Open Letter: Why I, Kevin Kofler, am not rerunning for FESCo

[Kevin Kofler]

Sir Gallantmon (ニール・ゴンパ) wrote:
> Though, there are some instances where the prevailing opinion should be
> ignored, when there is no solid evidence to back it up, e.g. Mono and the
> like.

Indeed, I also think defending freedom is important (and it was part of my 
campaign). But I've also been unhappy with FESCo's decisions in that domain, 
e.g.:
* libvdpau was approved for Fedora. This is a library which:
  - only accelerates decoding patent-encumbered MPEG family video codecs.
    ALL software which uses that is in RPM Fusion, not Fedora, anyway.
  - has no actual Free Software implementations. It is ONLY implemented by
    proprietary drivers.
  So what does Fedora have to gain from this pseudo-Free library?
* in at least 2 occasions, so-called "Open Core" [1] crippleware has been
  not only approved for Fedora (which makes sense, as IMHO we should accept
  everything under a Free license and with no patent issues as a Fedora
  package), but advertised as a Fedora Feature, which I consider to be
  completely counterproductive, as it gives free press coverage to such
  crippleware and sends a message to companies that releasing some crippled
  shareware version under a Free Software license is enough to get your
  product advertised as Free or "Open Source" all over the planet. My
  complaints about giving free advertising to such crippleware have been
  entirely ignored.

[1] http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/10/16/open-core-shareware.html

        Kevin Kofler