Everyone, please stay calm and respectful with each other, and don’t forget that this is the Fedora forum. It is fine to interpret the scope widely in the Water Cooler, and asking if something has an impact for Fedora is fine. But leave out simplified connections to debates around political issues that are everything but simple: much things that have started to become part of discussion here are themselves a complicated scientific discipline which we do not intend to moderate as it would need dedicated expertise, whereas simplifications ain’t constructive for any party/position.
This developed now several times in hostile ways. I really would like to avoid starting to delete off-topic comments. But if it goes on that way, we have to more radically enforce on-topic posts to avoid further hostilities
Dear fellow readers, dear Chris, please accept my apologies if I have offended anyone here. It was never my intention to insult anyone with what I wrote. I just wanted to bring a European perspective into the original topic.
What unites us here, at the very least, is that we enjoy working with Fedora and are happy to have found such a great community. Maybe we should focus more on what brings us together and less on what divides us. That could be a first step towards reconciliation. I will definitely take this to heart.
I am a big fan of the USA, and as a German, I have every reason to be. Mark, please forgive me if I upset you with what I wrote here.
just an observation and not directly related to the topic.
[soap box]
Anytime politics are involved in a discussion the subject usually brings up heated controversy. This seems to happen in all environments – texts, phone, personal, forums, etc.
We all have our own views and politics appears to be a trigger for venting likes and dislikes.
It is usually best to avoid introducing politics in any form in a discussion unless it is one-on-one or something like a political rally where the controversy is expected.
[/soap box]
The staff warnings above should be enough to cool the issue and have persons think calmly before posting instead of using heated emotional responses.
I apologize, I don’t want to talk about this, but I’ll correct you a little. Everything is completely the opposite, when politics comes into your life, you start arguing first with yourself, then with the people around you, then you make some decision and, based on the decision, you take steps. All those with whom I have spoken recently, of course, are not panicking, but they are very intensively looking for alternatives to stabilize their future.
We live in an extremely amazing time, when 7 billion people on the planet depend on the decisions of one or two people. It is like living in a looking glass.
I think everyone just needs to calm down and look for the right solution with a cool head.
It is usually best to avoid introducing politics in any form in a discussion unless it is one-on-one or something like a political rally where the controversy is expected.
In general, I think you are right. What we are doing here is technical in nature. But in this case, politics have a direct impact on our usage of Fedora and our contributions to the Fedora project.
Look at this for example. This guys Fedora Account go deleted immediately when he said that he was from Syria, because of US export restrictions:
To be very clear, I don’t blame the moderators on this forum. It seems like they were sorry that they had to do this. What is to blame is politics getting involved in Fedora, because Fedora abides to US export restrictions. In the current, well, let’s say, uncertainty, you never know if what happened to this Syrian guy might not also happen to Canadians/Mexicans/Europeans tomorrow or on the 2. of April or whenever. I think that it is perfectly natural for people to feel the need to talk about that with other Fedora users and Fedora contributors to make up their mind about what this means for us.
This is the distinction I meant above: it is fine to ask if something has an impact on Fedora. So it is absolutely justified to ask IF something has an impact and HOW to mitigate it if the answer is yes.
Everything that doesn’t serve these questions goes beyond the scope, and it is useful to keep it out as we can neither solve it here nor rationally discuss it: it ends up in simplifications that serve nothing but creating hostilities, and thus also contributing to worsen the issues many seem to want to talk about. Issues start already at the point that posts imply different definitions of what politics is, and this is therefore already the point at which we leave the path of constructive problem solving.
Maybe you also already recognized that posts that are not immediately related to the topic (so to the “IF impact” and “HOW to mitigate” questions) tend to not even define a specific problem they work on (thus , at the worst, people end up in fights before they even agreed on the exact problem that currently is to be solved) → and this is the problem that can only evolve destructively because it usually means that both sides do simplify to the level of ending up each in their own tautologies in which they can only be confirmed to be true and the other to be not (in such discussions, definitions and problems are vague and thus variables that intuitively “mutate” towards fitting an opinion → topics get massively blurred and incomprehensible as this one did earlier). Even a Water Cooler topic has to evolve in a comprehensible/rational way in order to be constructive and to avoid all the problems we have seen in this topic so far. So let’s focus on what we can solve here rationally and constructively
Nice to see how the discussion is developing. I almost didn’t believe we would get back on track.
I’ll summarise:
The discussion revolved around the hypothetical question of whether Trump could cut off access to Fedora for users outside the United States.
Key Points of the Discussion:
Export Restrictions: Fedora is already subject to US export controls for countries such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Crimea. Some participants feared that a renewed Trump administration might expand these restrictions.
Technical Workarounds: Some users speculated about ways to continue using Fedora despite potential bans, such as alternative mirror servers or piracy.
Political Influence on Open Source: Several participants argued that open-source software like Fedora could be impacted by geopolitical decisions, particularly through regulatory measures or licensing changes.
Fedora as a US Product: As Fedora is a Red Hat project (owned by IBM), it is more directly affected by US politics than European distributions such as openSUSE. Some users considered switching to non-US distributions due to the uncertainty.
