virtio-win drivers

[Matt Domsch]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 03:12:00PM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> I would argue that the virtio-win drivers are not content, but code.

code, for which we have the source code under an acceptable license
(GPL).  The catch is, we can't build it in a Fedora distribution
environment, nor can we execute it in such, _and_ it requires
proprietary tools to build.  As such, keeping out of the distribution
proper is appropriate, though I can see the parallels to firmware too.

Per Justin, there is an effort to get these drivers to build with
MinGW.  At that time, they can be built in koji and packaged in the
repositories, just as we do with the other mingw-* packages.  But that
may be a while in coming.  Until then...

I'm looking for a way to say "yes" to this, to keep the Fedora Project
umbrella wider than just the strict distribution focus.  This request
may be a bit of a stretch, but only a bit.

If guests don't run well on our virt platform, especially when that
guest is very widespread, people will simply run a different virt
platform.  _That_ doesn't help us.  Making it easier to provide the
best experience when using Fedora is, IMHO, worthwile and beneficial
to Fedora and our user base.

We don't have to say yes to this hosting request. linux-kvm.org could
be used to host these Windows drivers, but we have some precident in
that livecd-creator for Windows is hosted on fedorahosted.org.

I'm not opposed to Fedora hosting these (I suggest alt.fp.o) until
such a time that they can be built into the repositories properly.

Thanks,
Matt