FESCo decision on 3rd party repositories

[Matthias Clasen]

On Wed, 2013-12-11 at 16:23 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 4:21 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > At the FESCo meeting today, the following things were decided on 3rd
> > party repositories.  Some of this is specific to COPRs because those
> > are an odd case of 3rd party repositories.
> >
> > 1) COPRs can provide RPMS with .repo files in them because Red Hat is
> > the provider and assumes liability, but those cannot be included in
> > the main Fedora repos per FESCo decree.
> >
> > 2) COPR repos may be searched for applications to install as long as
> > the user is explicitly asked to enable the copr before installing
> > packages from them.
> >
> > 3) General 3rd party repositories cannot be searched or enabled due to
> > liability concerns.
> >
> > (NOTE: "searched" in 2 and 3 was intended to cover searching by
> > software.  Clearly users can manually search for anything.)
> >
> > 4) FESCo is okay with pointing to specific free software repositories
> > in the same way as COPR repos if they are approved by FESCo and Fedora
> > Legal. They are not limited in the criteria that they can choose to
> > apply.
> >
> > 5) For non-free sofware repositories, FESCo is not changing exisiting
> > policy. Non-free software repositories are not allowed.  Permission to
> > make these discoverable via searching software would require a change
> > in policy from the Fedora Board.
> >
> > In short, this means products can request approval of specific 3rd
> > party free software repositories.  If approved, they can include their
> > contents along with COPR repos in application searches a user does and
> > offer to install them with a warning that they come from a 3rd party,
> > non-Fedora repo.  Repositories containing non-free software cannot be
> > enabled by default or made discoverable through software.
> 
> The FESCo ticket documenting all of this is here:
> https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/1201

The discussion in that ticket was focused almost entirely on coprs,
which are really not that relevant when it comes to third-party
software.

I have no problem with the 'cannot be enabled by default' part of the
last sentence, but 'cannot be made discoverable' is bordering on
censorship - fesco does not get to decide what users do with their
fedora systems.

Lastly: was any attempt made to invite Christian to the Fesco meeting ?
I find it somewhat questionable to decide this item while the main
proponent who is cc'ed in the ticket is on a plane to Lahore.