Debate on Politics in the Forum: The discussion became heated, with some participants criticising the political focus, while others emphasised that politics directly impact Fedora. Moderators called for a rational and solution-oriented discussion.
The debate highlighted concerns about long-term access to Fedora due to geopolitical uncertainties. While a ban seems unlikely, the discussion raised valid questions about the extent to which open-source projects can be influenced by US policy.
I am not sure if that is entirely correct (or at least maybe a little misleading) in two respects.
First, our code (and what/how we make a product of it) is open and reproducible, and it is not solely US but comes from many parts of the world. Given that much RH contributions are from CZ, I am not even sure if the majority of code is from the US. Anyway, it is public and available, and I am not sure if a US law that would impact its availability and use can really impact as it might conflict with other countries laws without being enforceable.
Fedora itself is a brand and the brand Fedora is US owned (so, owned by a US company). This means, US law applies to this US product (when it is published under the name Fedora).
I am not sure if there is a possibility to create and enforce a law on open source code that has been written in the US, but it would not differ to other Linux distributions, and available and easy to distribute it is anyway. So keep in mind that the US product does not occur at the time we develop something, but when it is published under the name Fedora.
However, just like most people here, I am not a lawyer and you have to be careful as I am not an expert in this topic, but I wanted to point out that this is also a more complex issue, it is not just “this all is a US product” or so.
Second, as far as I know, openSuSE is in a comparable situation as openSuSE is afaik owned by the US subsidiary of SuSE, and not the German (now I think Luxembourg) company (SuSE and openSuSE are two brands in the end, although related). That might have changed, but when you go to the openSuSE website, it still belongs to SUSE LLC (=US company) and refers to US law, even if the board is in Germany. I do not know if that changes because a lot of things are going on at openSuSE, and they started to do much independent of the SuSE company (Geeko Foundation → UK), and I think it is not yet clear what evolves from that.
Is Fedora “technical data” that then falls under EAR?
On the projects I’ve worked on that were subject to EAR and/or ITAR the determination was made that no open source could ever be “technical data” thus we were free to export at will and had no requirement to even mention it’s inclusion on export documentation. This view was happily accepted by our US government customers. As open source is accessible to anyone anywhere at any time it was looked at more along the lines of common knowledge.
The one thing that did, for a while, make export a little trickey was encryption algorithms. Not because of “technical data” being involved but that they were classified as munitions. It has been long ago that exceptions were given such that export difficulties went away.
Quite fun to see how not technically correct titling can generate so much participation. Almost like social media.
It appears that the Linux Foundation came to the same conclusion:
It seems like the US export restrictions are enforced by Fedora so thoroughly just to be sure, not because it is really necessary. Which, to be very clear, is just the way it looks to me. But since I am not a lawyer, there could be something in Fedora that would necessitate these restrictions, even though I am not aware that we use non standard cryptography.
As the world has gone crazy, the question “Is it possible that …” is not really constructive.
The better question would probably be - what should we do to support Fedora as an international, open and accessible project.
One of the easiest answers to that - help expand your local Fedora(and generally FOSS) community. It was the right thing to do 20 years ago, and it is still the right thing to do now.
Despite being registered in US, the Fedora Project is a large international group of people.
To support it with some data, here is the answers from Fedora Annual Contributor Survey 2023 to the question “Is English your first language?”
Yes, trademarks and registrations matter and have impact on some of the decisions the project makes, but the project is nothing without its users and contributors. And the larger and the more diverse we are as a community, the more options we have to deal with whatever comes next.
Agreed. Then how about we drop the strict enforcement of the US Export Administration Regulations, since Fedora does not even fall under these regulations? As the Linux Foundation argues:
Open source software that is published publicly is not subject to the EAR
Open source specifications that are published publicly are not subject to the EAR
Open source files that describe the designs for hardware that are published publicly are not subject to the EAR
Open source software binaries that are published publicly are not subject to the EAR
It seems that this policy does nothing but getting people’s fedora accounts deleted if they mention that they are from the wrong country.
We already follow the approach you quoted. It talks about providing access, and we do not restrict access to Fedora code, docs, spec files or binaries in any way. There are no blocks by geolocation and nothing is hidden behind a mandatory login screen.
(One time Fedora DNS servers went down for a day after the release due to a technical issue, and since then some people tell a myth of Fedora trying to block the downloads for their location, without ever verifying it)
The lack of a FAS account does not prevent people from downloading and using Fedora.
The issue is that FAS account allows a direct two-way collaboration. And it becomes a grey area because collaboration can happen in many different ways and may or may not be considered as providing a service even when done for free.
I do not really want to dive deeper into topic here, because it is not new and most likely one can find exactly the same arguments on a mailing list from 5 or 8 years ago.
If things change, we will have to reevaluate our decisions for sure.
I want to highlight one thing though:
There is no simple blanket ban rule. Decisions on this topic are done at the highest level on a case by case basis after review by the Fedora Project Lead.
If there is a concern about someone’s status in the project - file a private ticket to Fedora Council or a Code of Conduct committee rather than make assumptions.
I like it 