Hello all, This is my first post to this list, hopefully some of you can agree to what I'm writing.
I've been an Unix user since early 90's and did test Linux for the first time in 1993. I've also been running fedora since core 1 and has been a frequent user of radhat distributions over the years. Not that I've never used other distributions, well I have and most of you guys have. Back in the early Linux years it was debian on firewalls and slackware for coding and redhat for the graphical stuff, well that have since changed. Today I feel happy just running Fedora and release 7 for the moment. But one thing that has always nagged at me is why do the Linux community often have a hard time at working toghether. This is probably the one thing that still makes Linux not go all the way in many offices, because of 3rd party problematics.
I (after all my years) still do have big troubble selecting a 3rd party repository every time a new version of fedora comes around. Do I use this or that with this version of fedora, which works best.. and help me upstairs.. you have to choose because they are not campatible and might break your system and kill all of your dependencies, shit!..
Does this sound familiar? No? .. YES!!!
This is year 2007 and the problematics above describes scenarios that should have been gone many years ago.. It's like the floppy disk. That sucker still remains in pc systems even today. If you need to install (dont speak #¤%#¤ in the church!, well I'm a scientist so I guess I can.) Windows with advanced scsi options, your driver is on a floppy.. Darn, well luckily for me I do try not to use MS$ server as often as possible so that problem is soon past me.
Ok back on track (3rd party repositories) It's way over time to have guys like livna, freshrpms, rpmforge and atrpms etc start a collective, collaborative and functional repository (for the greater good). There are many guys doing the same work that the other one already has done, and some times one repository does not work, the next time it's the other way around. Just start one big community 3rd party repository, define rules, let everyone contribute and mirror it.
Now that we finally are past Core and Extras and it is merged into one. The next step shold be to clean up the above described mess that is doing harm to the Fedora users and the general community by creating confusion and eventually breaks your installation. So please guys keep up the good work, but do it together!
// Jonas
On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Jonas Karlsson wrote:
Ok back on track (3rd party repositories) It's way over time to have guys like livna, freshrpms, rpmforge and atrpms etc start a collective, collaborative and functional repository (for the greater good). There are many guys doing the same work that the other one already has done, and some times one repository does not work, the next time it's the other way around. Just start one big community 3rd party repository, define rules, let everyone contribute and mirror it.
Which is exactly what they're doing, in fact. :)
Talk to Thorsten Leemhuis to learn more about this effort, and how you can help.
--g
Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Jonas Karlsson wrote:
Ok back on track (3rd party repositories) It's way over time to have guys like livna, freshrpms, rpmforge and atrpms etc start a collective, collaborative and functional repository (for the greater good). There are many guys doing the same work that the other one already has done, and some times one repository does not work, the next time it's the other way around. Just start one big community 3rd party repository, define rules, let everyone contribute and mirror it.
Which is exactly what they're doing, in fact. :)
Talk to Thorsten Leemhuis to learn more about this effort, and how you can help.
--g
This is good news! //Jonas
Jonas Karlsson wrote:
Ok back on track (3rd party repositories) It's way over time to have guys like livna, freshrpms, rpmforge and atrpms etc start a collective, collaborative and functional repository (for the greater good). There are many guys doing the same work that the other one already has done, and some times one repository does not work, the next time it's the other way around. Just start one big community 3rd party repository, define rules, let everyone contribute and mirror it.
Now that we finally are past Core and Extras and it is merged into one. The next step shold be to clean up the above described mess that is doing harm to the Fedora users and the general community by creating confusion and eventually breaks your installation. So please guys keep up the good work, but do it together!
There is some ongoing efforts on consolidating some of the popular third party repositories. I guess they have been waiting to get off the ground solidly before announcing their efforts.
Keep in mind there is always going to be other third party repositories for Fedora. Popular distributions tend to attract people with different policies. A number of Fedora contributors have their own repositories because they haven't had the time to work through package reviews, licensing etc. There are tools like yum priorities plugin which can help you deal with them if you really need to mix these repositories.
