Package submission process

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

Ian,

The reason for the additional steps:

1. We need legal assurance that what you are submitting is legally yours 
to submit.  This is the reason for the Contributors License Agreement.  If 
you're repackaging an application that's under an appropriate OSI license, 
all is well.  But if you're taking code that your company has written and 
repackaging it without their knowledge or consent, that's bad bad bad, and 
we need to protect ourselves legally from that.

2. We use Bugzilla in our tracking process to ensure that we know whether 
a package is moving through the process or not.  We ran into a lot of 
issues early on with people sending packages to the list for review, and 
then nothing happening with them.  At least now we have some visibility, 
so that when someone complains "hey, no one has touched my packages for a 
month," we can figure out relatively quickly what the issue is without 
sorting through mailing lists.

Sorry if it's a little more heavyweight than you'd like, but we've done 
our best to make it as streamlined as we can, while still doing everything 
it needs to do.

--g

_____________________  ____________________________________________
  Greg DeKoenigsberg ] [ the future masters of technology will have
 Community Relations ] [ to be lighthearted and intelligent.  the
             Red Hat ] [ machine easily masters the grim and the 
                     ] [ dumb.  --mcluhan

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Ian MacGregor wrote:

> Hello,
>   My name is Ian MacGregor and I have been using Fedora since FC1. 
> Fedora is the best distro available and I thank those involved for its 
> creation. I create packages for apps when I find an app that I like 
> which is not on Fedora Extras or Livna - I enjoy building packages. I 
> have been trying to become a Fedora Extras contributor but I cannot 
> understand the 20-step process here: 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/Contributors
> 
> I have dozens of packages that I'd like to contribute to the community 
> but the process is, IMHO, too involved, time consuming and complicated. 
> It is my opinion that this process can be streamlined down to a mere 6 
> steps, as outlined below:
> 
> Step 1: Read and follow the PackagingGuidelines and PackageNamingGuidelines.
> Step 2: Make a package.
> Step 3: Upload your SRPM and SPEC files onto the internet somewhere.
> Step 4: Contact a Reviewer and let them know your package is ready for 
> review. If the package is acceptable, go to Step 6, else Step 5.
> Step 5: Take care of any problems the reviewer found with the package 
> and go to Step 3.
> Step 6: Submit the package to Fedora Extras.
> Step 7: Bask in the knowledge that you are helping the community grow.
> 
> It just seems to me that someone took what should have been a simple 
> process and complicated the heck out of it. I am not complaining, rather 
> I am stating the obvious. I feel that there are many packagers out there 
> (I know of several) who are simply not willing or able to comply with 
> all of the 20 current steps - most of which are unnecessary as it's just 
> a .src.rpm/.rpm of source code and the packager is not supposed to alter 
> the source code to begin with. Not only is the current process 
> confusing, but I feel it is a waste of time and server space and I do 
> not have the time nor patience to keep up with it all. Making a 
> .src.rpm/.rpm is one thing, as it only takes a small bit of time, but 
> keeping up with everything regarding the current process is much too 
> time consuming and confusing in my opinion. Can you imagine the number 
> of packages that could be submitted to Extras, and the number of new 
> packagers willing to build and submit, if this process were made easier?
> 
> I'll check back often and if/when the current process is streamlined I 
> would even be willing to tackle many of the packages on the 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/WishlistExtras
> 
> Thank you for your time.
> 
> Respectfully,
> Ian MacGregor
> http://ardchoille.org
> 
> -- 
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> fedora-extras-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-extras-list
>