3rd party repositories vs the floppy disk

Karsten Wade kwade at redhat.com
Wed Jun 20 19:31:21 UTC 2007


On Tue, 2007-06-19 at 15:46 +0200, Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:

> In fact it is a 'problem' that should not exist at all. 3rd party 
> repositories should not need to exist for the distribution of 
> proprietary or patented (eg. non-free) software if only all software was 
> free. Fedora (or: Free Software) is exactly the solution to that 
> problem. Side-note: Of course 3rd party repositories can have a 
> different opinion on how stuff should be packaged or whether to allow 
> the most bleeding edge stuff, etc... They'd not become completely 
> obsolete in a free-software world.

This is actually the real center of the discussion, if we realize it or
not.

There are practical reasons why to have >1 repo:

* Want to package different versions
* Stability v. latest/greatest
* Personal, technical, social, political, legal reasons to package
differently
* Personal, technical, social, political, legal reasons to what can be
included in the same repo
* Don't control everyone

And to me, the last is the most important.  There is a reason we have a
mix of personality types in a tribe.  For the purposes of this, we'll
call all of humanity one big tribe.  Personality types evolved to
support the tribe in different ways.  It is necessary to have a large
percentage of people be happy to remain settled -- otherwise, no one
would stop long enough to build a house/town, farm the land, and have
more babies.  Throughout those people, many minds break the mold and
look ahead -- from them come progress, inventions, first thoughts and
beautiful poems, all the things that make the drudgery worth living.  A
small but notable percentage *must* hack new paths into the wilderness
-- we need the stories and benefits gained from breaking new ground
never even thought of before.

A simple metaphor is, "Trail blazers hack the paths, pioneers move there
first, settlers make it worth coming back to."

When you have created a package repo that can support all those
personality types, then you have a model for Utopia.

- Karsten, pioneer with a machete
-- 
   Karsten Wade, 108 Editor       ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
   quaid.108.redhat.com           |          gpg key: AD0E0C41
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