Connecting to proprietary web services (was Re: F14: what to do about pino / twitter)

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2010-10-01 at 15:50 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-10-01 at 14:52 -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> > This is definitely scope creeping the discussion here, but I'm coming
> > round to the viewpoint that Fedora shoudn't ship any application in
> > the default install whose primary purpose is to connect to proprietary
> > web services, or at least not ones configured by default to do so.
> > (All apps are of course free to be in the repositories).
> > 
> > This would dovetail nicely with making it not suck to install applications.
> 
> I don't think this is a useful direction to take the F14/pino problem
> into. If we stop installing applications that are useful for users, then
> the users will go somewhere else. 

This is the same argument you can make with proprietary hardware
drivers. Ultimately we've always agreed with the FSF position that
encouraging the use of proprietary software just makes it less likely
that free software will be written, so we shouldn't do it.

The situation here is exactly analogous. If we choose to, say, ship a
client configured to connect to identi.ca by default instead, we're
putting our weight behind freedom in a very important area, just as
important as hardware support.

I'd say we shouldn't adopt contradictory policies here.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
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