Rahul
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Jonas Karlsson wrote:
Ok back on track (3rd party repositories) It's way over time to have guys like livna, freshrpms, rpmforge and atrpms etc start a collective, collaborative and functional repository (for the greater good). There are many guys doing the same work that the other one already has done, and some times one repository does not work, the next time it's the other way around. Just start one big community 3rd party repository, define rules, let everyone contribute and mirror it.
Now that we finally are past Core and Extras and it is merged into one. The next step shold be to clean up the above described mess that is doing harm to the Fedora users and the general community by creating confusion and eventually breaks your installation. So please guys keep up the good work, but do it together!
There is some ongoing efforts on consolidating some of the popular third party repositories. I guess they have been waiting to get off the ground solidly before announcing their efforts.
Keep in mind there is always going to be other third party repositories for Fedora. Popular distributions tend to attract people with different policies. A number of Fedora contributors have their own repositories because they haven't had the time to work through package reviews, licensing etc. There are tools like yum priorities plugin which can help you deal with them if you really need to mix these repositories.
Rahul
This is good news and might shed some light on the current situation. Do you know if there is a timeframe or roadmap for this or if it still in the talks.
The yum priorities plugin is a nice feature, but shouldn't been necessary in a perfect world (isn't that the direction of Linux? :) )
Other 3rd party repositories will arise and probably start another confusion in the future. In my opinion I just feel that it is a lot of waste with time and energy to package the same packages in different repositories by different people (as it is now) instead of mirroring it and dividing the workload. And if other 3rd party repositories arise they do not need to make their own version of the same packages already present in another repo, only add the packages that is unique. That way there can be no confusion. How about a large database where packagers can add their packages that they have in their repo with no dobblets allowed, everything working together? And most importantly the links to add the repos in yum.
//Jonas
Jonas Karlsson wrote:
This is good news and might shed some light on the current situation. Do you know if there is a timeframe or roadmap for this or if it still in the talks.
Still discussing things. I am deliberating not pointing you to the links respecting their choices to keep the effort more quiet although I don't necessarily think it should be private.
The yum priorities plugin is a nice feature, but shouldn't been necessary in a perfect world (isn't that the direction of Linux? :) )
Perfect world doesnt exist. All we can do is find the best way to cope up with the imperfections.
How about a large database where packagers can add their packages that they have in their repo with no dobblets allowed, everything working together? And most importantly the links to add the repos in yum.
Either the programs must respect ABI compatibility more and we can encourage a more decentralized systems or we need a centralized repository. A database of repositories is pick your poison method. If they are really not conflicting with each other they could just merge and skip the middle men.
Rahul
On Tuesday 19 June 2007 09:42:44 Jonas Karlsson wrote:
How about a large database where packagers can add their packages that they have in their repo with no dobblets allowed, everything working together? And most importantly the links to add the repos in yum.
Having distributed repos is a bad idea. Buildroot inconsistancies or out of dateness, different source controls, no way for the community at large to assist in other 3rd party repos, no central control over when content goes out, no control over what content goes /into/ those repos (can't reference repos at all that carry illegal (to the US) content), etc...
If the content really were compatible, they should just package it in Fedora and play in the big sandbox.
Jonas Karlsson wrote:
Hello all, This is my first post to this list, hopefully some of you can agree to what I'm writing.
[...] But one thing that has always nagged at me is why do the Linux community often have a hard time at working toghether. [...]
Erhm, last time I saw people having a hard time working together, within moments they had signed a deal between the two of them resulting in one of them waving with coupons.
I (after all my years) still do have big troubble selecting a 3rd party repository every time a new version of fedora comes around.
How is that possible? I know there's easier things to do but this isn't at all that difficult. In fact, it is properly documented as well by the Fedora Unity project [1].
Do I use this or that with this version of fedora, which works best.. and help me upstairs.. you have to choose because they are not campatible and might break your system and kill all of your dependencies, shit!..
