[fab] Fedora as Free Software?

[Michael Tiemann]

I'm in Porto Alegre attending the FISL (Brazilian Free Software)
conference.  Free software gets a lot of play down here in Brazil.

There's an edited copy of the Ubuntu distribution on the FSF's tabletop,
as well as an edited copy of the Kubuntu distribution.  The edits look
like this:

                    NOT                       NOT
    This software is   free software.  You are   encouraged to share it
                     ^                         ^

The point the FSF is making is that Ubuntu includes non-free software,
like nVidia drivers.  I believe that the last go-round on the Fedora
lists about our strong, STRONG commitment to free software suggests that
we can take a strong position, and enlist the free software community to
take a stand for us and with us.

Today, we have the following packaging guidelines for Fedora:

        The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux
        community to build a complete, general purpose operating system
        exclusively from open source software. In accordance with that,
        all packages included in Fedora must be covered under an open
        source license. 
        
        We clarify an open source license in three ways: 
        
              * OSI-approved license. You can find the list of OSI
                approved licenses here:
                [WWW]http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ 
                
              * GPL-Compatible, Free Software Licenses. You can find the
                list here: [WWW]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-
                list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses 
                
              * GPL-Incompatible, Free Software Licenses. You can find
                the list here:
                [WWW]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-
                list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses 
                

        If the license of a package isn't covered in one of those lists,
        urge the upstream maintainer to seek OSI-approval for their
        license here:
        [WWW]http://www.opensource.org/docs/certification_mark.php#approval 

        Alternately, if code is dual licensed, and one of the licenses
        meets the open source license criteria, that code can be
        included in Fedora under the open source license. 

        Kernel-module packages must use one of the following licenses:
        GNU General Public License v2.0, GNU Lesser General Public
        License v2, IBM Public License v1.0, Common Public License v0.5,
        Q Public License v1.0, Open Software License v1.1, or any open
        source license granted by Red Hat. 

        Note that any kernel module licensed with any license except GPL
        or LGPL will taint the kernel. 

I'm wondering what you guys think about changing the tilt of Fedora from
open source to free software.  Namely, saying that the license should
meet the free software definition (
 http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html ) and then mentioning that
OSI-certified licenses (with the exception of the Reciprocal Public
License, which we're going to reevaluate) are a good list, as well as
the free software licenses that are listed on the FSF website.

The goal is to make Fedora a distribution that the FSF can positively
endorse.  I think we're really close.  Any reason to not try to go all
the way?

M