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

[Matthias Clasen]

On Tue, 2014-01-21 at 15:32 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 02:52:22PM -0500, Tom Callaway wrote:
> > I recognize Christian's larger point, but I worry about a loss in
> > improving (or creating) FOSS tools when Non-Free tools exist. That's the
> > slippery slope that I am uncomfortable with, a world in which nouveau
> > wasn't invested in because "everyone just uses the NVIDIA driver".
> 
> This is a big concern of mine, too.

The nvidia driver has always been available if you needed it, just not
in a form and packaging that is accessible the wider audience of
possible users that Christian gave an example of. The refusal to make it
accessible mainly punishes those users, pushing them towards other
options and condemning Fedora to be a niche offering for users who like
to fiddle to get things to work.

The people who have the skills and get payed to work on things like the
nouveau driver would not get distracted by a graphical way to install
nvidia drivers.

When it comes to applications on the other hand, having an easier way to
install samples from the wider ecosystem will probably help improving
the free options, rather than hinder it. It is always good to see what
the competition is doing, and take some inspiration from it.

If you want to keep our users from seeing non-free options to keep them
from recognizing that the free choices suck, then you've already
admitted defeat...