Fedora.next in 2014 -- Big Picture and Themes

[Alec Leamas]

On 1/25/14, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2014-01-25 at 12:04 +0100, Alec Leamas wrote:
>
>
>> After hacking a simple tool which provides a GUI for a repository file
>> it's possible to create repository packages complete with  desktop and
>> appdata file. I have some 5-10 such repository packages under way, my
>> plan is to push them into rpmfusion.
>
> http://rpmfusion.org/Contributors#Read_the_packaging_guidelines

I know this is controversial. I've also heard some rumours about
Fedora using something they call "Packaging Guidelines". Has anyone
some  information  on this topic? ;)

Can we just for the sake of discussion leave this formal side of it, for now?

> So I found this point interesting in thinking about these issues this
> morning. There was a post of Hughesie's (I think) in another thread
> which was also illuminating: it suggested the design of Software is to
> be a generic 'software' installer - to provide as much 'software' from
> as many sources as possible, under the 'it's all just software' theory,
> I guess.
>
> I think the assumption that this is obviously the right design is
> interesting, because I strongly disagree - not just for legal or policy
> reasons, but because that's most definitely *not* what I want. I don't
> want a 'greedy' software installer that just finds every piece of crap
> on the internet and offers it to me. I appreciate the curation that

I don't know if this is  Hughesie's vision. Anyway, it's certainly not
mine. Adding whatever software available out there to the repos is a
Bad Idea. Agreed

That said,, IMHO  we actually need  to be better on delivering what
people need. Some of this is not in Fedora's repos. This is already
acknowledged here and there. E. g., rpmfusion has  list of
repositories which are known to work with rpmfusion [1]. For fedora,
we have e. g. jpackage, which is stated s compatible in the Java GL.

I'm trying to find some middle ground here. Instead of just enabling
repos, perhaps when installing something else, I'm trying  a process
where each and every repository added is packaged separately. Hence,
here is also  separate review for each repository. And even if
installed, it's not enabled until l explicitly configured by user..

I see all the problems when using things like pip, gem etc. However,
this is not anything like this. It's about letting users install
carefully selected repositories which are known to work with Fedora.
Doing it this way, we also create a difference to other repositories
which are not endorsed.  Also this is something we need badly IMHO.

It's also  task which naturally belongs to rpmfusion, mostly the
non-free section.

--alec.

[1] http://rpmfusion.org/FedoraThirdPartyRepos