[fab] Most Advanced 100% Free Distribution?

Rahul Sundaram sundaram at fedoraproject.org
Thu Nov 2 14:45:33 UTC 2006


Warren Togami wrote:
> http://lwn.net/Articles/207228/
> With the avowed goal of providing a completely free distribution - one 
> without non-free kernel binary 'blobs' or any other non-free software, 
> the Free Software Foundation has announced sponsorship of the project. 
> Ted Teah, FSF's free software directory maintainer explained, 'With all 
> the kernel firmware and restricted repositories removed, and the 
> reliance on Ubuntu's proprietary distribution management tool Launchpad 
> gone, this distribution is the most advanced GNU/Linux distribution that 
> has a commitment to be 100% free.
> 
> Perhaps they haven't heard of Fedora?

Perhaps they have. Our guidelines allows OSI approved licenses among 
which the reciprocal license is considered non-free by FSF. This is a 
completely theoretical issue at this point though since Fedora does not 
include software under this license and we have been discussing about 
changing the guidelines to avoid this problem even.

I am not sure what the kernel binary blobs in this PR refers to. AFAIK, 
the upstream kernel itself includes firmware which we dont remove in 
Fedora.  Our guidelides dont require source for all firmware and just 
redistribution rights.

I am still waiting on understanding better FSF's standing on various 
other stuff like firmware, patented software etc. So we are close but 
not quite there yet and there might be potential roadblocks from this 
ever happening.

Rahul




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