Thu 28 Jun 2007
Slashdot posts a story about how moving from the Red Hat build systems to the Fedora build systems means that through some sort of magic, OLPC is now subject to export restrictions. Here is a hint, OLPC is a US based non-profit and as far as I know, though I am not a lawyer, OLPC is subject to US law in any case. What that says about export restrictions I don’t know – ask a laywer not Slashdot. Add the fact that it is no secret that Red Hat is the creator of the Sugar interface and that the OS is a derivative of Fedora and all you’ve got is FUD. <sarcasm>Oh no Slashdot users don’t spread FUD they only combat it</sarcasm>. The “article” gets it wrong on so many accounts and I am easily reachable via IRC or e-mail (they link to a mailing list post with my e-mail in it) that you think someone might have fact checked. So to set the record straight here is a mini FAQ:
Why did OLPC move to Fedora?
OLPC didn’t move to Fedora. Sugar, the software layer, was already being built on top of the Fedora OS within Red Hat’s build systems. With the merge of Fedora Core and Fedora Extras we felt it prudent to move the Sugar packages to the Fedora infrastructure. This lessens the burden of maintainership as we were branching a lot of packages just so we could build against them. It also gave us access to a legion of Fedora packagers, developers and translators, which has so far payed off very well in terms of quality of the packages.
What does this mean to people in the community?
It means people in the community have more ways to participate. The Red Hat build servers are accessible only to Red Hat engineers, Fedora’s are open. Go here if you want to contribute to the base OS.
What else is gained?
By not reinventing the wheel we free ourselves from having to think about infrastructure such as signing packages or hosting builds which leaves us to think about the forward moving innovative bits.
For more information you can read my post announcing the move.
June 28th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Slashdot posting an absurd article with a misleading or completely inaccurate summary is hardly news John. I don’t think it warrants surprise, let alone indignation.
The interest of Slashdot for me has always been its mix of nonsense and genuinely interesting articles.
June 28th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Hardly news to you but some people take Slashdot as bible. It presents itself as a news site and I have the right to set the record straight when my own mailing list post is misinterpreted. If you are going to give Slashdot a pass because it is entertaining then I guess we should do the same for Microsoft or Fox News. FUD is FUD, and I call it as I see it.
June 29th, 2007 at 1:43 am
As you point out, the change from RH servers to Fedora servers makes no difference to blacklisted users. But how will users and developers in Cuba and other restricted countries (is Libya still on the CIA’s list?) get access to the code then?
June 29th, 2007 at 9:34 am
I am no lawyer so I can’t really answer your question but I can make some educated guesses.
First of all, all US citizens are subject to the blacklist laws but I don’t think it requires we block our servers to those countries which are on the blacklist. The code in question is available through many different repositories, some of which are not under the control of Red Hat and are not subject to the laws of the US.
Looking at the legal/export page on the Fedora wiki (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/Export) it would seems from the product matrix that the regulations only apply to Fedora “products” (though the page might just be out of date). A product is not well defined here but looking at the matrix it may just well mean releases made by Red Hat sin it only lists Fedora Core products and not Extras. It also fails to list Fedora 7 which was moved to the community. Again the page might just be out of date.
Export restrictions are murky. What constitutes as export is something you will have to ask a lawyer. They do trump any license, including the GPL but only where it is enforcible (i.e. US citizens are subject to it).
One thing I do know as fact is that Libya has not been on that list after accepting responsibility for past terrorism which had been perpetrated by Libyan citizens, paying reparation to affected families and denouncing terrorism.