What do we want to archive with Fedora?

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Hi,

the current "alternate kernels"(¹) and the "never ending story: we don't 
want kmods in Fedora" discussions slightly annoy me a bit and makes me 
wondering: "What do we want to archive with Fedora"?

Or, to be more precise: "What's more important, giving the users what 
they want, giving them what we think is right for them or what we think 
is political the correctest?"

Sure, the answer is "something in between". But where exactly? I fully 
understand why kernel-developers like dwmw2 and davej don't want kmods 
or alternative kernels (BTW, those two are doing a great job for Fedora 
and upstream; thx guys!).

But it's something some people want/think they need(²). Heck, those 
people are probably even willing to put work into it to get it into 
Fedora(³) -- so do we really want to forbid it? I might be wrong, but I 
don't think that's the way to get the community involved properly.

CU
thl

(¹) -- just in case anybody is wondering: no, I do not want different 
kernel for our desktop and server spins, too. That makes no sense afaics.

(²) -- and understandable desire giving the fact that there are a lot of 
kernel-drivers out there that are not upstream (talking only about 
open-source drivers here, I don't want the proprietary crap in Fedora, 
too). Sure that sucks, and it would be best if all those modules would 
go directly upstream, but is it our task to enforce it? Sure, we should 
encourage it, but do we have to produce a worse product due to the 
missing not-yet-upstream stuff just to put load on the driver authors to 
make them send there modules upstream? If the answer is yes: why don't 
we obey our own rules and have tux in our kernels for ages? It will 
never go upstream afaics.

(³) -- no, those kernels and kmods should IMHO never be that import to 
get part of our main products (e.g. what's know as Fedora Core now and 
what will be "Fedora Server", "Fedora Desktop Gnome", "Fedora Desktop 
KDE" and "Fedora Directors Cut, Extra long" in the future). They should 
remain add ons mostly supported by the community-members that wants 
them. Well, maybe some might get included in special Editions like 
"Fedora Soundstudio" that might want to use a RT-Kernel or "Fedora FSF 
GNU/Linux" with a kernel that has all the firmware parts removed.