And again, properly documented by the Fedora Unity project [1]. All the software you ever wanted, in- or outside the Fedora Universe, including directions on things to keep track of while you go and install it the first time.
Does this sound familiar? No? .. YES!!!
This is year 2007 and the problematics above describes scenarios that should have been gone many years ago.. [...]
In fact it is a 'problem' that should not exist at all. 3rd party repositories should not need to exist for the distribution of proprietary or patented (eg. non-free) software if only all software was free. Fedora (or: Free Software) is exactly the solution to that problem. Side-note: Of course 3rd party repositories can have a different opinion on how stuff should be packaged or whether to allow the most bleeding edge stuff, etc... They'd not become completely obsolete in a free-software world.
Ok back on track (3rd party repositories) It's way over time to have guys like livna, freshrpms, rpmforge and atrpms etc start a collective, collaborative and functional repository (for the greater good).
Obviously, you're not the first to mention this. Apparently less obvious is that these guys do cooperate, and put aside some of their opinions and principles in order to do so. In addition, they put in extreme amounts of effort, too. Maybe even less obvious is that although there are reasons to not merge all 3rd party repositories together, they still make the effort. I mean they did initiate their own repositories for a reason, rather then joining some existent effort, right? Despite the history of things though (you could have known all this), they still make the effort of merging repositories. Not for their sake, but for yours.
Now that we finally are past Core and Extras and it is merged into one. The next step shold be to clean up the above described mess that is doing harm to the Fedora users and the general community by creating confusion and eventually breaks your installation.
The problem is not that there is more then one add-on repository for Fedora. The problem is not that some of those repositories or packages within those repositories conflict with one another. The problem isn't that there is non-free software either.
You calling this a mess however, that is what I call a serious problem. How dare you say anyone is doing users and the community any harm? I certainly hope you didn't really mean it that way. If anything, Fedora is about improving user experience with the Linux operating system, as long as it is Free and Open Source Software. If anything, we move forward on improving that very branch, too. There's lots of people putting in lots of effort working on that set of principles, for their own sake as well as yours. And because it's cool and challenging.
Kind regards,
Jeroen van Meeuwen -kanarip
[1] - Fedora Unity project: http://fedoraunity.org
Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
How is that possible? I know there's easier things to do but this isn't at all that difficult. In fact, it is properly documented as well by the Fedora Unity project [1]. And again, properly documented by the Fedora Unity project [1]. All the software you ever wanted, in- or outside the Fedora Universe, including directions on things to keep track of while you go and install it the first time.
Thank you Fedora Unity for the work you are doing. I've read the Fedora Unity's guidelines. Remember I did use Fedora even before Unity existed so this problematics is not new news. But I think it is time to address them in public to get opinions. The Unity do describe the problematics and how to live with it, but that do not solve things at a higher level. The problems will still be there and we (the users) will need to work around them.
In fact it is a 'problem' that should not exist at all. 3rd party repositories should not need to exist for the distribution of proprietary or patented (eg. non-free) software if only all software was free. Fedora (or: Free Software) is exactly the solution to that problem. Side-note: Of course 3rd party repositories can have a different opinion on how stuff should be packaged or whether to allow the most bleeding edge stuff, etc... They'd not become completely obsolete in a free-software world.
This will sidetrack to much to go into but I agree.
Obviously, you're not the first to mention this. Apparently less obvious is that these guys do cooperate, and put aside some of their opinions and principles in order to do so. In addition, they put in extreme amounts of effort, too. Maybe even less obvious is that although there are reasons to not merge all 3rd party repositories together, they still make the effort. I mean they did initiate their own repositories for a reason, rather then joining some existent effort, right? Despite the history of things though (you could have known all this), they still make the effort of merging repositories. Not for their sake, but for yours.
The problem is not that there is more then one add-on repository for Fedora. The problem is not that some of those repositories or packages within those repositories conflict with one another. The problem isn't that there is non-free software either.
