[Fwd: Re: [PlanetCCRMA] New Apt problems]

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 12:59, William M. Quarles wrote:
> Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> > On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 11:14, William M. Quarles wrote:
> >>I guess something else to consider is that there has been talk of 
> >>multiple Fedora distributions, including the now-realized Fedora Extras 
> >>collection of packages on fedora.us.  These Extras include a lot of 
> >>things that you and Matthias already have.  That might be something else 
> >>to consider when thinking about which packages to continue maintaining 
> >>on your repository, because Fedora Extras could be used as a standard. 
> >>It might also decrease some of your work!
> > 
> > Yes, I have looked into this, of course. But the policy they have, as I
> > understand it, is that there has to be _one_ repository, and of course
> > it is theirs (this predates the adoption of fedora.us into the
> > Fedora/RedHat project as the starting point for Fedora Extras):
> > 
> >   http://www.fedora.us/wiki/RepositoryMixingProblems
> > 
> > They do _not_ want to work or collaborate with other repositories, you
> > either join them or join them. 
> > 
> > There are very good reasons for wanting just one repository, as they
> > carefully explain. There are also very good reasons for wanting _more_
> > (which of course they don't mention). And the reality of the world is
> > that there _are_ more 3rd party repositories, and most predate
> > fedora.us. 
> 
> Well, I don't think that you should join them.  It is impossible for 
> them to maintain every single piece of software that is out there, so I 
> think that it is kind of ridiculous to ask everybody to join one 
> repository.

Well, it is not "them", they are asking all repo maintainers to help by
joining the project. Reasonable. 

> At that point then we are talking about bureaucracy and 
> monopoly (e.g. Microsoft). 

The "monoculture" thing is a concern, yes. On the other hand it can be
argued that it can work. This is pretty much how Debian is managed. But
Debian is really a community effort, which Fedora is not, yet. 

> All that I'm saying is that it might be a 
> good idea to reduce the negotiations in a merger by letting fedora.us 
> handle the basic packages that all three repositories already share. 
> That will keep things more standardized.  However I guess that the new 
> problem that presents is that if you try to report a bug on one of their 
> packages because of something that happened involving one of your 
> packages, all that you will get back is, "JOIN US."

Or, if a package they maintain breaks stuff that I do, then I have to
replicate effort anyway. 

> This give me reason to stir up debate... to the newsgroups for me 
> (mailing lists for you).

You mean fedora.us? I don't think that would be a good idea. This thread
has been rehashed to death there (I don't have urls to give you, but you
probably can find them in the archives). The really vocal people on the
fedora list are adamant and due to historical issues most 3rd party repo
maintainers get really pissed off really fast. 

Maybe Fedora policies will change in time, or enough people will join
and make places like Planet CCRMA irrelevant. 

-- Fernando