On Monday 02 January 2006 18:12, Warren Togami wrote:
Jarod Wilson wrote:
> While I agree that it isn't necessarily Fedora's responsibility to play
> nice with 3rd-party repositories, I think it ought to be a goal to make
> using 3rd-party repositories as painless as possible. I think there are
> quite a few people who might not use Fedora, if not for the 3rd-party
> repositories.
>
> If there's a fix or functionality addition to a core package needed for
> another package maintained by a 3rd-party, why not push them into the
> core versions? Then people who want software out of the 3rd-party repo
> but don't want core packages replaced get to have their cake and eat it
> too, and 3rd-party repositories don't get bashed as much. Everybody wins,
> no?
>
> Of course, someone within Red Hat would probably have to step up as
> 3rd-party repository liaison to coordinate the effort... But I think its
> something worth doing, for the sake of the Fedora community at large.
It is an anti-goal of Fedora to promote the proliferation of arbitrary
mixes of 3rd party repositories as the standard way of using Fedora. A
central goal of Fedora is collaborative development in a centralized
repository.
I'm not saying Fedora should promote arbitrary mixes of 3rd-party
repositories, just that there aren't really any good reasons not to cooperate
with them, at least on some level. If repository X needs an updated libfoo to
build application bar that tons of users want, why not update Core's libfoo?
I suppose bugzilla is the place to log such requests right now, but many
don't get addressed in a very timely fashion, leading to 3rd-party
replacement packages and/or simply no longer bothering to log such request.
For this reason it is untenable to expect or suggest Red
Hat to explicitly coordinate with 3rd party repositories.
Perhaps my use of "coordinate" wasn't the best. Strike "coordinate the
effort"
and replace with "maintain an open and active, bi-directional line of
communication". There are several large 3rd-party repositories with a wealth
of experience, so why not leverage them more? Fedora itself is definitely in
the driver's seat, but why ignore directions from 3rd-party repositories,
simply because they're 3rd-party?
Your post is
also problematic in completely ignoring potential legal implications of
an official relationship between Fedora and 3rd party repositories.
Okay, so don't make it an official relationship. (Can anyone say "livna"?).
Of
course, IANAL, but I don't see any legal problem with fixing or updating core
libs/packages that are already in the distro, so long as it isn't adding mp3
support or the like.
Users have an option of using 3rd party software, but the
responsible
party for dealing with problems shifts in such cases.
If you have concerns about individual packages, please file bugs in Red
Hat Bugzilla. Changes can be made to individual Core/Extras packages
are usually general bug fixes and enhancements. It is wrong to expect
Fedora to make special concessions only to work around problems
introduced by 3rd parties. If it is the right thing to do in general
cases, then it is proper to make changes to Core/Extras.
I'm not talking so much about problems introduced by 3rd-parties as I am about
problems/deficiencies uncovered by 3rd-parties, i.e., fixing packages in Core
in a timely fashion to eliminate the need of 3rd-party packagers to replace
Core components.
--
Jarod Wilson
jarod(a)wilsonet.com