Fedora Core 3 Transferred to Fedora Legacy

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 1/23/06, Hans Kristian Rosbach <hk at isphuset.no> wrote:
> I think what he is saying here is not only relevant to installer
> problems. Downloading several hundreds of megs of updates on every
> fresh install can get very tiresome, time consuming and costly.

I'm not disagreeing with the idea of update respins. What I am saying
is there is absolutely no reason that respins can not be maintained
long term by community to spread the manpower around.  If the release
team say they are not prepared for the potential maintainence burden,
that should be respected.. even if they are wrong about what the
burden will actually be. The way forward is community effort like
yours. The questions before us is identifying the steps to formalized
your effort as part of the Fedora project over time.

> Alternatives is good. This is what the whole linux thing is about.

Alternative distributiuons get branded with different distribution
trademarks in the wider scope of linux in general. I absolutely want
to see a full ecosystem of Fedora based alternatives out there, trying
out ideas, which may feedback into the Fedora project or may not.
How many debian based alternatives are there right now which aren't
formally part of the debian project itself?  I am hopeful that the new
trademark policy will make it much easier for community "alternatives"
to say "based on Fedora" without fear of confusion.  What I don't want
to see is for community to sit on their hands waiting for every good
idea to be officially adopted before willing to try it.  The respins
are not a bad idea, and I absolutely appreciate the fact that you took
the initiative to set this up to provide a useful service to other
community members.

> One wouldn't have to mirror all releases of course. Say the original
> FC4 and the latest respin.

I'm not going to get into how much content the mirrors are willing to
mirror... I simply don't know what is appropriate here.

> The fedora download page should also make it clear that FC4 is the
> best tested one, but the FC4.* has fixed some bugs and contain newer
> packages BUT may contain new bugs.

I think over time, getting discussion of a "blessed" respin on the
download page is not impossible. But I think the extent the Fedora
project officially advertises a respin effort will be incremental in
nature.

> Since anaconda is not updated at all in FC4, I'd say fixing the few
> bugs there would be pretty unlikely to make new ones.

That's a discussion you should have with the anaconda developers and
the fedora release team... since they have the most experience with
regard to how sensitive the codebase is.

> The alternative of saying "wait 6 months, then try our new version" or
> "you need to use the aging FC3" is not a good solution either.

There is no perfect solution. Again I'm not saying that respins are an
inherently bad. And I very much appreciate your effort. I've pointed
people to the respins torrent from irc several times.  What we need to
do now is figure out the steps to take your effort and begin to
formalize it and identify how it can be placed in the Fedora project
umbrella officially. It seems Rahul is volunteering to help you with
that process.

> A few can, such as kernel and anaconda.
> Isn't it worth it to pursue these?

Its worth pursuing all bugs, the problem is one of manpower. Without
more community involvement there isn't enough manpower.  Again, the
respin effort that you are making I fully support. What I can not
support is the demand that the Core release team take on the burden of
maintaining respins on their own.

> Anaconda bugs should be pretty simple fixes since it probably
> wouldn't need new features / bells & whistles.

A discussion you'll have to have with the anaconda developers and the
release team, since they arguable have the most experienced with these
issues.

> Good. But a little cooperation would be nice.

I think Rahul is trying to move forward with cooperation.

> I'd be glad to help out with that, but I would certainly appreciate
> help from the official team when I get stuck with a problem I cannot
> solve myself.

You'll have to cross that bridge when you come to it.  Let me remind
you in an effort to encourage you that both the ppc and x86_64 bit
releases were driven by a non-trivial amount of work by the community
with some help by developers in Core. I think willingness to dig in
and get your hands dirty before turning to the Core developers for
help counts for a lot.

> The one mail I received from Rahul did not strike me as a
> "I'll help you" mail, but rather a general suggestion.
> The other one we have found out never reached me.

That is an unfortunate turn of events.

> It was never the lack of willingness.

Excellent! Hopefully you and Rahul can start a dialog about fedora's
relationship with the respin effort.

> I have gotten a few bugreports about FC4.1 but none about FC4.2.

I'm glad to here it, but you also don't know how heavily used the
fc4.2 sets are so its diffcult to gauge the extent of any new problems
that crop up. Sometimes the tracker for the isos are down when people
in #fedora attempt to use them, so I don't have an accurate impression
from the irc discussion as to how often people are picking these up
for installs.

-jef