On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro@gnome.org> wrote:
On Tue, 2016-06-14 at 15:40 -0400, Ben Rosser wrote:
> This is a slight tangent, but by "remove Fedora packages", do you
> mean
> actually remove them from the distribution entirely or simply not
> show the
> packaged version in e.g. GNOME Software in favor of the upstream
> Flatpak?
> The latter makes sense to me, the former seems potentially
> controversial.

I was thinking remove the Fedora package. What's the point in
maintaining a secret Fedora package for a graphical app, when we're
going to be presenting a different version of that app to users?

Well, if a packager wants to maintain it, why not?

As someone who's a bit skeptical about containers as the future of software distribution, I'd like to continue getting "traditionally packaged" applications from Fedora where possible. I became a Fedora packager as a large part because I wanted to expand the pool of such software that was available in Fedora, by making it available to other users. It seems like that's not a thing we're going to care about as much going forward, which I guess is... fine, but I kind of have mixed feelings about the whole thing.

I suspect I am in a minority here, though.
 
And as
Josh says, this would also create confusion regarding where to report
bugs, and also confusion when users have two different sets of bugs
depending on whether you use a Fedora package or the upstream Flatpak.

That is a valid concern, and not something I'd have an immediate solution for.
 
There's no plan to systematically go around removing Fedora packages in
favor of Flatpaks; rather, we plan to do this on a case-by-case basis
at the request of upstreams that have developed Flatpaks and want those
Flatpaks to be available in Fedora. Package maintainers would be
allowed to dispute the change, again on a case-by-case basis, but I
don't expect that to happen often. We're also planning to allow third-
party RPMs to replace Fedora-provided RPMs following the same
procedure.
 
Full details at [1], just keep in mind this is a WIP document in the
preproposal stage; i.e. we were not planning to propose it on this list
yet.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Third_party_software_proposal

Sure, I understand that the recent press coverage of Ubuntu's solution in this space (Snap) has brought some of this stuff forward preemptively. My gut reaction, though, to *replacing* Fedora packages with upstream-provided containers, though, is, "...thanks, I'll pass". My gut reaction may be entirely irrelevant in the larger scheme of things, but maybe it would be a good idea to at least start discussing this even if a formal proposal is a ways off yet? Though this is a tangent, as I said originally, so maybe this thread is a bad place for such a discussion.

Ben Rosser