Weekly Edition
Return to the Front page
| |||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
Blaming Fedora
A disgruntled Fedora user recently complained about how the distribution's
policies "sometimes suck." It seems that this user had attempted to use an
obscure OpenOffice.org feature which is available under some distributions,
but which is not available on Fedora systems. This feature, it turns out,
is implemented with a piece of closed-source code, which Fedora is
unwilling to ship.
Your editor has a gripe as well. For a period of time, his Rawhide desktop contained the Emacs 22 pre-test releases from the FSF. Once Rawhide picked up those releases, however, your editor happily stopped building his own. But the Rawhide version of Emacs lacks the Tetris game found in stock Emacs. The end result is that your editor has to use his editor for actual work instead of pointless block stacking. Rather than start a lengthy flame war, though, your editor simply chose to avoid procrastination and get something useful done. Fedora, like any complex project, offers plenty of opportunities for criticism; some of those have appeared in these pages in the past. But this sort of feature removal is not one of those opportunities. Anybody who uses the Fedora distribution should understand the constraints the project operates under. They include:
Sometimes it seems like Fedora cannot win. The distribution takes regular grief for its omission of patented codecs, non-free office suite components, binary drivers, etc. But those who appreciate free software rarely credit the project for the extensive work it has done to ensure that everything it ships is free. Fedora users benefit from Red Hat's support: without that support, there would be far less developer time, bandwidth, publicity, etc. available to the project. Dragging Red Hat into unneeded legal hassles would benefit nobody but the lawyers; Fedora users have an interest in avoiding that eventuality. One might well wonder why certain Fedora users feel the need to repeat these complaints so often. Perhaps the project is not doing an adequate job of communicating what it is trying to do. One assumes that, if people understood what Fedora is, they would not complain about it not being something it can never be. (Log in to post comments)
Delete is your friend Posted Apr 12, 2007 2:05 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Whoever started the thread didn't even provide his or her name or even a unique nickname. "linuxmaillists" is apparently an address created for specific mailing lists. Besides, the original post contained blames and no specific details about the problem.When I see such posts I usually press "Delete" immediately. Such posts are not even worth the space on my hard drive. And they can ruin a whole day if taken seriously. As the free software attracts more users, we are going to see more antisocial types in the mailing lists. It's important to learn how to deal with them without spending too much effort. They want attention. Don't give them what they want, it will only incite them further. There are always better posts waiting for answers.
Blaming Fedora Posted Apr 12, 2007 2:11 UTC (Thu) by mrons (subscriber, #1751) [Link] I think something Fedora could do better is to provide an easy way of telling their users what and how packages have been modified from upstream.
Doing an "rpm -q --changelog" often tells us about some patches that have been applied, but it's not the whole story.
Perhaps "rpm -qi" should provide a brief summary of any modifications from upstream?
list of patches Posted Apr 14, 2007 13:32 UTC (Sat) by scottt (subscriber, #5028) [Link] The list of patches is available from the source rpm:rpmquery -pl coreutils-5.97-12.3.fc6.src.rpm ... coreutils-4.5.3-langinfo.patch coreutils-4.5.3-sysinfo.patch ....
I often just use the viewvc interface to peak at their CVS contents:
Blaming Fedora Posted Apr 12, 2007 3:03 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] If only we had a cartoon parrot mascot. That'd clear things up.
BTS Posted Apr 12, 2007 3:36 UTC (Thu) by joey (subscriber, #328) [Link] This problem isn't exactly unique to Fedora (says the Debian developer. :-)
For clued in users, the best thing to do is check the BTS and if the issue isn't documented, file a bug. It's a legitimate bug report if OOo is missing $FEATURE due to nonfree code having been removed. Maybe the bug can't be fixed without reimplementing some code. It's a legitimate (wishlist) bug report if emacs is missing tetris.
Even if these bugs never get fixed, having them in the BTS provides a place to document why not, avoids repeat bugs from clued in users, provides an easy place to point non-clued users at when they complain, and provides an quick overview of such issues that clued in users can look over before using a peice of software.
Blaming Fedora Posted Apr 12, 2007 6:16 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] This article pushes the Red Hat angle too much.
One must understand many of the core Fedora developers are dedicated to Free Software. Fedora would probably strip non-free stuff even without direct Red Hat involvment.
And yes projects like OO.o would save themselves and their users grief by checking their dependencies licensing before blindly implementing stuff.
Fedora free? Posted Apr 12, 2007 10:54 UTC (Thu) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] If Fedora is 100% free, why did the FSF feel the need to create gNewSense?
Fedora free? Posted Apr 12, 2007 11:23 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] ha.
Because people's definitions of Free differ! Fedora Free isn't good enough for the FSF, the FSF want FSF Free.
That's what is nice about having multiple distributions. Different philosophies, different points of view.
Picking out a distribution is like finding a matching personality at a bar or something. What is a good match for me isn't going to be perfect for everybody.
Sounds like the guy complaining would be better off with something like Mephis or Linspire were they don't care about stuff like that. Unless of course the person doesn't care that much to switch distros. Then complaining is probably alright, as long as the forum the person choose is the correct place for that sort of stuff. (not being familar with Fedora mailing list drama and guidelines I can't realy tell.)
