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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 09/10/2015 09:53 AM, Stephen
Gallagher wrote:<br>
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<pre wrap="">The point of software is to provide a service to an end-user. Users
don't run software because it has good packaging policies, they run
software because it meets a need that they have. If they can't get
that software from Fedora, they *will* get it from another source (or
use a different OS that doesn't get in their way). I'll take a moment
to remind people that two of Fedora's Four Foundations are "Features"
and "First". We want Fedora to be the most feature-complete
distribution available and we want to get there before anyone else
does. I would say that holding to our no-bundling policy actively
defeats our efforts on that score.
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Those are valid points, but I think that there are alternative
approaches to address them. <br>
Can containerization it be leveraged to handle the packages which
require bundling? This way, we could maintain the principled stance,
and use containers with bundling packages as a temporary measure.<br>
<br>
Secondly, I would argue that the 'Freedom' requirement results in
more restrictions in functionality than the 'no-bundling'
requirement. We deal with that by having specific 'rpmfusion'
repositories, and this workaround is well known, documented and
accepted---so maybe another approach is to have a
'rpmfusion-bundled' repo?<br>
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<pre wrap="">The reason for this proposal is relatively simple: we know the
advantages to unbundling, particularly with security and resource-
usage. However, the world's developer community largely *does not
care*. We fought the good fight, we tried to bring people around to
seeing our reasoning and we failed.
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I think we should really pause and think about what does the 'does
not care' mindset entail. It's not just the attitude towards
bundling: it extends to security problems, integration issues, and
who knows what other aspect of the product. I concede that it's, as
you said, a list of the same tired arguments---but they do have a
point! I think it is a mistake to declare defeat, even if it's
nominally only on the specific issue of bundling. <br>
<br>
I do understand the pragmatic motivation of your proposal, but we
have to calibrate it against the real and possible detriments. Taken
to the extreme, an overly permissive approach _could_ introduce
enough crud to affect the entire system. Please forgive me for
sounding alarmist and cynical but I am old enough to remember the
1990's FTP collections. They were full of projects started by
well-intentioned, pragmatic developers, which evolved into an
unmaintaintainable mess ---I am so glad that we left that behind.
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