xulrunner 2.0 in rawhide (F15) bundles several system libs

[Kevin Kofler]

Sven Lankes wrote:
> I'm not worried too much about a library being system or not. What I'm
> worried about is twofold:
> 
> 1. Established packagers of high-profile packages get to do what they
>    want with fedora packages while small-scale packagers of low-profile
>    packages get told to bugger off if they cannot make their packages
>    use system libs (zsync anyone?).

+1

I really don't see why we keep exempting Firefox from our rules.

>    Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I can see none of the chosen ff
>    comitters has actually asked fesco to grant an exception for libvpx,
>    right? Now that the topic has come up there is talk in the ticket
>    that the exception should be granted but that cannot feel right to
>    anyone, can it?

And indeed, the fact that this is only being brought to the responsible 
committee (FESCo) after the fact is also unacceptable.

> 2. The combination of the Mozilla Trademark issue combined with the
>    strict handling of patches by (corporate|distro)-maintainers (I don't
>    think that this is a RH/Fedora issue - same with Canonical/Ubuntu)
>    makes me feel uneasy about ff being called Free sofware.

Indeed, Firefox is effectively non-Free for Fedora, since we're being kept 
hostage of their patch approval processes, and since our maintainer has a 
conflict of interest and values Mozilla's policies above Fedora's.

> (And yes - I am aware that the other relevant floss-browser is much
> worse than mozilla wrt. bundling libs and using forked libs).

(Hey, don't insinuate that Konqueror is irrelevant!)

Chromium is not in Fedora for exactly that reason. Why does Firefox get a 
free pass?

> Also the bug is not about _using_ the system lib it's just about
> allowing the user to build against it.

Indeed. And this is a core part of freedom.

Plus, the end user isn't going to build Firefox himself. It's going to be 
built by a packager who knows what he's doing when building against the 
system library, and the distribution also controls that library. So I really 
don't see why Mozilla refuses to allow it.

>> From Mozilla's perspective, they could:
>> 1. Do what they are doing now, temporarily not allow a few new
>> system libs, waiting until they get banged into shape and *then*
>> enable system libs (down the road).
>> 2. Bang on the code in private and wait until it meets every Fedora
>> packaging guideline, etc, until committing to the upstream
>> repository, so we all get to wait for all of the cool shit that's
>> happening.
> 
> 3. Add the patch to their system that would allow people to build
> against a system lib.

+1

        Kevin Kofler