The Open Source Definition - Open Source Initiative #6: “No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor”
I think that one of the clearly evidenced foundations of the Free Software / Open Source ideology is that we are free to work on the things we are interested in working on, and we are not free to stop other people from working on the things that they are interested in working on.
Fedora’s policies on permitted content are consistent with the Open Source definition; there are no policies that ban software based on field of endeavor.
Generally, I think the idea that this decision should be made on the basis of the field of endeavor is one that should be considered very carefully, because it calls into question whether Fedora is an open source community project.
I want to be very specific about that statement. The council is expected to make decisions about the project. Deciding either way about this proposal does not call into question whether Fedora is an open source community project. Making that decision based on the field of endeavor does, in my opinion. Fedora doesn’t ship pre-built binaries or not-open-source software. We are dedicated to open source software, and our policies allow us to make assertions about provenance and security. I think that’s good for our reputation, even when it’s inconvenient. Fedora doesn’t ship patent-encumbered software even when otherwise Free implementations exist. Not always good for our reputation, but at least defensible. If we start discriminating on the basis of the field of endeavor, I think that would actually be really bad for our reputation.
Is the title the only thing standing in the way of moving forward? Would you approve of this work if it were a “Machine Learning Developer Desktop Initiative”?
Because ML is an emerging technology, not a mature one. Software in this field benefits from a rapid release cycle, not a very slow one. Delivering features to developers every 3 years is not aligned with the needs of an emerging technology field.
I believe that the purpose of a distribution is to distribute software. LTS distributions are actually not very good at doing that. The vast majority of software releases in upstream projects are never shipped by any given LTS release.