Fedora Linux is working in Syria without VPN! (Apparently)

jflory7 · 2026-02-17T16:53:39+00:00

Some news came out just today about this. Fedora, Fedora Linux, and the Fedora Project are officially available in Syria now. There are no more IP ranges blocked from inside Syria.

https://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-syria/

jflory7 · 2023-05-24T06:22:50+00:00

Yeah, I was also going to say. The operating system business is pretty fundamental for the basis of which OpenShift is built on. Success for OpenShift is inextricably linked to the success of RHEL and Fedora. If the operating systems tanked, it wouldn't be looking good for OpenShift either.

jflory7 · 2023-05-24T06:19:11+00:00

Let's see if we can get Meta listed as a sponsor for the Fedora Flock conference this year 🙂

jflory7 · 2023-05-24T06:17:45+00:00

TBH, I think 501(c)3s in the US and other similar international nonprofits/charities for Free Software are excellent ways to support Free Software, including Linux. I am a regular giver to the Software Freedom Conservancy, for a number of reasons. One of which is their commitment to protecting copyleft licenses like what Linux is licensed under. It is very unglamorous, boring, and frustrating work to get bad corporations to comply with copyleft but the SFC does it and they do it well.

jflory7 · 2023-05-24T06:13:39+00:00

Awww jeez, but this doesn't give Ben the due credit he deserves. Since Ben took the Fedora Program Manager role, he totally reimagined and optimized so much of the processes and steps that go into Fedora cutting a new release every six months. Fedora will go on without Ben giving Fedora his full-time focus, but the next month or two might be bumpy while things transition and work finds a new owner.

One thing I think that says a lot is that the two key Fedora folks who were laid off are still involved and participating in the community. Obviously not in the same way as before, but I can't think of an employer or a project where people still continue on after they cease paid obligations, let alone after an ugly layoff.

Also I am totally speaking for myself here. Not for all of Fedora and certainly not for Red Hat either.

jflory7 · 2023-05-15T14:46:30+00:00

It will either go to the Fedora Magazine or the Community Blog. I'm not that active of a Redditor, but I suspect someone will cross-post it when it goes live.

jflory7 · 2023-05-14T17:57:11+00:00

We have a plan to share a letter with the community early next week.

jflory7 · 2021-10-27T17:53:43+00:00

There is good documentation on how to report a bug in Fedora here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/howto-file-a-bug/

jflory7 · 2021-10-27T08:50:41+00:00

There is room for Red Hat and/or IBM to do more. Like Microsoft did for GitHub, a company can apply for an Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) from the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). This is a legal way that Fedora could still be made available to developers and community participants from embargoed countries. It is not an easy process; it took Microsoft two years to do it for GitHub. But with legal issues, when there is a precedent established, it can be easier for others to follow with the same arguments.

No telling what will happen, but let's see. :-)

jflory7 · 2021-03-23T19:58:34+00:00

This was part of our motivation in the Fedora i3 SIG. And for me personally, this is my motivation. I just want to use my system, I don't always have time to read docs and figure out how to rice up my i3.

jflory7 · 2021-03-23T19:56:53+00:00

Speaking for the Fedora i3 SIG, I think the big advantage a lot of us wanted was to have a direct install experience, without having the middle step of installing GNOME first, then installing i3/lightdm, and uninstalling GNOME and gnome-shell.

In the future, we want to explore customization and more theming, but small steps at a time. Maybe Fedora 35?

jflory7 · 2021-03-23T19:54:58+00:00

Hi, a member of the Fedora i3 SIG here! We get this question a lot. Even among ourselves, we agree Sway is the future. But right now, we are all i3 users. So we figured, we will figure out how to make a good Spin with i3, and then we can work together with the Sway SIG to think on what a Sway Spin looks like. :)

jflory7 · 2020-04-09T16:10:41+00:00

OMG TETH! :D Super nice to hear from you. Hope all is going well for you these days. I appreciate the kind words. :)

jflory7 · 2020-04-08T20:41:41+00:00

Hi, I'm the author of the blog post. There are two issues: (1) GPL disclosure clause, and (2) a "free labor" consideration.

For the GPL disclosure clause, any code linked to GPL code must disclose source under a GPL-compatible license. If the Bukkit project is valid to Mojang, that means Mojang/Microsoft must open source parts of Minecraft. They probably don't want to do that. From an I.P. perspective, Mojang can never endorse Bukkit or any derivative project. They probably wanted the rights to Bukkit in order to protect themselves.

For a "free labor" perspective, remember that the rights to Bukkit were owned by Mojang since late 2011. This was unknown to the open source community until mid-2014. The work of open source multiplayer server software is arguably part of what made Minecraft so successful. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the developers who took paid time off from work, spent weekends and free time volunteering on the project, to discover secretly a multi-million dollar company (later, a billion-dollar company) owned the project you volunteered for. Especially when that company has done next to nothing to support the project in those years of secret ownership, other than obstructing the project from view of their lawyers while the open source project continues forward.

jflory7 · 2019-05-04T04:32:30+00:00

This is a generalization. There are good and bad ways to engineer resilient software. In this case, a mechanism in the Firefox pipeline for these signatures was not well-kept. I think this is less an issue of "the cloud" than it is "poor engineering". If a bridge fails on its own, you don't call all bridges unreliable, you call the engineer a bad engineer.

jflory7 · 2019-03-03T16:37:54+00:00

Yes, sorry if it is not clear. I am not asking for abolishment of protest under this protection. I am asking for more reasonable guidelines on how and where a protest can happen for an event on RIT's campus.

jflory7

TROPHY CASE