firefox.i386 in x86_64 repo

[Mike A. Harris]

Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 10:15:12PM -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
>> It may be temporary, it may not be.  We've removed mozilla in favor of Firefox 
>> for building things against, so firefox grew a -devel sub package.  However 
>> this is a temporary measure until xulrunner is ready for prime time which 
>> will provide the basis of the browsing stuff and a -devel package to build 
>> against, so that firefox doesn't need a -devel anymore, and packages can use 
>> a much smaller xulrunner to develop against.  At that time, firefox may cease 
>> to be multilib automatically, however I would entertain requests to force it 
>> to be multilib...
> 
> The argument-which-I-hope-I-will-not-restart applies here too -- Macromedia
> _ought_ to make an x86_64 version, and they have less incentive to if all
> the distro vendors make it easier for them to just ship i386 everywhere.

I can totally agree with this.  But others will say, and with
a reasonably good point is wether the number of people using
x86_64 is larger or smaller than the number of people using
and requiring flash mandatorily.

There is no right answer for such, only hardcore left and
right viewpoints based on personal individual preference and
requirements.

If Fedora were to ship _only_ the 32bit version of firefox
in x86_64, then I would more or less have a problem with
that assuming the x86_64 build were more performant (as it
should be) overall.

The web is probably _the_ most important client-side "killer
app" right now however, and like it or not, many people rely
on flash, java and/or other stuff which is equally proprietary,
and can only consider using a product if it provides the
functionality needed.  Including the i386 version of firefox
enables people to optionally use this software they require
without forcing it on them, allowing more people to use the
OS without having to rebuild things themselves, or hack around
the problem.  It seems a reasonable compromise between two
extreme viewpoints to include 32bit ff to me, and it itself
is completely open source.

I also agree however that in theory at least, this provides
macromedia with less incentive to provide a 64bit version of
flash.  Where I contrast though, is that I do not see this
as a problem.  To provide only the 64bit version of firefox
would in theory promote macromedia to provide a 64bit version
of a proprietary product, thereby encouraging use of
proprietary products even more IMHO, as 32bit OS's are legacy
in many ways now, and will be legacy in all ways in the near
future.  Let's leave proprietary software stuck in 32bit
land, and hopefully an open source alternative to flash will
come along which happens to be 64bit clean.

Just an alternative viewpoint, also purely based on open
source advocacy.

-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.