What do we think of this?

[Mike McGrath]

Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Jesse Keating wrote:
>
>> They have "non-free" as in not open source in different repos, but 
>> "non-free" as in "against US law" while it is still opensource may 
>> not be in a different repo.  That said, even if the non-free stuff is 
>> in a different repo, they still maintain that repo and can coordinate 
>> the deps across and such.  Fedora by nature makes it so that the 
>> non-free stuff has to exist outside the Fedora umbrella where we have 
>> no control over the repo and no good integration.
>
> Surely it's not in the interests of the 3rd party repos to contribute 
> to Fedora breakage.  Right?
>
> Is it *theroetically* possible to have a set of standards that 
> unofficial repos could follow to be less likely to break us?  And if 
> so, what prevents those standards from being created, and met?
>
> Maybe these are stupid questions -- but I like putting stupid 
> questions on the record.
>
> --g 
We could do a better job in coordinating with them and while its not in 
their interests to break Fedora its not always in their interests to do 
the work, which can be significant, to make sure it doesn't break 
anything.  We as a community tend to take the stance "If its not free in 
every sense of the word, its not fedora"  I think that some of the 3rd 
party repos out there have left a bad taste in our mouths as a result.  
I think we should embrace any work that people do for fedora as much as 
the law allows.  This includes things like paid mp3 support and such.  
This might make these non-official fedora repos seem less... 3rd party 
and easier to work with.

    -Mike