OS Future now that Fedora Legacy defunct

[James Wilkinson]

Jim Douglas wrote:
> I would also like the Fedora team to not mangle the original programs so
> much.  I would like to be able to download the official Fedora
> application or the real official application without many changes.  I
> look at OpenOffice as an example.

This *is* something that Fedora are trying to do -- to do as much
development as possible "upstream". But there are certain areas (and
OpenOffice is *definitely* one of them) where that hasn't been possible,
without compromising some of Fedora's principles and other priorities.

OpenOffice, for example, comes from Sun and is increasingly reliant on
Sun's Java. This is not Free or Open Source (yet)[1], so that part of
the package Just Can't Be Installed without modification.

Then there are things like better support for internationalisation or
better integration with the rest of the system, which are very difficult
to support across every version of Linux out there -- it's easier for
the OpenOffice team to provide their own. But when you know that your
OpenOffice will be running on Fedora, you can reasonably make a better
package for your end users by tying it into what you know is available
on Fedora.

Then there are additions which Red Hat want, and are prepared to fund
(e.g. Xen). We should say no? When *all* of Fedora's funding comes from
Red Hat (bar some of the infrastructure?)[2]

> I think they also need to find a way to auto detect settings for
> applications that are already compiled/installed...and recompile them
> on the upgrade.
>
> ..apache, postfix etc..

That sounds incredibly weird, incredibly difficult to program, and not
what most people want. I mean, why would you *want* to recompile
programs? Answers beginning "To support..." miss the point -- ideally,
you should be able to get the support by editing a config file or by
installing another RPM. Wouldn't it make more sense for Fedora to spend
engineer time making that possible?

Fedora *isn't* supposed to support every weird taste. If you want *that*
sort of support for locally-compiled programs, you know where Gentoo is!

James.

[1] Anyone saying "but Sun's just released it as GPL" hasn't been paying
attention. No. They haven't. They've said they're *going* to, and I
believe them, but it Hasn't Happened Yet, and probably won't until it's
too late for Fedora 7.

[2] Thanks, guys!

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