Fedora Extras is extra

[William M. Quarles]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:

<snip>
> I personally think it comes down to how you prioritize certain aspects
> of the issue at hand relative to each other. In essense there are two
> long term competing world views. Not 3 months from now... not 6 months
> from now... think fc6 time schedule. Do you want to see as much
> centralized system into one (or two) repository as possible. Or do you
> want to see a several competing repositories each with overlap sets of
> packages as the long term solution?  Each has its strengths and
> weaknesses depending on what solution you are trying to solve.

Fedora Core 6 will only be a year from now, not mush of a stretch from 
six months.  I think that you should keep that in mind as you throw 
around that number.

And the repositories don't all compete with each other.  That's only how 
Fedora Extras sees it, because THEY are the newcomers trying to compete 
with all of the other repositories.  A lot of the non-Fedora-Extras 
repositories are interoperable now because the individual maintainers 
have been working together on that. That has been emphasized several 
times already on and off of this thread.  I think that it was either 
Axel or Dag that said that the repository world has been broken down now 
into only two camps, not 4, not 3, only two: Fedora.us, and non-Fedora.us.

> I personally think moving to as much centralization provides a more
> interesting Fedora Project. I like the idea Micheal Tiemann of Red Hat
> has express about "Fedora Collections" where in the future once Core
> and Extras exist in the same build environment you think about opening
> up the space and having targetted media sets besides just Core, put
> together from core and extras. I'm also concerned about relying on
> system made of nearly individual packagers maintaining their own
> individual repositories and build systems. I'm concerned about what
> happens if one those individuals can no longer provide packages any
> longer. Since there is no integrated build system between individual
> repositories, it might be a significant amount of time for a volunteer
> to duplicate the build system that repository was using if it goes
> dark due to an individual maintainers.

Probably that repository will merge with another well-established 
repository, and then that individual will pick up the packaging with 
their pre-existing build system.  I'm not worried about that happening 
anytime soon with Planet CCRMA, my main repository, because Fernando 
gets paid by Stanford University to maintain it, and if he leaves 
they'll probably hire somebody else in his stead.

> If an individual maintainer
> can no longer package in a centralized build system... a volunteer
> does not need to try to duplicate any of the build infrastructure to
> come forward and maintain the packages that were orphaned.

A volunteer would still have to come forward to keep maintaining that 
particular package however.  I'm sure that far from all of the packages 
will be popular to maintain.

> I have several other reasons why I personally prefer a long term
> centralized solution, but i would have to say those are my two primary
> reasons.  And i think its important that we all take a moment and
> think about long term priorities and constraints, instead of getting
> caught up in the day to day, back and forth debate. Without taking
> anything away from those people who volunteered their efforts to
> create large repositories of packages for the general public to use,
> in the guideline vacuum Red Hat created for add-on packages through
> the entire RHL period.. i think the long term health of Fedora is best
> served with as much centralization of package build process as
> possible moving forward.

I don't completely disagree with that.  I just think that their should 
be some centralization, mainly libraries, and also programs that are 
useful mainly because a lot of other programs use them.  These would be 
packages that would not be relevant to Core but would be relevant to 
programs outside of core.  And leave open some "third-party" 
communication.  That will increase interoperability immensely, while 
still leaving some spice in the world.  It will also leave the door open 
for people who actually want to write software for Fedora Core 
commercially (especially companies that write software that people want 
but nobody else wants to program) to interact with the Fedora Extras 
community, making it even bigger, brighter and more interesting... gosh, 
imagine that!

----
Peace,
William