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

[Anders Karlsson]

* Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat.com> [20080323 20:52]:
> On Mar 23, 2008, Chris Snook <csnook at redhat.com> wrote:
> > Pardon my ignorance, but I honestly don't see a risk in shipping
> > *sources* which contain hex-coded firmware blobs that have been
> > licensed for distribution,
> 
> This is not about the risk.  This is about not distributing non-Free
> software.  For me, it's not a matter of licensing, not a matter of
> license compatibility.  It's a matter of not supporting the
> distribution of non-Free Software, no matter how hidden it is, or how
> important it is for some.

Right, so what is stopping you from maintaining your own branch of
Fedora, own repo's and own infrastructure for the work that you are
doing?

I just do not understand the need to cripple Fedora (that happens to
work rather well at the moment for seemingly rather a lot of people
without "doing an Ubuntu") by stripping out the firmware from the
kernel *in the distribution*.

If this really was so important, should this work not be done at the
upstream level, with kernel.org, rather than on distribution level.

> I'm not taking away anyone's choices.  I'm just adding means for
> people to run and distribute Fedora while being more assured they're
> not using or distributing any code they got from Fedora that is
> non-Free Software.

I still do not see why cloning Fedora to a separate project (leaving
existing Fedora intact and fully working) is not a better option.

> > If you'd like that incentive to carry any weight, perhaps you should
> > write a patch that has a chance of getting accepted into Fedora
> > proper.
> 
> A patch won't fix this.  People keep on adding firmwares to the
> upstream kernel.  It has to be a continous monitoring and maintenance
> process.  It's painful, I know.  I'm willing to do it, to keep a 100%
> Free kernel.  I'm willing to do it for myself, even if it's not
> integrated in Fedora.

I am really glad to hear that. I still think that this effort you
describe, if this is that important, should be done upstream or by
cloning the distribution.

> Now, if Fedora doesn't take it, it will say something about Fedora's
> stance towards freedom.  I know I differ from Fedora in this regard
> already, so that's no big deal.
> 
> > Personally, I just want to install the package called "kernel".
> > Unless I have an absolutely compelling reason, I'm not going out of my
> > way for anything else, be it "kernel-libre" or "kernel-firmware".
> 
> I respect your position, even though I disagree with it.  That's one
> of the reasons why I've started this as a separate kernel-libre
> package, rather than asking Fedora to drop all the non-Free firmware
> in the kernel and outside, out of coherence with its stated mission.
> 
> However, some people find the existence of non-Free Software a
> sufficiently compelling reason to want a 100% Free kernel, and then a
> 100% Free distro.  I wish Fedora could be it.  If it doesn't want to
> be, that's fine, there's always BLAG.

Utopia sounds good, but the path there is not short, nor a straight
line. While I agree with you that 100% Free (as in speech) should be
the goal, having a gun-foot moment now is counter-productive. "Pick
your battles to win the war" as someone else said.

Wireless firmware is closed source at the moment for very good
reasons. Some countries don't like it when people have full access to
radio transmitters as there are laws and regulations to not create
total chaos on the airwaves. Hence, the firmware for those
transmitters are kept closed source. How do I know? I spoke to one of
the Intel people several years ago, when I first bought a IBM X31
Centrino laptop that had an IPW2100 card in it. The reason it took
them over a year to provide even the start of a driver was the FCC
having grave concerns about an open driver being subject to abuse.

The trade-off then was open driver - closed firmware (so that power to
the transmitter was controlled in firmware). Looking at this thread,
that seems to still be the case.

If you were to take this 'fight' seriously, then you should convince
the FCC (and similar organisations worldwide) that the control on RF
transmitters and airwaves should be relaxed to the point that
companies can release fully open firmware (as no-one will care if a
tweaked firmware is used to boost signal strength at the likely cost
of interference with other peoples equipment around them).

As you see, "choice" have repercussions. The question is, how far do
you want to take *your* "choice" at the expense of others?

/Anders