what do you want to know about EPEL?

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

I'll take a shot at this. Note that I don't speak for the EPEL Steering
Committee. :)

On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 16:18 +0100, Lee Faus wrote:
> 1) How do appliances fit into EPEL?

I'm not sure this is relevant. EPEL is a repository of RPM packages
built against RHEL 4 and 5. If your appliance can make use of those RPM
packages, then it would seem that EPEL is a good fit for that appliance.

> 2) Is RPM a requirement for EPEL?

Yes.

> 3) If we deploy to EPEL, do all of the packages we depend on need to
> be in EPEL as well?

Yes.

> 3a) If so, who is responsible for getting those packages into EPEL?

Someone? Anyone? There is no requirement that anyone in particular do
it, but they do need to be there. You can't put the cart before the
horse, but we don't care who maintains the horse (as long as someone
does). :)

> 4) How is Fedora/Community prepared to help getting business
> applications into EPEL?

This is a good question. I suspect that individuals who are interested
in these applications will be motivated to help. Some of the rest of us
are just interested in helping FOSS companies get more exposure and are
volunteering our time and resources to assist. We won't really have a
good idea until we get the ball rolling forward.

> 4a) Are there FTEs devoted to getting business applications into EPEL?

I'm not tasked for this as my only role as a FTE for Red Hat, but as the
Fedora Engineering Manager, I'm volunteering quite a bit of my time to
assist with this process. So, you've got at least 1/4 of 1. ;)

> 5) Do you need to go through Fedora to get to EPEL?

So, the answer here is "sortof". EPEL uses the Fedora Packaging
Guidelines, so if your package meets the criteria for acceptance in
Fedora, it is also ok for EPEL. The maintainer will also need to agree
to the Fedora CLA (or negotiate a separate corporate contributor
agreement) and have a Fedora account, in order to maintain the packages.

However: If you really don't want your package in Fedora, just EPEL, we
can do that.

I hope that helps,

~spot