An introduction of the new cheerleader...

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 00:28:43 -0500 (EST), Cristian Gafton wrote:

> [...], I will attempt to make happen in the shortest possible time:
> 
> - Fedora developer and contributor forms. These include things like
>   establishing qualifications, credentials and requirements for issuing
>   various accounts and access levels - in short the formal aspect of getting
>   those interested the "commit" access to Fedora Project bits;

I'd like to see early communication about the Fedora Extras package
submission and approval policies and its development model (i.e.
questions such as whether Extras will be release-based and freezed in sync
with Core and who will overlook the experimental and stable stream?).

The sporadic criticism of the fedora.us QA system has not been taken as an
opportunity to discuss it and develop it further or change it completely.

The community is surprisingly quiet, almost as if everyone is waiting for
Red Hat to make the first step and publish something which can be torn to
pieces then.

There must be developers and package maintainers [other than ESR] with
precize ideas on how they would like to contribute packages. Similarly,
there must be people--in particular users of the software which is being
packaged--with precize ideas on how they would and could help deciding on
when a package is approved and whether an updated package get released.

There is one particular thing I don't understand. Once an arbitrary
repository contains a new package, people don't hesitate to download and
install it. When it's broken or not as usable as expected, they either
downgrade or try the next repository (this experience is based on comments
seen in message boards), repeating this procedure regularly. But when a
package of the same software is in a public queue of packages to be
reviewed before they get published, people avoid such packages like the
plague and don't give the packages a try and don't leave feedback. I think
the community can do better than that. But the Fedora community has a long
road to take to realize that--like with the Debian GNU/Linux project--it's
better to spend a combined effort on a primary source of reliable and
maintained packages than to either want everything maintained by Red Hat
in "Fedora Core" or to keep an excessive list of repositories maintained
by individuals and live with interoperability problems.

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