Proposal: Revision of policy surrounding 3rd party and non-free software

[Christian Schaller]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Toshio Kuratomi" <a.badger at gmail.com>
> To: "Fedora community advisory board" <advisory-board at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 8:01:03 PM
> Subject: Re: Proposal: Revision of policy surrounding 3rd party and non-free	software
> 
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 12:56:37PM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > > Talking with jwb on IRC, it seems that the intention of this is not to
> > > overrule FESCo but to get a Board change of policy on libre software.
> > 
> > Um... that's oddly worded and not what I thought the result of our
> > conversation was.  I'm honestly not even sure what you mean by "change
> > of policy on libre software."  I don't think anyone is looking to
> > somehow exclude libre software or promote non-free software over libre
> > software.
> > 
> Hmmm... Yeah maybe oddly worded.  How about, "the intention of this is not
> to overrule FESCo but to get a Board change of policy on non-libre software"
> ?  I wrote it the other way thinking of it as being a change to how we
> balance the scales of promoting libre software vs collaborating with
> non-libre software but as you say, it's not really about devaluing libre
> software as much as increasing the value of collaborating with non-libre
> software sources.
> 
> 
> > > Taking that as a basis to start this conversation, most of this policy
> > > should go to FESCo to decide as it came up just a few months ago and
> > > resulted in this FESCo policy:
> > > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Third_Party_Repository_Policy
> > 
> > Yeah, that was the result of Christian making this this request to
> > FESCo.  So I'm confused why you think it should go _back_ to FESCo,
> > when FESCo clearly said non-libre software repositories were something
> > that would need to be discussed by the Board.
> > 
> Christian's proposal contains more than just a question of whether the Board
> okays inclusion of pointers to non-libre software.  As pointed out in the
> last paragraph of my previous message, it's also a proposal for the third
> party repository rules themselves (some of which conflict with FESCo's
> current policy).

Well since we are saying that the 3rd parties are 100% responsible for supporting
their own users, it would be a bit silly to try to impose our packaging rules on them.

We can't have it both ways here, both putting up big warning signs saying that this is unsupported
3rd party software and at the same time try to tell for instance Google how they build and package their
software.

Christian


> I think that portion of the proposal should go to FESCo to decide.  But
> the Board haas to weigh in on the question of whether pointing to non-libre
> software should be allowed at all before that.
> 
> Unless what Christian wants is to have the Board overrule the FESCo policy.
> In which case we should be having a different discussion here.
> 
> > >
> > > In FESCo's meeting where we discussed this[1]_, we decided that the
> > > Board's
> > > previously established position(s) of Fedora's relationship to Free
> > > Software
> > > would conflict with our making it easy to search for non-free software.
> > > Therefore we would need the Board to change that relationship before we
> > > could consider policy allowing non-libre repositories.
> > >
> > > At minimum, we'd probbaly need the Board to simply say that it was okay
> > > for
> > > us to allow searching and pointing to non-free software in the same
> > > manner
> > > as we allow for COPR repos (see the existing FESCo policy for the
> > > details).
> > 
> > As I understand things, this is all that is being requested.  I'm sure
> > Christian will correct me if I've misunderstood.
> > 
> Cool.  Then you and I are on the same page, at least.
> 
> -Toshio
> 
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