You calling this a mess however, that is what I call a serious problem. How dare you say anyone is doing users and the community any harm? I certainly hope you didn't really mean it that way. If anything, Fedora is about improving user experience with the Linux operating system, as long as it is Free and Open Source Software. If anything, we move forward on improving that very branch, too. There's lots of people putting in lots of effort working on that set of principles, for their own sake as well as yours. And because it's cool and challenging.
Yes I did call it a mess, when the result might be to reinstall your machine. But I stand corrected and beg forgivness for saying the word harm in an uncareful way if you feel hurt by it. I did mean it in both ways. Looking at a very very large picture it actually makes confusion become harm. Looking at a smaller picture it is all good. Remember to get Linux on everyones desktop will require almost no confusion at all (just look at the confusion all the many different distros make(which to choose for the regular windows guy)). The persons behind the 3rd party repositories are doing a tremendous work and are a big part of the community, and I do thank them for the blood sweat and tears going into it. Why this question has even been risen is because this is now way past a small operation. There are millions of people using using these 3rd party software repositories and when there are, I also think that it is fair to ask the questions I do ask, don't you?
//Jonas
On Tue, 2007-06-19 at 15:46 +0200, Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
In fact it is a 'problem' that should not exist at all. 3rd party repositories should not need to exist for the distribution of proprietary or patented (eg. non-free) software if only all software was free. Fedora (or: Free Software) is exactly the solution to that problem. Side-note: Of course 3rd party repositories can have a different opinion on how stuff should be packaged or whether to allow the most bleeding edge stuff, etc... They'd not become completely obsolete in a free-software world.
This is actually the real center of the discussion, if we realize it or not.
There are practical reasons why to have >1 repo:
* Want to package different versions * Stability v. latest/greatest * Personal, technical, social, political, legal reasons to package differently * Personal, technical, social, political, legal reasons to what can be included in the same repo * Don't control everyone
And to me, the last is the most important. There is a reason we have a mix of personality types in a tribe. For the purposes of this, we'll call all of humanity one big tribe. Personality types evolved to support the tribe in different ways. It is necessary to have a large percentage of people be happy to remain settled -- otherwise, no one would stop long enough to build a house/town, farm the land, and have more babies. Throughout those people, many minds break the mold and look ahead -- from them come progress, inventions, first thoughts and beautiful poems, all the things that make the drudgery worth living. A small but notable percentage *must* hack new paths into the wilderness -- we need the stories and benefits gained from breaking new ground never even thought of before.
A simple metaphor is, "Trail blazers hack the paths, pioneers move there first, settlers make it worth coming back to."
When you have created a package repo that can support all those personality types, then you have a model for Utopia.
- Karsten, pioneer with a machete
On 6/20/07, Karsten Wade kwade@redhat.com wrote:
When you have created a package repo that can support all those personality types, then you have a model for Utopia.
But is it reasonable for people to expect Fedora to have a set of tools that let settlers feel like they are trail-blazers? To abuse your analogy for a few moments more....
brick and mortar trail-blazer know with intimate detail how difficult the environment will be on a daily basis... in fact they almost cherish the difficulty.
brick and mortar settlers on the other hand want absolutely none of those very real dangers and difficulties.. but love to vacations and pretend to be trailblazers and pioneers... and they tend to need to sign liability waivers in case they get hurt while on vacation.
I'm perfectly fine with trailblazer and pioneer repos, full of alternative builds or new things, that are intrinsicly more difficult to deal with. I'm not so fine with a set of tools aimed at settlers that encourages them to play in the more dangerous spaces without a liability waiver analogy.
-jef"there is a reason that only 1 in 4 families who claimed land during the landrush of the mid-western united states were able to survive more than one winter."spaleta
On 6/20/07, Karsten Wade kwade@redhat.com wrote:
When you have created a package repo that can support all those personality types, then you have a model for
Communism is an utopia. People forget that some of the best and greatest communist utopias -- city-sized/wide -- were founded in the US. Utopias work when everyone agrees and holds each other accountable. You don't need processes or rules or denials, because everyone just works together. For an engineer like myself, communism is the ultimate ideal and efficiency -- which is why, not surprisingly -- the Soviet Communist Party was dominated by engineers.
