Collaboration

[Johnny Hughes]

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Main Entry: col·lab·o·rate 

Pronunciation: k&-'la-b&-"rAt

Etymology: Late Latin collaboratus, past participle of collaborare to
labor together, from Latin com- + laborare to labor

1 : to work jointly with others or together especially in an
intellectual endeavor
2 : to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not
immediately connected
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Question1:
If RPMforge has a perfectly working ClamAV for EL5, and if we are
collaborating, why would EPEL build ClamAV?

Question2:
If ATRPMS has a perfectly working nx/freenx for EL5, and if we are
collaborating, why would EPEL build nx / freenx?

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Answer to both ... EPEL wants to be "THE" Master 3rd Party repo, not
just a 3rd Party Repo.  There can be no misinterpreting that, it is just
plain fact.

If we were collaborating, EPEL would build things not already in
RPMforge or ATRPMS or CentOS Extras.  We are not collaborating, we are
consolidating under the rule of the EPEL team.

So if that happens and if EPEL is maintaining 8000 packages with the
help of the Dag, Dries, Alex, Rex, the CentOS Devels .. then how long
till this bright idea:

Hmmm ... This EPEL thing is going so good, what about a collaborative
Fedora EL to consolidate all the rebuilds?

It is only a matter of time until that happens, as far as I can see.

Now, if EPEL is really interested in collaboration, and not domination,
then some assigning of master packages to RPMForge and/or ATRPMS ... and
using existing RPMForge and ATRPMs binary packages in the mock build
repo definitions would go a long way toward quieting the domination
speculation.

All I see, frankly, is this:

EPEL is "THE" 3rd Party repo for Red Hat based EL ... join us, play by
our rules, and submit all your packages here.  Integration ... sure, the
other guys can join us and play by our rules or not.  Collaboration ...
sure, the other guys can stop what they are doing and join us and play
by our rules or not.

Why does that make me even the slightest bit nervous ... I mean, Red Hat
would never ever pull the plug on supporting Fedora EPEL (Or the
mythical Fedora EL, if it happened and put CentOS out of business),
would they?  Of course they would if it enhanced their business model.
Anyone here ever heard of Red Hat 9?

I am not ready to hitch CentOS to this model to see it be made
irrelevant by the next progression in this process ... so what
assurances are there that the master plan is not to totally dominate the
community Red Hat based EL market (a position that CentOS currently
holds based on the extremely hard work of about 20 people, the donations
of hundreds of ISPs and Mirror Providers, etc.).

Getting tied back in to same process/entity that fragmented this market
in the first place does not seem very logical to me.

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes
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