freedom Foundation too strict? (Alternately, are we reading it too strictly?) In other words, is our hard-line on only displaying FOSS solutions ultimately accomplishing our Mission to advance FOSS? I argue that it is not, because it artificially limits our audience to the set of people who are *already* working on FOSS. I think that relaxing our stance a /little/ could lead to a wider contributor base, providing a greater benefit to the FOSS community than absolute purity. Josh, please don't see this as a means to bypass the Board decisions. I am not intending this as an end-run, but more as a way to put up the weathervane on wider community opinion. Historically, we've not really had elections tied to a particular stance on these issues, so it's hard to know for certain if we've really got a representative voice on any of the committees (Board, FESCo, FPC) or if we've ended up with an oligarchy where the people who send the most emails to the lists get elected. (I suspect we're leaning towards the latter, and of course there's something to be said for putting the most involved people in charge). But any good leader knows to occasionally make a reality check[1] and make sure that we're actually aligned with what people want. [1] I often critically fail my saving throw there... -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNVhBEACgkQeiVVYja6o6PfDACfU+PW7Q8DqI0lonzxZUH0XqGI PI4AoJbSn+jilnnrpH46vinXlWguUkUS =35MF -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: To boil it down: Is the Freedom Foundation too strict? (Alternately, are we reading it too strictly?) In other words, is our hard-line on only displaying FOSS solutions ultimately accomplishing our Mission to advance FOSS? I argue that it is not, because it artificially limits our audience to the set of people who are *already* working on FOSS. I think that relaxing our stance a /little/ could lead to a wider contributor base, providing a greater benefit to the FOSS community than absolute purity. I honestly don't know anyone involved in this discussion who has a hard line about only displaying FOSS solutions. The line is about what we ship. People are free to enable non-free repositories and have those displayed in our tooling if they make that choice. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 21 April 2014 11:19, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 01:08 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57 -0400, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: Does Fedora need to be that gateway OS? Maybe Ubuntu would be a better intermediate step? If Fedora isn't that gateway OS, why are we bothering? What makes it likely that any user would switch to us if they've entered the FOSS community via Ubuntu? (Don't get me wrong, this is a question we also need to answer, but I don't think it's wise of us to be recommending that Ubuntu handles gathering our new users for us.) It is an interesting question... why are we bothering? When people bother because they need to be THE gateway.. they are setting themselves for a lifetime of disappointment. That ship sails completely with little to no control. I have found that if you are going to bother.. do it because it is making something better for you, for something you care about. That is stuff you can control and not items left to the fact that people choose to use what everyone else uses or by the fact its name sounds exotic or they like Orange over Blue. -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 4:48 PM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04/21/2014 04:35 PM, Josh Boyer wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 11:02 AM, inode0 ino...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 7:36 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: 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.) Sure but also understand that no matter what precise words are written down on a piece of paper at a given point in time they will suffer from sticky questions over time as the world we fit into changes. This is a good insight. I think the problem I have with this well-intentioned thread is that it's a broad reaction to a specific issue we're trying to sort out right now. Webapps aren't new, the fact that a large portion of them aren't FOSS isn't new, and their usage in and interoperability with Fedora is not new. The new item here is displaying them as options in the software center. I think it's a fair question to address whether or not displaying non-Free web applications in the software center (or other similar applications) is within our Foundations. I don't think we need to add an entirely new Foundation or significantly reword the existing ones in order to answer that question. A statement from the Board on this seems perfectly reasonable. Well, the current Board discussion (and the one prior to it regarding third-party repos) certainly catalyzed this discussion, but I still think it's one that's worth having every few years. Ultimately, I don't think we as a group have consensus about what exactly the best interpretation of our Foundations are in terms of how they further our Mission. To boil it down: Is the Freedom Foundation too strict? (Alternately, are we reading it too strictly?) In other words, is our hard-line on only displaying FOSS solutions ultimately accomplishing our Mission to advance FOSS? I You mean the proposed hard-line? Because that line doesn't exist today. argue that it is not, because it artificially limits our audience to the set of people who are *already* working on FOSS. I think that relaxing our stance a /little/ could lead to a wider contributor base, providing a greater benefit to