closed source modules and fedora

There’s been some excruciatingly long threads this week about xorg 7.1 and the binary-only modules that some folks use for ATI and nvidia. On the whole I’ve stayed out of them b/c no good comes out of that discussion on list. However, I grew tired of it this morning and wanted to say the following (Note, this is me saying this, I do not speak for the board, but it might be that the board agrees with me, I don’t know – you’d have to ask them)

FEDORA IS ABOUT AND FOR FREE SOFTWARE

If fedora doesn’t work with non-free software and you’re upset about this; then I shall give you a quarter so you can call someone who gives a damn!

If this sounds arrogant or hateful, it’s not. Think about it like this:

Let’s say I run a vegetarian restaurant. A person comes into the restaurant and orders a beef steak. I tell them that we don’t have that and they respond “well, you should make it possible for me to have a steak here”. Am I out of line in telling them that we don’t do that nor do we care about making it possible? I don’t think so.