I am requesting that the freecad package be allowed to use the version of smesh bundled in it.

In version prior to 0.17, I was able to get it to play nice with the fork of the full salome mesh at:
https://github.com/tpaviot/smesh

Which is the same project I get the required OpenCascade Community Edition (OCE) since until recently the canonical upstream was not FOSS friendly (OCCT).

I have requested that the smesh fork be updated[1] to be compatible with FreeCAD 0.17 but have not gotten a response. OCE has not been updated lately either but that is not build issue at the moment.

With the help of the upstream forums and developers I have finally gotten a good build[2] of FreeCAD 0.17 on rawhide (gcc 8 issue). [3]

I have spent many more hours on this than I care to admit, much of at at $DAYJOB which has nothing to do with FOSS, linux, or Fedora.

If this exception is not granted I will have no choice but to orphan FreeCAD as I don't have the time or expertise to maintain it more than I already have.

Other requests for help over the last year:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29248
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28229
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28229

If a fork of smesh that work becomes available or someone takes the initiative to bring full salome[4] into Fedora I'll gladly switch back over.

[1] https://github.com/tpaviot/smesh/issues/55
[2] https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=30609662
[3] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=27399&sid=9b85038a595dd070b3848d5739c1fbc5
[4] https://www.salome-platform.org/