virtio-win drivers

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 03:27:25PM -0600, Matt Domsch wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 03:12:00PM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> > I would argue that the virtio-win drivers are not content, but code.
> 
> code, for which we have the source code under an acceptable license
> (GPL).  The catch is, we can't build it in a Fedora distribution
> environment, nor can we execute it in such, _and_ it requires
> proprietary tools to build.  As such, keeping out of the distribution
> proper is appropriate, though I can see the parallels to firmware too.
> 
> Per Justin, there is an effort to get these drivers to build with
> MinGW.  At that time, they can be built in koji and packaged in the
> repositories, just as we do with the other mingw-* packages.  But that
> may be a while in coming.  Until then...
> 
> I'm looking for a way to say "yes" to this, to keep the Fedora Project
> umbrella wider than just the strict distribution focus.  This request
> may be a bit of a stretch, but only a bit.
> 
> If guests don't run well on our virt platform, especially when that
> guest is very widespread, people will simply run a different virt
> platform.  _That_ doesn't help us.  Making it easier to provide the
> best experience when using Fedora is, IMHO, worthwile and beneficial
> to Fedora and our user base.
> 
> We don't have to say yes to this hosting request. linux-kvm.org could
> be used to host these Windows drivers, but we have some precident in
> that livecd-creator for Windows is hosted on fedorahosted.org.
> 
> I'm not opposed to Fedora hosting these (I suggest alt.fp.o) until
> such a time that they can be built into the repositories properly.

I've put an item on the Board's agenda for today to explicitly answer
the general policy question, of whether it's acceptable for Fedora to
host outside the repositories binaries which are built from FOSS on
another platform, for the purpose of promoting the use and
functionality of Fedora.

I agree that we want to say "yes" to this, the discussion here has
converged on "yes," and as you pointed out Matt, we do this already at
http://liveusb-creator.fedorahosted.org.  I want to make sure it's
recorded for posterity and indicated in the packaging guidelines that
this is an option for developers in the future.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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