Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul 14, 2008, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:

> Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 <at> yahoo.com> writes:
>> A Because Fedora includes Firmware and those guys don't.   

> Bullsh*t!

> BLAG 70000 ships:
> * the original Fedora 7 kernels as the default and kernel-libre only as an 
> option,

Big surprise, BLAG 70000 pre-dates kernel-libre.

> * the following firmwares: asterisk-firmware, atmel-firmware, ivtv-firmware, 
> iwl3945-firmware, iwl4965-firmware, iwlwifi-firmware (old version of 
> iwl3945-firmware), ql2100-firmware, ql2200-firmware, ql23xx-firmware and 
> ql2400-firmware, all with "License: Redistributable, no modification permitted"
> * zd1211-firmware which claims to be GPLv2, but with no source available.

So this is like gNewSense 2.0 shipping linux-ubuntu-modules containing
non-Free Software.  It was against their policies, it was eventually
fixed.

If you find any such problems in BLAG 80000 (never formally released)
or BLAG 90000 (released easier today), please report them.  Likewise
gNewSense 2.0, dyne:bolic, UTUTO-XS, Musix GNU+Linux.  Those guys are
serious about it, they have public commitments to that, but like
everyone else they can make mistakes.

As I said before, (honest) policy matters more than the exact bits
that get shipped, and fixing policy is much easier than fixing
software.

> I consider it completely irresponsible to recommend a distribution
> whose "current release" has not received ANY security updates for a
> month!

Whatever irresponsibility you perceive here is probably just laziness
of publishing announcements about software that has long been
available.  BLAG 70000 was old, indeed, and it's a shame it was still
regarded as the latest stable release in spite of the (as of
yesterday) unannounced BLAG 80000 and 90000.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}