Fedora Core 3 Transferred to Fedora Legacy

Rahul Sundaram sundaram at redhat.com
Sun Jan 22 23:56:28 UTC 2006


Les Mikesell wrote:

>On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 15:28, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>The free availability of the VMware vmplayer really changes
>>>the picture for test-drive releases.  I'd say the single most
>>>dramatic thing that could be done now for new-user, new-version
>>>rollout would be to maintain up to date virtual machine images
>>>for full and minimal installations and promote them on
>>>the main download site. 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>It could be but it isnt within the project scope to support any 
>>proprietary software. 
>>    
>>
>
>Please explain how making an image available that runs under
>the free vmplayer 'supports' proprietary software any more
>than making an iso image available 'supports' CD and
>media manufacturers.   
>
Pretty simple. Vmware is proprietary software. ISO images and hardware 
that use them are not.  The CD and media manufactures deal with open 
interfaces to the hardware supported natively in Linux kernel. Fedora 
does not provide proprietary drives for some hardware either.

>And more to the point, how does
>this relate to being community oriented, which I thought
>was the topic at hand?   Was it a community choice to not support any proprietary software (in whatever way you see
>this as support)?  I don't see how this choice helps anyone. 
>  
>
It is not but the project also serves other goals. No matter how many 
people ask for it, Fedora project will continue to support only legally 
unencumbered Free and open source software. This goal cannot be changed 
by the community just like you cannot ask Linux kernel developers to 
include non-GPL'ed software. Fortunately the community is generally 
supportive of this goal.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Fedora


>> Red Hat has a nice team of developers working on 
>>Xen instead which could serve similar purposes. FC5 will likely have a 
>>pretty good implementation of Xen.
>>    
>>
>
>When Xen provides the same functionality, including the
>ability to test-drive a linux distribution under a running
>Windows installation, it would be reasonable to discuss
>whether it is worth maintaining both.
>
Xen can very well support Windows. In fact Xen did support a modified 
version of Windows before MS decided to pull off the project. Now it can 
be supported through hardware virtualisation. Intel and AMD will start 
supporting it in their next generation processors. Xen will be able to 
run more operating systems and support more architectures with better 
security through fine tuned isolation of processes and near native 
performance for guest operating systems.  See 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/xen and related references for more 
information.

>  Right now, there's
>only one choice and using it would help get the product you
>do have some better exposure. 
>  
>
Sure. There are already VMWare images for FC5 test versions. You can 
google them. I merely said that the project by itself wouldnt support it.

-- 
Rahul 

Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers




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