Unite Non-free repos (Was: Re: Non-free Extras?)

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Mittwoch, den 22.02.2006, 14:56 -0500 schrieb Eric Mesa:
>[...]
> The reason for my starting the thread was the fact that there are a
> myriad of repos out there for those of us who need (or "need" -
> depending on your point of view) access to non-free software.  They
> overlap in a lot of places, but some have one app that others don't.

That's true.

> However, mixing repos who don't work together can have bad results.

Yep. 

> So I was hoping we could unite them in, 

Well, "unite them" sounds like a good plan -- the current situation
creates a lot of confusing. Some users wandered off to Ubuntu due to
that. But there are some things that you can't unite. So it probably
needs to be a "unite what can be united".

At least freshrpms and livna are close together regarding politics and
packages -- both do not replace or update packages from Core or Extras
(normally). Maybe it's time to forget all the old flamewars that
happened years ago and merge the two. Anvil, thias, what's your opinion?
I'm, willing to act as middle man for "merging discussions" if those two
accept me (Disclaimer: I contribute to livna, but I was not involved in
the flamewars in the pre-fedora.us days -- only some of those that
happened later).

newrpms: che has a package under review from extras. He also does not
replace things from extras or livna normally. I'm optimistic that we
could get him involved in merge plans, too.

atrpms and dag/dries/rpmforge: Depends on them. They currently replace
packages from Core and Extras -- that's necessary to achieve some things
they do (things Extras and Livna don't do), but a lot of people don't
like that. But there is no reason why they can't joins a merged
"Non-Free-Repo" (Let's call it "Repo-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named") and
continue the other stuff that does not harmonizes separately. But that's
probably more work for them with a small gain for them. Correct me if
I'm wrong.

I didn't follow the other repos to closely -- maybe someone else can
comment on those?

>say, the Fedora-non-free and
> Fedora-tricky-licensing repos so that they could work together and
> maintain package consistency, etc.

We probably can't do the above (and shouldn't do that) under the name
"Fedora". Proprietary software (like the drivers from ati and nvidia)
and "Patent Encumbered" software is a no go for Fedora afaics.

But yes, maybe we could to a "Fedora Extras Non-Free" for things like 
- the Firmware for ipw2100 and ipw2200 
- stuff like povray -- open-source, but not "free" (see 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-list/2006-February/msg00191.html
for details)

CU
thl 
-- 
Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>