Re: [Fedora-marketing-list] What Is Fedora's Prime Directive?

On 8/3/06, Rahul <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote: A thought-provoking opinion. My response: Fedora users are free to use whatever software they like, including proprietary software. This necessarily will involve some hassle when Fedora ships 100% open source. I can see how the break proprietary video drivers with an update is inconvenient. However, holding back 7.1 is about the only thing that Fedora can do, and that holds the update schedule back. To get the latest and greatest upstream we can't wait for proprietary vendors all the time. The impression of not caring is reinforced when you emphasize that you are on your own with regards to proprietary drivers. I personally use those proprietary drivers on occasion, and I am resigned to them not working when certain update occur. Which is unfortunate. What I really wish would be for nVidia to follow xorg updates as closely as Fedora does, but I doubt they will do that. I would like a better definition of "stands on its own". Without Red Hat infrastructure, engineers, and leadership there would be no Fedora Project. Yes the goal is for community partnership, which has been a slow process so far. Yet I would argue that Red Hat having a corporate interest in the project drives innovation. As to a "cloud hanging over it", I don't get the impression that there is some malicious agenda. What's Red Hat going to do, take all Fedora and make it proprietary? Won't happen, it's open. Even with RHEL you can get the source of that and rebuild it, as CentOS did. The Prime Directive? Whatever you want it to be. The goal is for as many people as possible to take and use Fedora as they wish. The project also is in some respects a meritocracy, like other open source projects. Red Hat controls it by working on it. If, say, IBM were to have several hundred engineers work on Fedora they would probably gain similar control. As to the desktop Linux world, if it's good and open source we want it in Fedora somehow. Beagle desktop search is in Fedora due to mono being developed elsewhere. I also have seen people run Novell's new main menu on Fedora (which I hope to see in Extras sometime). As to CentOS stealing Fedora's purpose, CentOS would't be there without RHEL, and RHEL is based off of Fedora. I don't see this is stealing purpose, I see it as an inexpensive alternative to those who want the slower schedule of RHEL without the costs. Often this is for servers. Fedora workstations and CentOS servers make a powerful, and no cost, combo. There were significant logistical problems to a Fedora Foundation, as has been discussed at length before. I don't view it as Red Hat aborting attempts to give up control, rather their level of support didn't fit in to the standard non profit system. And as far as I can tell OpenSUSE doesn't have a foundation either. I can see how some don't like that Red Hat would profit though their Fedora contributions via RHEL. It pays the project's bills, however. And I have no problem with them contributing to a non profit organized distribution if that's what they want. Especially if everybody is contributing stuff back to the open source community. In short, Fedora is a 100% open source project that moves rapidly to bring innovative software to people. Indirectly, some of those people are Red Hat's paying customers. Due to this, proprietary video drivers among other things regrettably make things harder for end users. And there is some confusion as to what Fedora is about because it is different things for different people, compared to Ubuntu which is commonly thought of as a desktop. Throughout all this your freedom to take Fedora where you want remains secure.