Where are we going? (Not a rant)

[Paulo César Pereira de Andrade]

2012/12/9 Roberto Ragusa <mail at robertoragusa.it>:
> On 12/08/2012 07:52 PM, Rahul wrote:
>> On 12/08/2012 01:48 PM, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
>>> (my two cents, as someone using Red Hat / Fedora daily since RH5.1, and never stepping up as Fedora packager because too scared by the bureaucracy)
>>
>> Can you be more specific?  What sort of bureaucracy do you think is avoidable in the current process?  What would it take for you to get started?
>
> I do not have specific suggestions, as I actually do not know the process well,
> and even less the motivations behind each steps.

  Maybe there could be some "hire a packager" program :-)

> I can only say that at
>   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers
> 23 steps are shown under "Becoming a Fedora Package Collection Maintainer".
>
> Some of them are technical and more or less unavoidable (koji, expiring certificates,
> scm, bodhi), others are more social (ask a review, introduce, inform upstream,
> get sponsorship), finally there is legal stuff (the CLA).

  Personally I like this model because in the end it translates to
higher quality
packages (the social stuff), and with more people looking at it, unlikely to
allow passing some issues like dubious license, failing make check, failing
to pass proper compiler/loader flags, etc. Otherwise, to lift most of
it, it would
be required to encourage personal repositories or some kind of "contrib"
repository.

> My enthusiasm has never been powerful enough to overcome such an amount
> of static friction.
> I do not have a bag of packages to add to Fedora, so going through all the
> steps just to maintain one rpm or two is costly. I'm sure that after being
> "inside" the willingness to do more will raise easily, but the initial
> investment appears unjustified.

  Once you get used to the several steps it also becomes easier, but the
learning curve is not simple, and I believe most "mentor capable" people
are overworked, so, hard to get someone to babysit the first steps :-)

Paulo