This was a hard post to write and try to get all the subtleties of this across. As I noted, I always keep a Fedora system around because I do find the attitude to be admirable and to be supported.
As an experienced Linux person, I can hack support in when I need to. But when it came time to build a Linux system for an inexperienced Linux person: Someone who will never care about any of these issues, I went with Ubuntu because it just worked.
Both approaches have validity, and my point (perhaps not well made) is only that both have a place at the table. I have a followup to this one in progress to talk about this at a mroe personal level, which I'll put up over at http://on-being-open.blogspot.com. Its just talking a while to write.
I really do like Fedora (or I would not spend so much time and effort writing about it), and I would like to see it more widely adopted, not losing mind and market share to Ubuntu. What I hope will happen over time is that Fedora will adopt the idea of the "Restricted Source Manager": Go ahead and work, but let everyone know who is not being totally open.
At the same time, avoid using judgmental (or at least judgmental sounding) words. Stay away from things like "impure", or my personal favorite "tainted" (as in, the message Linux issues from the kernel when it detects closed source is present)
The people that get it will get it just as much if they get a list at boot that says "This is the list of closed or restricted source that Linux loaded in order to run on this computer". Be cool if it linked to an online petition to the vendors to change that too!
As an experienced Linux person, I can hack support in when I need to. But when it came time to build a Linux system for an inexperienced Linux person: Someone who will never care about any of these issues, I went with Ubuntu because it just worked.
Both approaches have validity, and my point (perhaps not well made) is only that both have a place at the table. I have a followup to this one in progress to talk about this at a mroe personal level, which I'll put up over at http://on-being-open.blogspot.com. Its just talking a while to write.
I really do like Fedora (or I would not spend so much time and effort writing about it), and I would like to see it more widely adopted, not losing mind and market share to Ubuntu. What I hope will happen over time is that Fedora will adopt the idea of the "Restricted Source Manager": Go ahead and work, but let everyone know who is not being totally open.
At the same time, avoid using judgmental (or at least judgmental sounding) words. Stay away from things like "impure", or my personal favorite "tainted" (as in, the message Linux issues from the kernel when it detects closed source is present)
The people that get it will get it just as much if they get a list at boot that says "This is the list of closed or restricted source that Linux loaded in order to run on this computer". Be cool if it linked to an online petition to the vendors to change that too!
In any case, more about this soon.