Fedora "backports" repo? (Was Re: PostgreSQL 9 for F14?)

[Jon Masters]

On Mon, 2010-09-20 at 21:58 -0400, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> 2010/9/20 Michał Piotrowski <mkkp4x4 at gmail.com>:
> > 2010/9/21 Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger at gmail.com>:
> >> As the concept of using third party repositories (both as packagers and as
> >> users) grows, this interdependence will grow.
> >
> > Ok, so maybe it's time to setup Fedora "backports" repo for these that
> > wants new and shiny Firefox 4, PostgreSQL 9 or whatever with big
> > number.

> What exactly is the fear here with these updates?

That they sometimes horribly break, change behavior (in any way), or
otherwise affect the smooth consistency of using a system and upgrading
daily, without actively discouraging upgrades for fear of breakage
(which is what Fedora has been doing for me, as an example). The fear is
also that people are not comprehending the difference between a released
Operating System Platform and a random collection of moving targets.

> Are there many
> desktop users who do NOT want the latest released Firefox?

Yup. I don't want it. I don't care about it and I'm uninterested in
having the latest version. I'd like the version I have currently
installed to get security fixes, but I don't want Firefox 4 on my
desktop system right now. I'll leave it on my development box running
rawhide and poke at it for testing, but I *DO NOT* want it released.

> Are there
> many people using Fedora as their OS for their database server?

If you mean does postgres matter, I've got an old non-Fedora box I'd
love to replace with Fedora, and it runs MySQL (amongst other things). I
can't replace it (using either database) until such time as Fedora has a
decent update policy though. So saying "nobody uses Fedora on the
server" is a sure fire way of perpetuating that sad reality.

I also care far more about server bits than I care about Firefox or my
desktop in general. I want a web browser, but I'll take any web browser
that works reasonably well enough. Similarly, I want a GUI of some kind,
but I don't care if it's enlightenment 0.17 if need be so long as it
doesn't ever change from one day to the next. I love the backports repo
idea. Ubuntu has been doing this for ages with their LTS releases, and
it's a nice way to pull in stuff like a more recent spamassassin without
having to upgrade the rest of the operating system, or change what works
out of the box in the default install path. So +1 to the idea in Fedora.

Jon.