Re: kernel-libre (hopefully 100% Free) for Fedora 8 and rawhide

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva redhat com>]

On Mar 22, 2008, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram fedoraproject org> wrote:

> Thanks for stepping forward with this.

NP, sorry that it took me so long to get to it.

> Wouldn't it be better to change the spec file so that the firmware you
> have removed is moved into a sub package and we can retain the same
> kernel?

Err...  This would mean that whoever distributes the kernel binaries
would be required to ship the corresponding sources containing
non-Free Software, which is precisely the sort of thing I'd like to
avoid, such that I and others who refuse to distribute non-Free
Software can promote Fedora at least to some extent.

> The advantage is that it doesn't have the overhead of maintaining a
> additional kernel package.

This overhead is mostly unavoidable, and in general removing the
offending modules is much easier than separating the firmware out of
them.  Hopefully having them removed will at least serve as an
incentive for those who'd like to have them included to split them out
such that the firmware can be supplied separately.  I don't think I'd
have the time to do that myself.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva {redhat com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva {lsd ic unicamp br, gnu.org}