On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 18:14, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> > 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.
>
> If you don't agree with this project's goals of providing only open
> source software, then perhaps this isn't the project for you.
I certainly have no 'brand loyalty' to any single distribution. I
mostly like fedora because all the quirky non-standard admin
stuff I had to learn for RH 4 through 7 still make it look like
I know what I'm doing.
> Or let me ask it another way, can the fedora project create virtual
> images for vmplayer without using proprietary vmware to produce the
> images?
I don't see how this is different than proprietary versions
of real hardware. Or the software in the bios included in them.
You have to run something, virtual or real - and all real
machines I've seen are proprietary.
> Would it be appropriate for fedora to use proprietary
> compilers and other infrastructure pieces to produce the binary
> packages that make up the distribution?
I'm neutral on that issue too as long as the result is
portable. If using proprietary tools internally would
make the developers more productive, then it helps
everyone, just as using a proprietary revision control
system made Linus more productive when his associates
were willing to observe the license.
> If people in the community want to spend money on vmware products to
> produce vmplayer images for other people in the community who want to
> spend money on vmware products to play vmplayer images.. they are free
> to do so.
There is no need to spend money on the player. A free version
has been released - which is the point of all this. People
will be using it to preview all sorts of distributions whether
you approve or not. You only need the full version once to
create an image which then can be distributed freely. Subsequent
updates and maintenance can be done with just the player.
> But as a contributing member of this open source project, I
> feel its highly inappropriate for this project to be producing content
> that requires proprietary tools to either produce or consume.
It obviously doesn't 'require' vmware to run fedora. And it
still won't 'require' it just because someone makes the effort
to make it convenient to run there.
> And i
> will passionately argue against you and anyone else with words both
> small and polysyllabic who would desire to see this project formally
> produce or encourage the production of content that requires
> proprietary tools.
No one has even hinted about making it 'require' anything.
The issue is just about whether someone close to the project
should have a 'quality control' hand in the images that
are made available. That is, does anyone care what a
potential new user sees on his first test drive?
> If you'd like me to tell you how strongly i feel
> about this, I invite you to come into the #fedora channel on irc so
> you can I can have a nice little private chat without disturbing
> anyone else who might be offended by the words i choose to describe
> your opinions on the matter.
I have no problem making making my opinions public and not much
interest in ones that aren't.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