the FOSS community than absolute purity. That's fine. But there's nothing in our Foundations and _existing_ practices and interpretations that disagrees with that point of view. Look, I think the Foundations are great. They remind us all of why we got into this to begin with (or most of us anyway). However, they are never going to completely cover all cases. They are broad. They project strength and conviction. They can't be worded to be future proof because nobody can see the future. They are extremely important guideposts on what Fedora is about, but they are not codifications of allowed practices and situations. If you start tweaking them or adding new ones to list out exceptions and allowances and to address the latest computing fad, you weaken their ability to act as those guideposts. They instead become case law or listings, which leads to less common sense, more process, more exceptions to be added, etc. They would become so lengthy and complicated that nobody would read them. I'm not saying adding additional Foundations or rewording the existing ones should never be done, but I do think these specific items you mention don't necessarily warrant it at this time. Josh, please don't see this as a means to bypass the Board decisions. I certainly don't think that. I am not intending this as an end-run, but more as a way to put up the weathervane on wider community opinion. Historically, we've not really had elections tied to a particular stance on these issues, so it's hard to know for certain if we've really got a representative voice on any of the committees (Board, FESCo, FPC) or if we've ended up with an oligarchy where the people who send the most emails to the lists get elected. (I suspect we're leaning towards the latter, and of course Given the lack of interest in the Board election this past round, I suspect it's neither. Instead we have people on the Board because they volunteered to be on the Board. That doesn't mean they are poor choices, mind you. It does, however, indicate somewhat of a problem that is beyond the scope of this thread. As for a representative voice.. representative of what? People in the Board seats should absolutely keep in mind various aspects of the entire project, but we need less partisanship and more open-mindedness at this level. We need people willing to work together to find out what is best for the Project as a whole, not argue on behalf of certain pieces of it. Compromise and cooperation are what will wind
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On 04/21/2014 01:27 PM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: On 04/21/2014 01:07 PM, Haïkel Guémar wrote: We should think on how we could improve collaboration with third-party repos, fedmsg/copr might be part of the technical solution. How about a Fedora Partnership Program ? We could open up at a certain extent our infrastructure and collaborate with software editors to make sure that their products have some support in Fedora. I love this idea and I think we should probably start another thread on it when this one starts to die down, assuming that the general sense is that the community wants to improve our third-party/non-FOSS relationships. The choices we make are determined by the possibilities we are presented with. While we all agree that it's neither possible nor desirable to prevent installation of whatever tools the end user wants, the Freedom absolutists would like to put up a barrier against non-Free software, or at least want Fedora to abstain from helping. I personally prefer that choice to be given to the users, who should be able to indicate what they want on their systems. Now, these abstract choices take shape during software installation, so it seems to me that they should be entered as user preferences in the software installer to shape the results of software search. In other words, ask the user what they want to see, and then let them choose from the results. We've discussed several such values-based choices: - the license conditions (Free vs. encumbered vs. non-Free and commercial) - tolerance for gritty old commandline tools vs. polished apps only - choice between full functionality vs. small size and/or speed I think they all can be seen as user preferences in the software installer discovery process, making the installer central to how the resulting system is put together. This is consistent with how Droid and iOS make software 'stores' and installation a central point of interaction for configuring their systems. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, 2014-04-21 at 17:50 -0400, Josh Boyer wrote: Look, I think the Foundations are great. They remind us all of why we got into this to begin with (or most of us anyway). However, they are never going to completely cover all cases. They are broad. They project strength and conviction. They can't be worded to be future proof because nobody can see the future. They are extremely important guideposts on what Fedora is about, but they are not codifications of allowed practices and situations. If you start tweaking them or adding new ones to list out exceptions and allowances and to address the latest computing fad, you weaken their ability to act as those guideposts. They instead become case law or listings, which leads to less common sense, more process, more exceptions to be added, etc. They would become so lengthy and complicated that nobody would read them. I'm not saying adding additional Foundations or rewording the existing ones should never be done, but I do think these specific items you mention don't necessarily warrant it at this time. Big +1 Simo. -- Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
