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

[Christian Schaller]

The thinking is simply that we can solve this and we can solve it in a way that isn't detrimental to the user experience of Fedora users. 

It is already likely there will be some changes in the Fedora kernel policy due to the Cloud WG wanting a different kernel, so as part of the process going forward there will be negotiations between the different WGs and with the Fedora kernel team to figure out what the different needs are, what is viable within the constraints of the resources we have, what are the possibilities and challenges each available solution bring.

But to address one concern that might be there, even if we wanted to we do not have the manpower to do a RHEL style kernel policy, so no matter what happens that will not be the solution.

But at the end of the day the the answer is 'trust us'. The how part here is a technical problem I personally plan on leaving to the domain experts. In the form of Josh and the Fedora kernel team we have the lessons learned over the last decade inside the team and I am sure Josh can confirm that he and the Fedora kernel team is not planning to accept changes that will create an unsustainable situation for them or their users. 

Of course if there are people on this list who think they are better at maintaining the kernel for Fedora than Josh and his team, feel free to step forward with a proposal for taking over the job, if you can convince FeSCO you are better suited I would be a happy man ,as it means I can assign Josh and the guys to work on various other kernel related projects inside Red Hat.

Christian


----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rahul Sundaram" <metherid at gmail.com>
> To: "Fedora community advisory board" <advisory-board at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2014 10:40:24 AM
> Subject: Re: Proposal: Revision of policy surrounding 3rd party and non-free	software
> 
> Hi
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 4:20 AM, Christian Schaller wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So between Josh and Red Hat graphics team
> I hope you can trust that we have the right people on board to find a
> solution if a solution is possible.
> 
> I am sorry but "Trust us" is not enough. I am sure you have the right people
> on board with the idea and there is no doubt those skilled people could do a
> reasonable job here but the details matter. For instance, if the idea is
> that we are no longer to rebase to latest upstream kernels because doing so,
> might break proprietary drivers, that affects all users regardless of
> whether they are using the driver or not and there are Fedora users who are
> specifically using the distribution because of the kernel update policy. How
> is QA on those non-free software going to work out? Not everything needs to
> be fleshed out but it is important to share as much as you can and be
> transparent about the current thinking on these issues.
> 
> Rahul
> 
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