And it utterly _fails_ when you have an organization large enough were personal accountability is not feasible, people _differ_ on goals. And that eventually results in another structure, be it of merit (meritocratic-republic) or majority (democratic-republic) or otherwise. And that's where others yet just won't deal with any "process" they consider is "wrong."
How you address that, there's _no_ "silver bullet." In the US, we engineers studied microeconomics and its microcosm of technical feasibility, market aspects and various limits -- despite it's gross inefficiencies and sheer "unfairness" in comparison -- because we believe capitalism, and the efforts people put towards its incentives, is one way we know that works for us. Not that it's perfect. Not that it doesn't stomp on people. And Americans engineers will be the first to tell you that "freedom" isn't about "fair."
I've had this argument with people in the CentOS project, various, major maintainers like DAG and others, who constantly complain about the "processes" and "inconsideration" that the Fedora Project imposes to be a contributor. But guess what? Debian has its "rules." Many other projects have their "rules" as well. And yes, it's driven somewhat by an agenda of -- ultimately -- Red Hat, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a "bad idea." Especially when it comes to not merely just package-level testing, but more importantly, integration testing and regression avoidance.
Those right there are very, very important characteristics of a properly tuned engineering lifecycle. While it would be great if we could all work directly together like a single, engineering team -- and individual software projects and packages included by and for Fedora can do that -- it still doesn't solve the larger issues of integration testing and regression avoidance.
So what is the "utopia"? I don't know, but I can tell you one thing for certain. When people _differ_ on what that is, it's a great sign that it's _not_ possible at all. So that's where the "rules" -- which we engineers call things such as "requirements" and "specifications" and "reviews" -- that matter. And yes, market considerations -- oh those inconsiderate, "evil enterprise" thoughts that Red Hat sometimes "pushes" on the "community" comes out as Red Hat employees work on Fedora, just like they do the kernel, GCC, GLibC, etc... -- are there, especially when people don't feel they don't represent "the will of the [Linux] people."
But Fedora, like any other "community" project survives on its contributors. And those contributors have built a set of processes and requirements and foci base on their time, energy and efforts. If people who want to contribute, but claim they do not, because they claim "Fedora," or worse yet, "Red Hat doesn't care" -- then they are free to fork and do what they wish. And we have continually seen what happens in the majority of cases (although not all), those efforts die off. And the few that remain do remain because those contributors can work within a set of rules and realizations that there's a lot of effort required.
"Utopia"? That term ranks up there with my other favorite, non-tangible term that people like to use as if it's a finite, discrete product or service -- "Renewable."
On Thu, 2007-06-28 at 07:32 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
I'm perfectly fine with trailblazer and pioneer repos, full of alternative builds or new things, that are intrinsicly more difficult to deal with. I'm not so fine with a set of tools aimed at settlers that encourages them to play in the more dangerous spaces without a liability waiver analogy. -jef"there is a reason that only 1 in 4 families who claimed land during the landrush of the mid-western united states were able to survive more than one winter."spaleta
Those who contribute and make Fedora are the ones who set the "requirements" and "reviews" to be in Fedora. They don't set those details lightly, and they don't set them to "control" the process without the utmost consideration for all. Everyone is "free" to contribute, as long as they respect those processes. Those who don't are free to consider other, alternative mechanisms and approaches outside of those processes.
Some do, and they do a great job. I'll always appreciate those who have their own ways of making things work.
But those who complain about the "control" on Fedora or -- more directly, Red Hat -- often use the same "it's not fair" I hear of so many processes and systems. It's _never_ been about "fair," it's only been about consideration for those who came before them, what they thought worked, and how they worked together -- "freely" not "fairly."
Most people agree what "free" is. Few people agree what "fair" is.
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org