Summary of the 2008-04-08 Packaging Committee meeting

[Les Mikesell]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>>>  Why, for example, couldn't the changes you say
>>>> fedora needs as a dependency for openoffice be included in the 
>>>> jpackage repository for that fedora release and maintained as exact 
>>>> copies?
>>>
>>> You are again ignoring reasons already explained. Jpackage 
>>> specializes in Java packages and doesn't include all the packages 
>>> Fedora does and vice versa. So the dependencies cannot be the same. 
>>> Even it does there are differences in release cycles, patches, 
>>> packaging and licensing policy among other reasons. It is pretty 
>>> difficult to have two variants of a software with different 
>>> maintainers in two different repositories perfectly in sync all the 
>>> time even with the best efforts.
>>
>> The 'different maintainers' is the point in question.  Did anyone 
>> offer to maintain the duplicated packages upstream with needed changes 
>> instead of forking incompatible ones?  
> 
> Maintainers even if they are some which they are in some cases cannot 
> avoid changes introduced for other reasons. In some cases, they try to 
> stay in sync. In other cases, they have to deviate.  Picking one point 
> and ignoring others just keeps continuing your discussions endlessly.

But this is the only point with any potential for improvement.  It has 
been clear forever that the fedora repository isn't ever going to 
contain everything users are likely to need for reasons that don't 
matter because they aren't going to change.  The only issue is how 
difficult the fedora distribution makes it to work with the larger 
community that pre-dates fedora and is willing to provide those things.

>  So end this discussion here and just move on.

Are you saying there is no hope for improvement?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com