Rethinking the Freemedia problem

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 3/24/06, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Just free thinking here.  Stop me if I'm an idiot.  :)

Any solution for media distribution should also address the issue of
distributing updates equitably on media as well as the release isos. 
Take a real hard look at how large the update churn is for a fedora
release per month of the fedora core 4 release cycle. Take a real hard
look at how large the sum total of the size of cummulative updates are
right now for a fresh install of fc4 (default and everything).  Take a
real good look at the number of security updates that have accumulated
over the lifetime of the fc4 release. Now tell me.. with a straight
face... thats its a good idea to be distributing install media without
also taking the responsibility to provide "reasonable" acess to update
media to people who don't have the bandwidth to pull it down for
themselves and aren't going to be able to reasonable apply all the
updates due to bandwidth shortage. Is this an appropriate course of
action without also providing a freemedia mechanisms for updates?

Now that I've gotten your attention. I'm now going to blow your mind.
Now consider...freemedia for Extras... which doesn't have established
release points. I also think its a bit unequitable to be talking about
a freemedia model built on community manpower which doesn't include
the community contributed segment of the packages.

-jef"can you tell that my impending move to the wilderness has
impacted my thinking as to the importance of update media"spaleta