Re: [council] #57: Seeking Council feedback/input on draft third party software policy

2016-06-16 20:53 GMT+02:00 council <trac@fedorahosted.org>:

#57: Seeking Council feedback/input on draft third party software policy
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 Reporter:  pfrields     |       Owner:
   Status:  new          |    Priority:  normal
Component:  General      |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  workstation  |
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Comment (by uraeus):

 In regards to 2 there is code for doing an extra dialog before enabling
 the installation of the software, including putting up a warning, I
 haven't really looked at it for a while as I felt the labelling stuff
 mostly made it redundant in the sense that it felt a bit over the top to
 both clearly label something as 3rd party and non-free and then also pop
 up a dialog asking the user if they really want to install this non-free
 3rd party software.

 As for 3, I agree about having a clear process, as for the details on 1 or
 more versions or who provides it I tried to leave it open to be something
 we could evolve and refine over time without having to make a big policy
 change process for it. I think when I wrote the original text I mostly
 thought about who would be the most likely party to be around for the
 longer run and I thought that if the upstream handles it then the upstream
 is likely to keep doing it for as long as the upstream is maintained, but
 I realize that we would need to evaluate the truth and validity of that
 one a case by case basis.

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Ticket URL: <https://fedorahosted.org/council/ticket/57#comment:6>
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The Fedora Project's mission is to lead the advancement of free and
open source software and content as a collaborative community.

Finally I've read this document, but I really have some concerns about third party software.

I'm one of those users who believes in Fedora, because it has no third party software in it. It's all open source, that makes it different to other distributions, otherwise I could use plenty of other distros. And I think we should care about this value, and also about all the users who chose Fedora because it has this characteristic. Furthermore, it is very very easy nowadays to install third party software, and people (already) do that on their own risk because often it compromises the Fedora system.

Even COPR is a third party repo, but it respects at least the Fedora guidelines, which other repos don't do.

That said, I'm not against enabling a sort of shared installer which labels third party software, but it should not only label it but also pop up a warning that the end user is going to install software outside of the Fedora universe, and that this can in some cases compromise his system. People are used to click and don't think about what they are doing, so we should remember that clearly.

I have also some concerns about replacing package formats, we should encourage community members to make Fedora packages, and not just allow upstream package formats. Like Matt I don't understand why we should prefer upstream packages, which very often care more about other distributions...let's prefer community member's packages.

The document actually is still rather generic, if we want to allow third party software in some kind we need to write a very strict document about what we allow and what not. We can facilitate the use of third party software, but Fedora is free and should remain free and open source.

--

Robert Mayr
(robyduck)