ESR "fedora-submit"

[Eric S. Raymond]

Warren Togami <wtogami at redhat.com>:
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/fedora-submit/
> "fedora-submit will be a command-line tool that ships RPMs to the Fedora 
> project for inclusion in their repository. It will ship with a future 
> release of Fedora Core."
> 
> No it will not.
> 
> "Warren Togami
>     Fedora project honcho. Has backed this concept."
> 
> I am not the "honcho", and I have never supported your crack-filled ideas.

>From <3F78168A.4050508 at togami.com>, September 2003:
> Your suggestion of a fedora-submit script sounds like a good way to 
> reduce overhead in submitting Bugzilla reports for packages.  I am glad 
> somebody finally wants to implement it.  I suggest to you to read 
> through many of the fedora.us reports to see the steps involved in this 
> process.   Your script would need to (off the top of my head)
> 
> 1) Check for duplicates.
> 2) Submit a new report for a package, along with GPG signatures.
> 3) Submit revised packages along with new GPG signatures after some 
> discussion points out flaws.
> 4) Upload packages to *somewhere* which we still haven't worked out.  We 
> obviously cannot give CVS access to everyone, and there may be issues 
> with a public upload location at an official server.  I much prefer the 
> GPG signatures + submitter controlled URL process that fedora.us 
> currently uses, but perhaps a future process may have a hybrid.  The 
> more senior trusted packagers have upload access to an official staging 
> area or CVS, while everyone else uses GPG + URLs.

Not only did you back the idea, you came fairly close to writing a
spec for it.  I don't know what side of the bed you got up on this
morning, but I suggest you try the other one.

The fundamental structural problem fedora-submit would address is still
present and still pressing.  Fedora's failure to address it effectively
is one of two big reasons why, after more than ten years as a loyal Fedora
user and developer, I'm being forced to the conclusion that I must
migrate to another distribution where the maintainers are less of an 
inward-looking circle-jerk.  (The other big one is the codec problem.)

Time is running out for you.  Ubuntu is eating your lunch.  Even
Linspire looks smarter and fresher than Fedora these days.  Your
failure to adapt implies merely a system-administration inconvenience
for me, but it's going to be a disaster for you.

(Note to Michael Tiemann: if you have any ability to wield a clue-bat on
these people, now would be the time to do it.  The level of don't-get-it
I'm seeing appears certain to cause Red Hat business problems in the 18- to
24-month timeframe.)
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>