Fedora Extras vs. CLOSED RAWHIDE

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:25:05 -0400, Jeff Spaleta wrote:

> > Fedora Alternatives doesn't exist yet unless fedora.us agreed on reopening
> > the "patches" repository (albeit with a different name) which contained
> > unofficial upgrade packages for Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core and anything
> > that depends on them.
> 
> Cough.. technically  Fedora Extras doesn't actually exist yet either.
> I'm trying to make a distinction between what we have now.. with
> fedora.us with a distinctly seperate 3rd party development process
> from core, and what we are suppose to have inside the Fedora project
> officially. If people want to discuss what fedora.us can do or change
> in the near term fine, but i thought this thread was as aimed at
> mythical Red Hat managed 'Fedora Extras' 

Dead end. The original posting examines what we have now and raises
questions on how such/similar issues will be dealt with in the future.
There's nothing wrong about an opinion poll. The Fedora Project is without
Fedora Extras for almost a year. It is not encouraging when even purely
theoretical discussions don't move us forward. The point of discussions
like this is also to give potential contributors and package maintainers a
perspective of what FE (within the Fedora Project) will be like and what
will be possible with FE. We can continue to run fedora.us as just another
3rd party repository with more strict rules on what will be included,
ignoring the announcement of its merger with the Red Hat Linux
Project. Alternatively, we can adhere to the goals and policies of Fedora
Extras sooner than later, tying it closer to Fedora Core and bridging the
period till Fedora Extras comes alive with its official infrastructure,
technical committee and stuff like that. When FE comes alive, you would
want to avoid discussions like this, because it would drive away community
members who would realize that running just another 3rd party repository
gives them much more flexibility and power.

> I see no reason to ignore FA
> as a solution to problems with FE. FA is in the master plan, if Red
> Hat isn't serious about providing the infrastrcture for FA as well as
> FE then remove FA from the skeleton plan and I'll stop pointing to it.

The description of FA forms not more than a fuzzy picture in my mind.
What about you? I'm certain, FA won't aim at becoming a dumping ground for
version fanatics, who want to avoid staying close to Fedora Core
Development, but who want to run leading edge software in a stable Fedora
Core release and upgrade core components to satisfy their requirements. It
would be very strange to see bug-fix upgrades of core components in FA
instead of the FC Test Updates channel. That would imply you would need to
switch to a FA collection completely (remember that FE cannot depend on
FA) if you needed or wanted a fix for a bug in FC. I've thought FA will be
for replacement packages, which provide similar, additional, or
alternative functionality of what FC can do (I spare myself many obvious
examples), or which are built with an alternative feature set or
conflicting package contents. Seeing a FA collection of (alternative?;) FC
updates would be something strange and unexpected.