Fedora Project, give me 20 Million Euros or Free EDA software

Kevin Fenzi kevin at scrye.com
Sat Jan 31 20:21:15 UTC 2009


On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:40:45 +0100
Chitlesh GOORAH <chitlesh.goorah at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello there,
> 
> Before reading the mail, be brave people read this blog post first,
> especially people from FESCo:
> http://www.edn.com/blog/920000692/post/1290038929.html
> 
> Do comment on that blog post. Afterwards you read my email.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> I found it sad that I have to write this email today. Well, it is part
> of my contribution to both opensource software and opensource EDA
> software communities.
> 
> The subject of this email is "Fedora Project, give me 20 Million Euros
> or Free Software" ! Unfortunately, I'm not kidding and even 20 Million
> Euros is not enough.
> 
> Well, let's get to the point !

... snip ...

First, let me say that I have been impressed and happy with all the
work you have been doing on electronics lab packages. This is a great
area to get folks involved in using and perhaps someday contributing to
Fedora. 

Also, I am happy that OVM is released under a free license. This is
great that an area that is full of closed source solutions now has an
open source content. I hope that this will show how well open source
works to those that might not know anything about it. 

However, allowing this package into Fedora with no way for the vast
majority of Fedora users to use it seems to me to be bad for the
overall user experence. 

On the plus side: users who have access to the non free simulator can
install and use this package and gain all the benifits from doing so. 

On the minus side: user who do not have access to a non free simulator
would possibly install this package, get confused, be unable to run it,
think that Fedora was telling them to go out and buy some commercial
software, etc. 

You mentioned an analogy on IRC: " I have written "Ebook about my car"
that  I want to package for fedora, I have to give the car via yum"

I don't think thats a very close analogy. This case with OVM has no
hardware involved, only software. I think a better one would be: 
Someone comes up with a super new document templating system. It's
released under a free license. OpenOffice says they will support it
sometime, but doesn't currently. It works with Microsoft Office now
however. Should such a package be in Fedora? Wouldn't it cause users to
see it and install it and then realize we are telling them to go buy
MSOffice? 

Now, thinking about it: Are there any other uses for OVM aside from
running it in a non free simulator? Would it somehow be useful for
people to learn from even though they cannot run it? Or is there any
other reasons it would be useful for people who don't have access to
the non free simulator?

> Kind regards,
> Chitlesh

kevin
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