Fedora free? Posted Apr 12, 2007 12:29 UTC (Thu) by bcs (subscriber, #27943) [Link] Fedora is committed to being 100% free software, and they've recently made some incredible progress on that front. They've occasionally asked me to help evaluate licenses as part of this work. They haven't quite reached the goal yet—for example, they're still dealing with some of the tougher issues like binary firmware blobs in the kernel. But I'm personally optimistic about their continued progress. -- Brett Smith, FSF Licensing Compliance Engineer
Fedora free? Posted Apr 12, 2007 18:30 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
When I asked about FSF's position, RMS claimed that he is willing to ignore the issue of sourceless firmware within the kernel and FSF site already lists several distributions as Free even though they include such firmware
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FreeSoftwareAnalysis/FSF
So a FSF licensing compliance engineer pointing it out as a example of Fedora not reaching it's goal is puzzling. Meanwhile Fedora project is waiting on FSF to go through the OSI licenses that are important to Fedora as requested by RMS earlier and inform us whether they are considered Free software licenses or not.
If you are willing to speed up that process drop me a mail @fedoraproject.org
Fedora free? Posted Apr 13, 2007 15:46 UTC (Fri) by bcs (subscriber, #27943) [Link] Thanks for the message; I sent you e-mail.
Fedora free? Posted Apr 14, 2007 11:48 UTC (Sat) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] Now that is interesting! I wonder what, then, is the reason that the FSF will not endorse Debian in this day and age!
Fedora free? Posted Apr 14, 2007 18:26 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Debian hosts and supports a non-free repository while technically unofficial is part of Debian infrastructure and is maintained by Debian developers. FSF wants that to be separated out entirely and wants Debian to not promote and mention it anywhere.
That is my understanding of the conflict. While non-free firmware in the kernel is problematic RMS says he is willing to overlook for a limited time period as a practical compromise.
Fedora free? Posted Apr 24, 2007 8:12 UTC (Tue) by robbe (subscriber, #16131) [Link] > FSF wants that to be separated out entirely and wants Debian to not> promote and mention it anywhere.
Which would be ... interesting with a lot of GNU manuals now being in
Like another poster said, there are quite a few different definitions
Tetris Posted Apr 12, 2007 10:57 UTC (Thu) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] Inclusion of the Tetris game could be liable to violations of trademark (on the name) and patent (on the gameplay), at least in the US.
Tetris Posted Apr 12, 2007 15:13 UTC (Thu) by spot (guest, #15640) [Link] In fact, the trademark issues were the only reason we pulled the tetris code from Emacs. You can't make a game and call it "Tetris", thats violating trademark. Now, if they called it "GNU Happy Fun Block Game" or "GNUBlocks" or anything not resembling the "Tetris" trademark, we'd be good.
Tetris Posted Apr 12, 2007 17:17 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] So, instead of pulling it entirely, why not simply rename it yourselves??Just curious, honestly; not trying to be confrontational... But, it just seems like if you are willing to rip out a feature, there should be no qualms against renaming it instead, if its name is all that is problematic to you... (I really don't care about this particular issue one way or the other; I'm on the vi side of the religious war... ;-) But, the more general meta-issue is what interests me...)
Tetris Posted Apr 12, 2007 18:12 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] I am guessing time and effort. There are only so many hours in the day, and the guy who handles emacs also has 20-30 other packages he has on his plate.
Blaming Fedora Posted Apr 14, 2007 22:35 UTC (Sat) by wcooley (guest, #1233) [Link] It's amazing how tempers can flare over such things. I can certainly understand and appreciate the ideological and legal motivations--and repeatedly explain such things to other people--but that doesn't mean I don't find it frustrating at times.
One might expect that such alterations could be found in the release notes.
Blaming Fedora Posted Apr 22, 2007 0:47 UTC (Sun) by Tr0n (guest, #42662) [Link] These are the people who do annoy me.
Instead of seeing that it isn't included, and going to the original site to build his own - he /blames/ fedora?
I can understand a query, concerning /why/ the feature isn't available, and questions on how to get it back (whether that means building, getting binaries, getting plugins, etc). But total ignorance is what annoys me.
I use fedora, and I'm glad I do - even if I don't find their political veiws of my taste. If I want codecs, binary drivers, or other closed-source items, I get them and integrate them into my system of choice, because it is my system of choice and I am comfortable with the fact I need to go and get that functionality.
If that user can't be bothered to read a main webpage or two concerning the 'free'-ness of fedora, then he deserves to be stung (as I can't count the number of times I've been informed of fedora's goal).
Blaming Fedora Posted Apr 24, 2007 8:07 UTC (Tue) by robbe (subscriber, #16131) [Link] > Perhaps the project is not doing an adequate job of communicating what> it is trying to do.
This will probably not help as long as Fedora is the "default" Linux
Blaming Fedora Posted Apr 25, 2007 17:51 UTC (Wed) by bdw (guest, #16047) [Link] One thing that Fedora could implement is a way to quickly install non-free components for multimedia, driver firmware, etc. similar to what Ubuntu has in 7.04 so newbies can quickly install the non-free codecs in a minimum number of mouse clicks.
Hopefully, with FC7, something like it will be available.
|
|
||||||||||||