rawhide report: 20050121 changes

[Josh Boyer]

On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 21:28 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Hi
> 

Putting this back on the list because you make some good points and this
is a good discussion.

> > 
> > That's because it's not always a technical issue.  It's about choice.
> > Default does not mean "this has to be installed".  It's just a default.
> > If I don't like the default, I should be given the option of installing
> > an alternative.  And that is without needing to download another large
> > ISO after the fact because one didn't realize that KDE wasn't included
> > in Core anymore.
> > 
> 
> I dont think you read my previous mails completely. Let me explain
> this once more
> 
> today fedora core is 4+1 cds.  if you limit fedora core to the
> defaults and have it in 1 or 2 cds, you can have  fedora extras or a
> subset of it on the rest of the cds. so the totally number of CD's you
> have to download as a KDE user still remains the same.  Morever by

With you so far, but I have an issue I'll discuss below.

> limiting fedora core to the default others who are satisfied with the
> defaults and dont want to make choice initially either due to
> ignorance or due to lack of knowledge would be happy to stick with
> what they get. the rest download what they want and install what they
> want from fedora extras and elsewhere
> 
> You still have the choice. the choices only increase with the
> formation of fedora extras.

If the Core install CDs give you an option to install from the Extras
CDs at _install_ time, and you have the choice to not accept the
default, then I could be OK with that.

However, my main concern with moving KDE to Extras is not ISO
organization.  It's more of a maintainership issue.  This whole thread
started because some packages were removed from Core, and then the
community found out that quite a few of those packages were orphaned.

KDE is a large package to maintain both because of it's code size and
it's large user base.  Someone from the community maybe well be able to
do the job, but right now KDE is released and maintained as a part of
Core.  It has a maintainer, it's part of the daily, weekly, whatever
builds and it probably gets at least some QA testing.

I realize that Fedora is officially an unsupported distribution, but the
fact remains that the kind folks at Red Hat still work on this quite a
bit.  If it's moved to Extras and needs a new maintainer (which may not
be the case), how quickly will it be picked up?  Who knows?

> 
> fedora core however has a defined goal. its called "core" for a reason
> and all I am asking for is for the fedora project to implement that
> goal for FC4.  Fedora installer should make it easy for  anyone to
> install updates or add repositories and manage to have atleast the
> same software before the formation of fedora extras
> 

Could you kindly point me to where the "defined goal of including only
defaults" is stated?  I can't seem to find it anywhere.  In fact, I find
statements all over the Fedora webpage that are contrary to that:

From: http://fedora.redhat.com/about/

"The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to
build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open
source software."

and

"Fedora Core is intended to be a logical upgrade path for previous users
of Red Hat Linux whose needs are consistent with the objectives of the
Fedora Project."

From: http://fedora.redhat.com/about/objectives.html

"Include a range of popular packages, beyond those included in Red Hat's
commercially supported products. (Limited, of course, to packages that
Red Hat can legally provide; also limited to quality packages as defined
by our standards.)"

I see nothing about Core only containing defaults.  Maybe I'm missing it
somewhere.  Do you have a link to it?  I'm not saying it's not a decent
goal to have, but that I just can't find it anywhere.

If all you want is to reorganize the ISOs so that all the default
options can be on 1 or 2 CDs, that's fine with me.  As long as the
installer has the option of installing from the "non-default" CDs as
well.

josh