ATrpms and FC5/RHEL5

[Warren Togami]

Jarod Wilson wrote:
> On Monday 02 January 2006 16:53, Warren Togami wrote:
>> Furthermore, I personally consider 3rd party repositories to be forks of
>> the distribution.  In most cases this is no problem if they do not
>> overlap and do not replace Core/Extras packages.
>>
>> A "fork" is not necessarily a bad thing.  Only users should be aware
>> that they use such repositories at their own option, and if they have
>> any problems they need to report it to their fork project/repository to
>> deal with it.  It is not Fedora's responsibility to workaround problems
>> caused by forks or 3rd party software.
> 
> While I agree that it isn't necessarily Fedora's responsibility to play nice 
> with 3rd-party repositories, I think it ought to be a goal to make using 
> 3rd-party repositories as painless as possible. I think there are quite a few 
> people who might not use Fedora, if not for the 3rd-party repositories.
> 
> If there's a fix or functionality addition to a core package needed for 
> another package maintained by a 3rd-party, why not push them into the core 
> versions? Then people who want software out of the 3rd-party repo but don't 
> want core packages replaced get to have their cake and eat it too, and 
> 3rd-party repositories don't get bashed as much. Everybody wins, no?
> 
> Of course, someone within Red Hat would probably have to step up as 3rd-party 
> repository liaison  to coordinate the effort... But I think its something 
> worth doing, for the sake of the Fedora community at large.
> 

It is an anti-goal of Fedora to promote the proliferation of arbitrary 
mixes of 3rd party repositories as the standard way of using Fedora.  A 
central goal of Fedora is collaborative development in a centralized 
repository.  For this reason it is untenable to expect or suggest Red 
Hat to explicitly coordinate with 3rd party repositories.  Your post is 
also problematic in completely ignoring potential legal implications of 
an official relationship between Fedora and 3rd party repositories.

Users have an option of using 3rd party software, but the responsible 
party for dealing with problems shifts in such cases.

If you have concerns about individual packages, please file bugs in Red 
Hat Bugzilla.  Changes can be made to individual Core/Extras packages 
are usually general bug fixes and enhancements.  It is wrong to expect 
Fedora to make special concessions only to work around problems 
introduced by 3rd parties.  If it is the right thing to do in general 
cases, then it is proper to make changes to Core/Extras.

Warren Togami
wtogami at redhat.com