[Fwd: Re: Fedora free software?]

[Rahul Sundaram]

Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>> From: Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
>>
>>     I honestly wish we didn't have to have such a clause, but without binary
>>     firmware, the vast majority of wireless hardware is completely
>>     non-functional.
>>
>> We have to recommend that people buy the only products that don't
>> require non-free firmware.  See the Hardware pages on fsf.org.
>> Can you help spread the word about this?
> 
> The link that RMS is referring to is here:
> http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/hardware.html
> 
> I don't think there is any harm in Fedora recommending that consumers
> purchase wireless products that don't require firmware. I'm not entirely
> sure the best way to go about this, though.

While talking to some of the Fedora games SIG folks on irc earlier there 
was general reluctance to put out a Fedora games spin which I was 
advocating for as a show case for all the nice games we have in the 
repository . The major reason is that 3D games require proprietary 
drivers to function on many systems and having just 2D games wouldn't be 
that appealing. If we include 3D games and users can't run them out of 
the box in a games spin on many systems that would just appear broken.

The solution I thought of was having a driver buddy similar to codec 
buddy with the major difference that it wont install anything or add 
pointers to the location of the drivers but warn/educate users on 
alternatives. If they install the spin on systems where we do not 
provide have 3D acceleration by default which translates into everyone 
of these systems with ATI and Nvidia cards then we provide a quick 
notification on their desktop directing to more information pointing on 
what chipsets/systems work out of the box in Fedora with full 3D 
acceleration which translates mainly to the ones with Intel chipsets.

Extending this we could do something similar for systems which require 
binary only firmware with or without redistribution rights.

Rahul