Relationship to existing 3rd party repos/CentOS/SL?

[Tim Jackson]

Dag Wieers wrote:

> Still, nobody listens to the voice me or Axel represents. And I'm sure 
> opponents like to minimize what it represents or the value it has.

I don't think that's quite true. Many people, including myself, have 
expressed publically before how much they appreciate both the work (in 
terms of existing packages & support) and the input (in terms of 
knowledge) from yourself, Axel and others. The kmod debate may not have 
been much fun, and it didn't end up with the result you wanted, but even 
in that debate you will find many people appreciative of your experience 
with a large userbase.

There is nothing better than yourself & Axel (and all the others with 
similar experience) contributing to EPEL. I really would like for that 
to happen, because the end result is better when a whole group of people 
work together in collaboration and co-operation.

I also think you are over-personalising this by talking about 
"opponents" and suchlike. I can (respectfully) disagree with someone, 
but it doesn't mean they are an "opponent". Actually, many times we 
might be trying to achieve the same thing, we just have different 
opinions. Sometimes there is no right or wrong, just a matter of 
perspective.

> Fact is that RPMforge and AtRPMS will now drop the repotag now that Fedora 
> rejected the idea. Have fun sorting through a mess where there are 
> different eg. clamav packages with the same version-release and different 
> content. That's what you get when you do not differentiate packages.

Personally I don't have a problem with this in the slightest, which is 
part of the reason why I am so ambivalent about repotags. I'm 100% sure 
that "EPEL doesn't have repotag" DOES NOT mean "Stuff you Axel/Dag". 
(Actually, I had no participation in the original debate, and I did not 
vote, so I'm commenting as an observer. But personally I think it is 
entirely up to you whether you use a repotag or not in your own private 
repo, I respect that decision either way, and I am quite happy both ways).

You & Axel appear to be implying that you removing repotags is some kind 
of threat, which is going to teach a lesson to some of the people who 
opposed it in EPEL.  Maybe it will, but personally I don't see it as a 
big deal either way. Again, I'm not actually trying to discuss the 
repotag issue here - just to point out that co-existence is mutual: 
nobody in EPEL can criticise you for removing repotags, but I've not 
heard from anyone that *wants* to criticise you. Perhaps I missed them, 
but I didn't notice anybody saying "hey, we don't need repotags, because 
we're special - but Dag does.". So, please, remove your repotag. If 
anyone in EPEL who opposed repotags in EPEL criticises you, then you can 
rightly claim they are hypocritical. But I suspect that nobody will 
actually complain. Well, time will tell.

> Fedora/EPEL is actively making sure people cannot use packages from 
> different sources 

I don't think this is true.  However, I do personally keep my active use 
of repos to a minimum because I personally find that mixing of sources 
is incompatible with the reasons I'm using an enterprise distro - 
regardless of the respective quality of the various repos. However, I 
don't see anything proposed that actually *stops* people doing that if 
they really want.

It's also important to remember that EPEL is more or less just a bunch 
of people trying to achieve a similar goal, not some kind of 
power-crazed organisation. You can be a part of that and influence the 
outcome, but human nature dictates that it's easier to do that "from the 
inside" than out. That said, as Axel is demonstrating, merely being part 
of the group doesn't mean that everyone has to agree with - and at the 
end of the day you have to decide whether the tradeoff of being part of 
something collaborative is worth the downside of having to live with 
decisions you sometimes disagree with. (Which also means sometimes 
having to sit back and watch some other people learn the hard way about 
some things and be able to say "I told you so". That's frustrating I 
know, but it's also life :)


Tim