half baked idea for further baking: "fedora-ugly" repo

[Bill Nottingham]

Matthew Miller (mattdm at fedoraproject.org) said: 
> This idea has come up several times at DevConf, and I thought I'd throw it
> out here so it can maybe get further development and discussion.
> 
> COPRs are cool, but very much the uncharted wilderness. The Fedora
> distribution proper is a stockade fort with high walls -- it's very nice
> iside (with some rough parts of town... I can take this analogy all the
> way...) but the barrier to get in is giantic and topped with spikes. 
> 
> And it's not just that there's a lack of guidelines. Different COPRs repos
> don't need to work together, and it's imposible to tell which will or to
> have any epectation that two which work together today will work together
> tomorrow. And, packages aren't signed at all.
> 
> So, the proposal: a new repository in the Fedora Project which I am
> tentatively calling "Fedora Ugly". It could be "Fedora Staging", but I think
> that promises a bit much (some things may remain here for a really, really
> long time). This repo would provide an integration space where packages from
> diverse COPRs repos could come together, and also be more discoverable by
> other Fedora developers and users (just add one repo).
> 
> Some specifics:
> 
>  - it could feed from COPRs -- add your packages by checking a box
>  - packages would only go in if they meet minimal automatic gating --
>    can't conflict with other packages
>  - possibly some sort of automatic flagging of crazy %pre or %post package
>    scripts?
>  - if they don't meet the gating, package owner would get an email
>    explaining the problem
>  - Fedora packaging guidelines don't apply fully, but maybe some subset
>    is appropriate?
>  - degree to which packages would be allowed here forever vs. encouraged
>    to improve so they can eventually be in the main repo is an open question
>  - repo would be off by default, but easily enabled in yum or in Gnome
>    Software
>  - packages would be signed, possibly by a different key from the main
>    Fedora one. 
>  - signing could be automatic rather than manual
>  - ugly-testing or ugly-updates repo, and rolling release vs versioning? to
>    be figured out!
> 
> What do people think of this idea overall? Anyone interested in polishing
> this up into a Real Thing?

I'm not necessarily against this, but how does this differ from the 'Fedora
Commons' part of the original proposal?  What would we be accomplishing here
above and beyond a set of curated COPRs?

Bill