Why people are not switching to Fedora

[Ankur Sinha]

Hi,

On Thu, 2015-05-07 at 23:27 +0300, Elad Alfassa wrote:
> I should also point out that this specific third party repo is not a
> solution. It's not easy for people to install, it requires prior
> knowledge. If a user needs to google search how to make their music
> play and follow instructions on some forum, that's a very bad first
> impression. If you google how to play mp3 in fedora, the first result
> is an askfedora thread, whose first answer talks about gstreamer1
> porting... that's not useful for users. At all. So not only it's a
> google search, it's a google search that would land you on pages with
> confusing technical terms. Yes, Workstation is for developers, but 
> you
> can't expect every web developer to get familiar with the 
> architecture
> of our multimedia stack just to play their music.

I've never understood this argument tbh. Instead of us educating
people on *WHY* the codecs aren't provided by Fedora, I see people
repeatedly speaking about how not having them in Fedora is a huge deal
breaker. 

While one reason is patents as someone already mentioned, the other is
also the philosophy of FOSS - I hope it isn't just about using a free
of charge system.. 

I do understand that having multimedia support is important user wise,
and I'm more than happy to spend time trying to educate people - I'm
not in favour of any changes that encourage people to install software
that is not FOSS.

> And even if they do find that repo, they have no way to install it
> securely and safely. While rpmfusion packages are signed, the key is
> downloaded in the initial setup (when you download the -release RPM)
> over plain text,
> and the page you download it from is a wiki people can just edit - 
> and
> also served over plain text so someone could modify the instructions
> and the links...
> 
> Another point is that this repo does not seem to be fast enough with
> security updates, as it is operated by volunteers and doesn't seem to
> have a security response team - so it sometimes takes weeks for
> critical security fixes to be shipped to users.

So, let us help the third party repository become better? Wouldn't
that be a good way to go to help our users?

> 
> I don't know how to solve these issues. I know there's a complicated
> legal background for all of this, but what I do know is:
> 1) People should be able to play music and videos
> 2) People shouldn't need to sacrifice their safety to play music and 
> videos
> 3) People shouldn't need to have special knowledge about how their OS
> works to perform these basic tasks.

4) People should know what FOSS is about.
5) People should know what intellectual property rights are.

I want to reiterate - it's not just the legal liabilities that such
software bring to RH, it's also about the philosophy that FOSS is
based on.

> 
> And this example is about codecs... drivers are even a bigger mess.
> How is a user supposed to download a wifi driver when their wifi is
> not working? Keep in mind that many newer laptops don't have an
> ehternet port at all. If you have a broadcom wireless chip and no
> ethernet port, you'll need a second device, or a second OS, to find
> out how to get the driver and how to install it. And if you have a
> different OS that already works, and Fedora requires you to either
> replace your wifi chip or figure out the magic command lines to
> install a driver, why would you make the switch?

Again, it completely comes down to lack of awareness - people that
have bitten by the broadcom issue (even though broadcom support in the
kernel has become much much better recently) know better than to buy
broadcom in the future.


> Basically, the more time a person needs to spend on learning how to
> make your OS work the less they'd want to make the switch.

It isn't "making your OS work", it's "installing additional
components" - again, if they knew why it had to be done, I'm sure they
wouldn't mind doing it once every 13 months (and less if they use
fedup which has worked like a charm on my three machines this week :D)

I'm completely on board with any movement that aims to educate people
on these issues - I'm not on board with any movement about changing
our foundations/policies regarding.
-- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha

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