Fedora, a non-gnu distribution? Or blobs and *-firmware: states. UPDATED

Reason of update: Kevin Kofler add some (important) information in this [9] comment. Thank you!

Hi,

Recently, I sought Fedora in the GNU free-distros list [1], and surpise, Fedora isn't in this list! However, Fedora has a serious political about the inclusion of proprietary softwares... On other page on gnu.org enlighten me [2]: 

"Fedora does have a clear policy about what can be included in the distribution, and it seems to be followed carefully. The policy requires that most software and all fonts be available under a free license, but makes an exception for certain kinds of nonfree firmware. Unfortunately, the decision to allow that firmware in the policy keeps Fedora from meeting the free system distribution guidelines. "

Fedora include proprietary software? A quick search redirect me to this part of the Licensing wiki page [3].

"Some applications, drivers, and hardware require binary-only firmware to boot Fedora or function properly. Fedora permits inclusion of these files as long as they meet the following requirements:[...]"

Well, it's for support most hardware... Update: Firmware are exucted on the target devices, not ont the main CPU. To verify if your equipement is supported by open-source application, you can try a Live CD of a totally free distribution (like Trisquel [4]), and see if your hardware work correctly.
On that case, you can run:
   # yum remove *-firmware
This command will be remove all proprietary firmwares, the naming guidelines oblige a name like <foo>-firmware. You can also see the wiki page of the SIG firmware [5], if you want to help to remove them of the project. But, even if you ran the previous command, your fedora is not totally opensource...

After a discussion about proprietary softwares in the #fedora-devel-fr on irc.freenode.net channel with some (friendly) french contributors, I run a:
   $ yum info kernel
And I can see that:

[...]
Licence: GPLv2 and Redistributable, no modification permitted
[...]

What? Kernel isn't under free license? After some french contributors, it is a fact from blobs (I can't found any "official" information about that). What is blobs? B.L.Ob [6] "a closed source binary-only driver without publicly available source code". Update: Blob are also firmware. The Fedora kernel not have binary-only drivers. Upstream work on that, you can help if you want. So, the linux kernel, the base of Fedora, is not totally free... That a very big problem!

To work with a totally opensource fedora, you can find some help with the freed-ora project [7], his homepage describe the procedure to change Fedora on a free distribution. Freed-ora have an active support, the last kernel was built the 26 october 2013 when I write this lines (the 16 november 2013).

The solutions:
I thought about some solutions about this problem :) I class their in order of importance (for me):
- Create a wiki page about blobs in the kernel.
- Add an option in Anaconda "Add proprietary firmwares" to allow a choice for users.
- Work actively on this problem (certainly resubmit this feature [8], I don't understand why it is abandoned). 
- [Add a "kernel-free" package in our repository (like the freed-ora's kernel) ] Update: It is a short-term solution. It is better to work on the existant kernel. " Focus your efforts on moving the blobs to linux-firmware, and getting the dependency in the kernel package removed. Then the same kernel package should make everyone happy."
- Create a Free Spin, endorsed by tne GNU project.
- Put all *-firmware in RPMFusion repository. 
- Say "Fedora is Freedom!"

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
[2]: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html
[3]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Binary_Firmware
[4]: https://trisquel.info/
[5]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firmware
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob
[7]: http://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/freed-ora.en.html
[8]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FedoraFreedom
[9]: http://nobrakal.blogspot.fr/2013/11/fedora-non-gnu-distribution-or-blobs.html?showComment=1384750540460#c6458436824776626505 

Free and open source music score? It's possible!

Hi all,

Occasionally, I play violin. So, I searched good websites to pick my scores. I found some interessant sites:

- The International Music Score Library Project (abbreviated imslp): A very big library. It run like a wiki. Anyone can upload his scanned score. Imslp is based in Canada and Canadian copyright expires 50 years after the death of the composer or other author. So, you can't found recent jobs. For the baroque, romantic or classical period, you can find very good score. (see http://imslp.org/wiki/Public_domain or http://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:About for more information about licenses). It group 7 612 different author (so, much score :) ). Most of this score is scanned, and usually handwrriten.

- The Mutopia Project: This project make computer-based score with LilyPond (you can also download midi and pdf versions). All the works is under Creative-Commons licenses. When I write this, you can found 1770 differents scores.

- The Choral Wiki: A wiki with very much vocal works. All the scores is under the CPDL license (a fork of the GNU Public License).

- Musescore: Musescore is a tool to create and edit score (it's aviable in the fedora repository). It propose also a space to share music scores. You can chose your licence (many works are under restrictive license, but some works is under opensource licenses)

If you have some suggestions, post a comment!

Firefox: Youtube all Html5: An alternative to flash

Hi,

I discover since a week Youtube all html5.
I've remove flash and adobe repo and Youtube play video normally. This addon can replace flash!  Well, we have some bugs (lists do not work...), and other inconvenience (an other button to resize). But, generally, it work good. 
It's distributed under the GPL3.




Test this, it's very good.

And if Red Hat disappears?

Since my entry in the Fedora project, I've a question: And if Red Hat disappears?

After some research, I found many things a little disturbing. The Fedora Project Leader is automatically hired by RH [1], we don't have a bugzilla.fedoraproject but a bugzilla.redhat, Fedora® and the Logo is a trademark of RedHat [2]...

I want to draw your attention on the fact that RH is a company, and RH is on the stock exchange. Imagine the filing for bankruptcy of RH. The Fedora Project will be very handicaped: no bugzilla, no trademark, many contributors go away... It's very dangerous.

Or worse, imagine RH become bad. If RH files for bankruptcy, we can recover the Fedora® trademark, the Bugzilla... But if RH became bad, it's very, very, very worse. Nevermore Fedora Trademarks, nevermore Logo, and all community of Fedora Project will be redesigned.
But, what to do?

It's good for the project that Fedora is a registered trademark ( otherwise, anyone can use the Fedora name , we have an example withe Linux [3]). But, for me, it's a mistake if it's registred by a company. I see more the Fedora Project Leader, or other important people of Fedora.

And we should have a bugzilla in our domain (bugzilla is an example it's the same for all resources)

It's very difficult to solve this, but we must do this, we must imagine the worst.


[1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Project_Leader?rd=Fedora_Project_Leader
[2]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines?rd=Legal/Trademark_guidelines#Use_by_Red_Hat
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Copyright.2C_trademark.2C_and_naming