Policy proposal for compatibility packages

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sat, 2008-01-05 at 19:32 +0100, David Nielsen wrote:
> Em Qua, 2008-01-02 às 17:27 -0500, Tom "spot" Callaway escreveu:
> > Patrice Dumas wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 02:28:42PM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> > >> - Third party applications which still depend on the old interface (that
> > >> the maintainer is aware of specifically, not "something might use it
> > >> someday")
> > > 
> > > That seems to me to be a perfect reason. Please don't try to force
> > > packagers to do something without reason. If a packager wants to invest
> > > time to maintain a compat package, let him do.
> > 
> > Well, one of the reasons we're making hoops for people to jump through
> > is that we don't want to clutter the distribution with compat packages.
> > This encourages upstream (and package maintainers) to just continue
> > using the compat packages, rather than porting to the new, improved ones.
> > 
> > This is why I think that this is a valid reason:
> > 
> > * Adobe ProprietaryDocumentFormat Reader needs this library to run.
> 
> Why would that be valid.. if all that requires this there is absolutely
> no reason to have a -compat package. It's Adobe' problem to fix it. They
> don't play by the rules so no cookies for them.

What about cookies for users who need the Adobe (or whatever) package
because there is no fully functional FOSS alternative?

Sure, we can (and do, as much as we are able) pressure upstream to get
their act together, but meanwhile--particularly if upstream is
unresponsive--we still need to get our work done.

I'm sure you know it's common for commercial developers to fix on a
particular stable, long-lived, well-supported distribution (RHEL4, say)
and support their packages only for that release of that distro for some
extended period of time.  Meanwhile, fast-moving distros like Fedora may
advance through several incompatible library or language versions.  It's
generally not practical to expect Adobe (or whomever) to reply to
complaints about Fedora compatibility with anything other than "use a
supported distro".

And please don't consign us to those supported platforms or distros.  We
are part of the Fedora community because we support Fedora's goals and
we want to keep close to the bleeding edge.  But we do still have work
to do.

> 
> - David
-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs