Announcements regarding Remixes, etc. on the announce-list

Paul W. Frields stickster at gmail.com
Tue Sep 7 14:25:48 UTC 2010


On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 08:52:05AM -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
> On 09/07/2010 08:30 AM, Jared K. Smith wrote:
> > As I waded through the moderation queues for various email lists this
> > morning, I noticed there was a pending announcement on the
> > announce-list regarding a Russian Fedora Remix.  I rejected the
> > announcement (as it the remix contains non-free software), but in
> > hindsight, I think this is probably something that we should discuss
> > here on the advisory-board list.
> 
> I support your initial assessment.  My common-sense-o-meter tells me
> announce-list is not a good or proper venue for items containing
> non-fedora (ie, non-free) software.

Well, there is a difference between non-Fedora, and non-free.  Take
for instance the regular announcements by the Cooperative Bug
Isolation project at University of Wisconsin at Madison.  This project
uses a repository of add-ons of specially instrumented software for
Fedora, all completely free as in freedom.  (There's more information
about the project at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/cbi/ if you want to read
more.)

This type of projects is, at worst, not detrimental to Fedora.  I'd
say it's actually a great use of our remixability, and aims at making
free software better.  Shouldn't we encourage that kind of project
through our announcement list?

I agree it's counterproductive for us to announce projects that don't
adhere to Fedora's stated mission and principles.  I think there are
projects well-aligned and associated with Fedora that ought to have
some ability to reach our users.

The questions I'd personally ask before approving an announcement that
is not purely Fedora related would include, "Does this announcement
concern exclusively free and open source software?".


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