Search Engine on start.fedoraproject.org

[Matt Domsch]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 02:20:42PM -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Jul 2010, Mike McGrath wrote:
> 
> > It's been pointed out to me that start.fedoraproject.org is in violation
> > of Infrastructure's free software policy:
> >
> > http://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/csi/free-software-policy/en-US/html-single/#FreeSoftware-Standard-Choosing
> >
> > In particular the "Proprietary Dependence" clause.  Now, start.fp.o has
> > existed long before the policy was put in place and a grandfather
> > exception does exist.... but I thought I'd mention it.  This could be an
> > opportunity to completely re-think the start.fedoraproject.org home page.
> > I know that upon its design there was some major things in the works but
> > AFAIK most if not all of them fell through and that search engine link was
> > all that was left.
> >
> > Thoughts, comments?
> >
> 
> Got this from jds2001 (Jon Stanley - Board Member, cardnals fan) who
> requested that I forward it on:

[snip]
> In short, I don’t think that we can remove Google search without also
> removing all other external dependencies from the infrastructure, which is
> neither desirable nor practical.

We can remove Google search from start.fp.o today if we want to, there
is nothing stopping us from doing so.  It doesn't have to be
all-or-nothing, and we run plenty of equipment (say, network switches,
load balancers, servers, storage arrays) that are not Free in any
sense of the word.  Our stance needs to be more than "if practical,
use open source", but it need not be "we only use open source
hardware, software, and services we can verify as being open source,
non-malware, ...".  I have no problem grandfathering in the services
we have, and, as time, needs, and available effort permit, substitute
them for open source services we run ourselves. But I'm not willing to
shut down all of Fedora Infrastructure because we can't get the board
layouts and firmware source for our servers and switches, and can't
power the data centers on solar.  There's ideals and goals, and there
is cutting off our nose to spite our face.

The immediate question is, what do we want start.fp.o to be?  It's
amazing real estate that we are only just barely using, and in its
current form doesn't seem all that helpful to the millions of users
who see it daily as they start their browser.  Having a way to search
Fedora or other Free content is one possible use, clearly there are
others.

-Matt