On 01/21/2011 02:14 AM, Jesús Franco wrote:
Hi Fedora fellows!
I've become interested in a remix of Fedora based just on FaiF software.
Please correct me if i'm wrong but i think the kernel is the only tiny
piece of software it's non free. I'm not saying redistributable, but free
as in freedom
Welcome.
If you are talking about firmware, the kernel is not the only piece.
Most of them independent firmware packages don't have equivalent source
under Free software licenses and Fedora merely requires them to be
redistributable. FSF free system guidelines at
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html are
themselves based on the Fedora guidelines and was born out of my
discussions with RMS and FSF on bringing more clarity to FSF's position
on various things beyond just software (fonts or game data for instance)
and FSF's later document at
http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html confirms that they
believe Fedora conforms to the policy with the exception of firmware.
Fedora's exception is at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Binary_Firmware
So you might have to replace the kernel and exclude (via yum.conf or at
the repo level) most if not all of the firmware for such a remix.
There is a project called Blag who includes the kernel-libre provided
by
Linux-libre project (maintained for Alexandre Oliva, engineer at Red
Hat), and another "purified" software like icecat instead of upstream
firefox. IMHO, it's not necessary a whole new project just to provide to
users worried about non-free blobs in the kernel a kernel-libre. It's
easy and straightforward to do it in Fedora as it is now.
You will have to confirm with FSF whether they consider Firefox as free
software or not. My understanding is that they do consider it as Free
software and Icecat or whatever was born out of a preference towards
promoting software that doesn't point to non-free plugins. RMS had
earlier contacted me asking if there was a interest in packaging Icecat
for Fedora and although I don't think we have a policy preventing that
from being packaged in the official repos, it seems a bit redundant
considering the very few changes between that and Icecat and I in turn
suggested to RMS earlier to create and promote a firefox extension
similar to Ubufox instead that would favor say Gnash over Adobe Flash
and that mail was copied to the Icecat developer although I haven't
heard from them after that.
On the question of kernel-libre, we don't permit alternative kernels to
be in the official Fedora repository although Alexandre Oliva has
created a repo as per my suggestions via identi.ca and it is quite easy
to use in a Fedora Remix.
Another question is the visual identity, i've heard some
complains about
the displacement of nodoka as default theme of Gnome. I'd like to include
in a remix as default theme too, among another "freedom brands" like
libreoffice, and focus my remix in the latinamerican locales. Thus
hopefully letting more space to include office and graphics apps. I think
in liveUSBs of 1GB size, more than a classic remix of <700 MB.
Nodoka is a GNOME 2.x theme and GNOME 3 themes have a different format
and Fedora 15 is going to default to using GNOME Shell and unless Nodoka
is ported over, this idea seems a bit belated. You might want to talk
to Nodoka author, Martin Sourada on his GNOME 3 plans before picking a
default. Hope that helps and let me know if you need further assistance.
Rahul