On 07/28/2010 01:10 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-07-28 at 11:37 -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 03:04:46PM +0200, Florent Le Coz wrote:
>>> On 28/07/2010 14:52, Mike McGrath wrote:
>>>> In my opinion including software that even upstream says is not ready
is
>>>> for a distribution that's "lost their way". We can still
be a leading
>>>> distribution and not include pre-release software. Especially
pre-release
>>>> software that's not only in our critical path, but also something
that
>>>> almost all of us use every day.
>>> I agree, but doesn't that mean that Firefox 4.0 won't be available
in
>>> F14 at all and will only be in F15?
>>> I think it would be a huge drawback for Fedora 14.
>>
>> It would be huge if there people who can't live without it didn't have
>> any other way of getting it than having it pre-packaged. I think
>> Firefox 4 looks to be fantastic, but the truth is that people only
>> have to wait a few months for a release with it pre-packaged, if
>> they're not able to add it on their own.
>
> I'd rather we provide them a package than have people going out and
> installing software from third-party sources (yes,
mozilla.org is hardly
> Evil, but it sets a bad precedent). I really don't see much of a reason
> we can't ship it as a post-release update. We'd probably want to do that
> in the end anyway, because Mozilla tends to stop security supporting old
> branches anyway; it's certainly plausible that they stop supporting 3.x
> during F14's support lifetime.
Just because it isn't in the F14 repo doesn't mean it won't be available to
people who really want a packaged version earlier - look at spot's chromium
packages, for example. And I really expect the F14-F15 time frame to be a very
similar situation with Firefox - just because it's released doesn't mean there
isn't some time to wait before it's really shippable. 6 months won't be the
end of the world, especially if it's added to an add-on repo someplace so
people can get it if they really want something other than ff3.
Perhaps it's time to figure out how to make things like Tom's chromium
more official. Find actual hosting/mirroring for that stuff, make a clear
path to get people to it but also letting them know "hey, your milage may
vary".
-Mike