[Fwd: Fedora & openSUSE meeting / cooperation ?]

[Luis Villa]

On 2/6/07, Christopher Blizzard <blizzard at redhat.com> wrote:
> Luis Villa wrote:
> > On 2/6/07, Christopher Blizzard <blizzard at redhat.com> wrote:
> >> The build service isn't particularly interesting, mostly because the
> >> model we're moving towards is to move as much outside of the firewall as
> >> much as possible.  It's kind of odd, actually, any time I run into any
> >> of the suse folks, all they want to talk about is the build service.
> >> Not a lot of value there, imho?
> >
> > It behooves all of us to make linux software easier to install- as
> > easy as xpis in mozilla, or app bundles in osx. Once you do that,
> > developers can focus more on development and less on packaging, users
> > can more reliably get newer/better versions with less pain, etc.
> >
> > The build service is a very kludgy solution to this, but for users and
> > non-distro developers it is a step in the right direction if it gets
> > used. It gives them value, even if there is very little value in it
> > for the distros.
> >
> > (I can rant on about this at great length; probably best not to get me
> > started ;)
>
> I see them as somewhat separate things.  To your first point - making
> things easier to install, I happen to completely agree, and it's one of
> the reasons why I'm driving down the path of using bundles instead of
> rpm or deb packages in olpc.  This much to the chagrin of people who are
> heavily invested in rpm and similar technologies.
>
> I'm approaching this from the standpoint of "make it easier to find
> software that's interesting and be able to give it to others" as opposed
> to "making it easier and more convenient to make an rpm."

I agree that the first approach is a vastly superior one which should
be prioritized given finite resources, but that is a very big problem
space with a lot of barriers preventing a solution. Given that, I
don't think you should so casually dismiss the second approach in the
meantime- I think as an intermediate bandaid it possibly has quite a
bit of value.

Luis (who sometimes wonders if web + xpi means we should have moved
the whole desktop to mozilla/xulrunner two years ago)