[Fedora-marketing-list] Re: Slashdot interview with Fedora Project leader Max Spevack

[Nicola Losito]

Il giorno 22/ago/06, alle ore 06:16, Rahul ha scritto:

> Nicola Losito wrote:
>
>> When you install and run Ubuntu you got enabled a bunch of  
>> features that doesn't make feel the user on his own (Gnome sounds  
>> enabled, when i'm supposed to enter the sudo password the screen  
>> goes dark leaving only the appropriate window "illuminated" and  
>> some other fancier - yes, useless, but fancier things).
>
> So boils down to eye candy basically.

Nope.
It boild down paying attention to fancier, little, useful visual and  
"desktop" tricks, that enhance user experience (hidden window asking  
for root password instead of something that focuses the attention and  
so on ...


>> Sometimes seems so .... have you ever tried using yum, with 3rd  
>> parties repos enabled, on a 56k pay-per-time line ? ?
>> Back when i was one of those FC seemed to me a distro for  
>> privileged aliens with fast/flat connections.
>
> Why would I? I dont use third party repositories.

Not a viable solution for a lot of people, and not realistic to think  
that *now* anyone would drop the use of something they're accoustomed  
to have (IMHO). Also, even if Livna or RPMforge are not official  
"endorsed", in the Fedora users I know *everyone* who's got it  
installed on a personal desktop have got them enabled. So ignoring  
their exsitence for me is "childish" ... for the lack of a better  
word of my knowledge :-(


> If I need to work on dialups, there is a way to configure yum to  
> use local repositories

Provided you can manage to get one in some other way ;-)


>  and Fedora might not be the right choice for me at that point.

And this isn't a point to be worked on ?
The 90% of people haven't got a nice connection, do we want to cut  
them out _also_ because we haven't thought a way to go in their  
"direction" ??
Italy, one of the 7th most rich and industrialized country in the  
world has still no fibre connection, and *DSL are "slow", strongly  
asymetrical and most of the time people have got pay per hours  
connections.
What in Eastern Europe ? South America ? and so on ...


>> Here i could make a mistake but:
>> - http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/components
>> it's clear in the division of what's "ubuntu" or "canonical" and  
>> what's not and also ...
>
> It is pretty simple for Fedora and it is documented in Fedora wiki  
> pages. Fedora Core is maintained by Red Hat and Fedora Extras,  
> Fedora Legacy is community maintained.

OK
but to me it seems you're avoiding to see my point :-)

In universe / multiverse we have 99% of any additional software one  
can use.
Then we can se "backports" (and these are self explainatory) a  
"commercial" repo by Canonical (which get some way of agreement to  
distribute Opera or Real with contracts that - i think - could be  
obtained by any distro provided there's interest into it - Skype in  
Mandriva installation media comes to my mind too). The rest of  
"ubuntu 3rd party repos" are for "elite" needs into specific areas.

For Fedora we have (at least) the repos listed here:
http://www.fedoratracker.org/tracker.py?mode=repoSearch
where there's no clear policy of what goes where.


> All of these references are about third party repositories. Fedora  
> Project has absolutely no say on what goes on with them.

>> Fedora Project should speak loud on this inconsistency (for the  
>> record i have 14 different repositories in my yum.repos.d, some  
>> enabled some not, and i do not think it's easy to get the reason  
>> of this to the "non introduced").
>
> There is no inconsistency at the project level and we cant control  
> third party repositories.

I know Fedora can't drive anyone into anything.
But there could be a strict policy on how to provide packages for the  
distro. This issue i think it's related to the licences present in FC  
that's been discussed some (recent) time ago here or in the board list.
When the licence's type area will become more "clear" we should find  
a way to make people come into Extras or to Extras-nonfree (to say)  
instead of making their "personal" repo, summoning up the community  
efforts in few areas.

I'd like my distro to have the major number of precompiled packages  
available, no matter what.


> Things are getting better but if you want to install random  
> repositories that's really your choice.

Indeed. But if I need these repos to get the software i need /want to  
test to run my machine productively and i have permanent, several  
issues with them i'll change my distro.

Again Fedora has come close to my need with 5 and it's mono inclusion  
and such, but still it's too "complicated" to make it run on many of  
my friend's machines since the issues i see using the various repos  
(or yum when they're with slow lines).

I have been present at the times at Fedora and at the time for  
Ubuntu, and they since the beginning have fought to be stable as  
Debian and easy as RH/SuSE.

Fedora has been (to cite Max's word) "We strive to produce a quality  
distribution of free software that is cutting-edge, pushes the  
envelope of new open source technology, and is also robust enough  
that it can be relied on for server or desktop use."

To me it somewhat sounds like "Fedora is an hacker toy, build to  
pleasure is quest for knowledge without crashing every now and then",  
which is fine, but then at some point I, as user, and many like me i  
think, may leave this land.

Thanks for reading :-)

-- 
Nicola  .:kOoLiNuS:.  Losito

http://www.koolinus.net
http://koolinus.wordpress.com


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