I must be doing something seriously wrong...

Bill Nottingham notting at redhat.com
Fri May 22 16:36:47 UTC 2009


Toshio Kuratomi (a.badger at gmail.com) said: 
>> Given what Fedora does with respect to software patents in otherwise
>> free software, I think you're wrong here. We *do* make that choice
>> and related modifications all the time.
>>
> That situation is different, though, as Fedora has been told that there  
> isn't a choice WRT patents.  The decree of eliminating patents has come  
> down from Red Hat legal so unless Fedora has the wherewithal to be  
> funded by someone else than Red Hat there is no choice being made here.
>
> Fedora does have a choice WRT flags.  There is a benefit to not shipping  
> flags but it isn't a matter of if we do ship flags, Red Hat will no  
> longer sponsor us.

It is still a situation where, due to the legal and cultural climate
of a particular country or countries, we draw the line as to content
& code that we include.  To reference my later point, I feel fairly comfortable
saying that we're not going to be shipping default backgrounds consisting
of naked people, or photographs of open surgical procedures, or overtly
religious iconography, or any variety of things, even though we have no
legal obligation to in that regard. Do we need an explicit policy on that
too? (I'm sure someone will argue that we should go ahead and ship all
those things if upstream includes them; I most assuredly do not agree.)

It's why I feel slippery slope arguments are missing the point - the
line as to what we'll ship and what we won't ship is already there, even
outside of legal obligations; this discussion about flags is essentially where
to place the line.

Bill




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