Les Mikesell wrote:
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 17:56, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
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.
No argument there. But, you aren't providing or supporting
it by providing an image that can run under it. You would
be supporting your users that would find that option useful.
The project does not provide support by proprietary software. Period.
Well, now we are back to square one. You can't say "community
oriented" and "no matter how many people ask for it" at the
same time and make any sense.
Of course it makes perfect sense. Is not Apache a community project
because it does not include proprietary software and only includes
software under the Apache license?. Is not the Linux Kernel community
project because the Kernel developers wouldnt not support proprietary
modules?. Is not Debian a open and community project because it doesnt
include proprietary beyond a informal non-free repository (Fedora went
beyond this level by not even including such repositories) ?. If all of
these projects are community oriented, then so is Fedora. Also remember
that community has no way to participate in development of proprietary
software and including such software would reduce the community ability
to participate. The idea of not including proprietary and enabling the
community is tied to one another in this way. Also if you look at the
survey when we did ask the community, they were supportive of this goal.
So you cant even say they want the project to support it.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Fedora.
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.
I wasn't able to find any when I tried a couple of days ago. Sure,
anyone can do this, but wouldn't it be a good idea for someone
who cared about promoting the project to make sure it actually
works and is kept up to date. In fact if such a person had
done it with FC5 test1 he would have noticed that it didn't
work right and might have been able to get it fixed before the
iso image release.
So see someone would have to not only include it but also test and
support it. This is something that the project does not want to invest
resources in because it isnt against the goals of the project and also
because we prioritize and spend time on innovative open source
development. Xen, Stateless Linux, SELinux MCS, GFS, Fedora directory
server etc, many of them developed by Red Hat and driven for integration
within Fedora are good examples of where we are spending our time on.
--
Rahul
Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers
