FSF Brand Ambassador

I remember seeing a quotation on the red hat installer splash screen; I don't remember who quoted it though. The quotation goes like this "Would you buy a car with hood welded shut?". The quote emphasized the importance of open source software. It implied the user power; power to fully control the computer they have payed for.

There are two applications that I would like to call the Brand Ambassador of the Free Software Foundation. They are GCC and Linux Source. GCC stands for GNU Compiler Collection, and Linux source includes the Linux headers and source files. These are the tools that pop open the hood. Without these, a distribution behaves like a welded hood car; removing the user power.

Earlier, all the distributions had these packages as part of default installation. A successful Linux distribution installation meant that you have a working compiler. The next step was kernel source and headers. User had the compiler, thus could compile the latest kernel or extra module to customize the Linux installation. Then Linux kernel matured; driver support was good, so people forgot about compiling their own kernels and just used the distribution provided kernel. As a result GCC and kernel headers were dropped in the package priority.

Now we see a lot of distributions that have neither of these two brand ambassadors. I feel sad about the current state. Has the open source community become what they were fighting against? Or making a distribution is so easy everyone is making a distribution without even knowing the core principles? Or users only know pre-packaged software distribution mechanism?

The latest and greatest package of your choice is released by the developer in source code format. And if you are not having the brand ambassdors, you have to wait for the distribution maintainer to release a packaged binary.

Some distributions don't provide these packages on the installation CD and have them in the repositories. They argue that additional package installation is just a matter of few clicks or one command. Consider the car analogy here. Would you like to go a few extra miles to fetch the tools (for opening the car hood) for your car? Majority of them will prefer to stay clear from the tools if such a situation arises. A toolkit is a vital component of any automobile. You just cannot keep the ambassadors away from the distributions.

We need to realize the importance of FSF brand ambassadors. We need to create awareness amongst various distribution maintainers about these ambassadors. The community should raise its voice and make sure that these brand ambassadors are always included in their distribution of choice. Only then we will be able to see FSF prosper.