Log from this weeks EPEL-SIG meeting (20070711)

[Dag Wieers]

On Sun, 15 Jul 2007, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

> 00:40:41 <    dgilmore> | i noticed that dag made some derogatory comments about epel on the centos mailing list
> 00:40:51 <       quaid> | oh, good
> 00:40:58 <       quaid> | nothing quite like keeping the flames warm
> 00:41:01 <    dgilmore> | saying that we dont want to work with him
> 00:41:12 <       quaid> | in fact
-snip-
> 00:42:05 <       quaid> | it's hard because these guys all had good points
> 00:42:15 <       quaid> | but they put way too much heat into it
> 00:42:29 <       quaid> | and burned the bridge before it could be built
> 00:42:45 <       quaid> | anyway, water under the ... oh, wait, nevermind
> 00:42:49 <       knurd> | we maybe should some carefully choose words into the wiki
> 00:42:55 <       knurd> | why we didn#t go for repotags
-snip-

My statements are *NOT* about repotags. Repotags would not provide 
compatibility, but repotags would help cope with incompatibility.

Nevertheless, my statements had nothing to do with repotags.


> 00:43:03 <    dgilmore> | http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2007-July/083569.html
> 00:43:04 <       quaid> | a good FAQ entry
> 00:43:08 <       knurd> | and that we suggest that our contributors cooperate

I stand by that statement. There is no interest from EPEL to work together 
with other repositories. The policy is to be the one and only single 
repository for RHEL/CentOS.

EPEL is in its right to go for that, but that should be advertised. 
Instead what is happening is that EPEL is claiming that 'their 
contributors cooperate'. Much like Fedora Extras in the past claimed this.

If Fedora Extras did cooperate, their may not have been any 
compatibilities and who knows, there may not have been an RPMforge, or an 
ATrpms today.

Nevertheless, if someone would say exactly that

  "EPEL is not interested in compatibility with other repositories"
or even
  "EPEL claims it is impossible to achieve compatibility with 3rd party repositories"

He is starting a flameware ? Is being derogatory ?

I can understand that EPEL wants to hide this fact from the public, or 
create another perception.

But EPEL is being dishonest about its intentions to lure packagers and 
users.

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]