Orion Poplawski <orion(a)cora.nwra.com> wrote:
I also don't see a terribly big difference between pulling
packages from
CentOS or from EPEL. Wouldn't they have to be the same anyways?
Which does to my greater point ...
If the package is pulled from EL Rebuilds, then it only solves it for
EL Rebuilds, not Red Hat Enterprise customers. If the package is
pulled from EPEL, it solves it for both EL Rebuilds and Red Hat
customers. Both the EL Rebuilds and Red Hat build the packages in
their respective release options.
I used to advise Red Hat customers that EPEL was the location where
they could get software maintained to Fedora Project standards that
did not conflict with Red Hat Enterprise products sans one or two.
But now I have to advise with many asterisks, and then I get concern
looks -- some of disbelief (until they look into it) and others who
just don't want to bother.
The expectations have changed, to the point Red Hat customers have
enough issues.
Case-in-point: (Real World, First Hand experience here ...)
These are the exact same issues Red Hat customers moved to EPEL in the
first place, away from using things like CentOS Extras. They wanted
the extra packages, but not anything that conflicted with Red Hat
Enterprise products. But that's no longer the case.
If the EL Rebuilds want to get together and coordinate repos so there
is one source for rebuilds from Red Hat SRPMS, I think that's a great
idea. But if you make the Red Hat sponsored, Fedora Project's EPEL
SIG this repository, then you will just turn EPEL into what many Red
Hat customers did not like with CentOS Extras.
And even if the Fedora Project is going to continue to be leveraged
for this endeavor, to keep the customers that preferred EPEL over
things like CentOS Extras, you're going to need to segment the two.
Otherwise they will leave and not come back.
I can't be the only person who has been around Enterprises this long
who has seen this over all these years. ;)
--
Bryan J Smith - Professional, Technical Annoyance