But Why? Re: [fab] Split Fedora-Announce-List

[David Eisenstein]

Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, Elliot Lee wrote:
> 
> 
>>The way that worked well for RHL was separating things into a
>>redhat-announce-list that received just regular announcements, and
>>redhat-watch-list that received security notices.
> 
> 
> +1 to fedora-watch-list for updates to all Fedora versions.

Have a question and a few comments.  Why do we need to do this?  Split up
the Fedora-Announce list?  I haven't heard complaints from the general user
community about there being announcements mixed in with package updates.
The idea may have merits, might it be a good idea to run this by our peers
in the Fedora community?

Could there be downstream consequences to changing the lists and/or adding a
new one?  Could there be end users or corporate users or security-related
mailing lists or websites that will be affected if all of a sudden
Fedora-Announce-List is bereft of software update announcements?

Regarding Fedora Announcements (or Fedora *Package* Announcements):  I find
that sometimes the announcements of package updates have ended up not being
as well-maintained in the archives that are kept as I would like.  In my
opinion, it is very important to have some formal repository where end-users
and developers can go to find all the info on updates for package xyz for
distro X.  But the Fedora Project does not (yet) offer some kind of formal
web-based or RSS-based repository for package update information comparable
to Red Hat Network's <http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/> web-pages for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux.  We have instead - list archives.  Which work, to a point.

Sometimes these list archives end up borked.  For example, the gzipped
mbox archive file for Fedora Announce List,
  <http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2006-March.txt.gz>,
is missing everything before March 22nd.  The other day, I needed that
information:  So I had to go out to an externally-maintained place,
gmane.org, to retrieve those missing announcements.  (Yes, I know, I should
be subscribed there....)

The point is this:  However the Fedora lists are organized, they need to
be well-maintained if they are to be a reliable record of Fedora software
activity for end users who come to install Fedora long after a distro has
been released, so they'll know what updates are available and why they've
been updated from the CD's they bought.  This is the *only* record some of
us have.

Thanks for considering these random thoughts.

	Regards,

	David Eisenstein
	of Fedora Legacy