PROFTPD

[Mike A. Harris]

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Res wrote:

>> Because we haven't had problems with vsftpd, and it's had both
>> a good stability and performance record in our use. (i.e., if
>> it isn't broken, don't fix it...)
>
>One problem Bill, vsftpd is useless in a virtual situation where you have
>multiple customers, one copy of the program and a config file for each
>customer, with proftpd we do it with just 1 sole config file, not with
>hundreds of them.
>
>Though, we do run vsftpd on our anonymous ftpd cause it doesnt have to
>do anything else :)

I think the general thing we're trying to get across is that we 
do not have the engineering resources to package and maintain 15 
ftp daemons, SMTP daemons, web servers, imap daemons, etc. and 
also audit them, track their security flaws and major bugs and 
provide proper and timely updates when such flaws are found, and 
provide the level of support for them that would be needed for 
them to be in Fedora Core.  We just don't have 5000 engineers 
here twiddling their thumbs looking for new applications with 
major security flaws to fix and release updates for.

Everyone has different needs, and no single software package is 
likely to satisfy every single person's needs.  That's just the 
way it is unfortunately.  And so we look at the software that is 
out there, and decide which one or two packages of a given type 
we will ship and support based on various factors.  Our choices 
are intended to be what we believe to be the best software for 
the largest audience of people out there, balancing security, 
reliability, stability, and features.  Nonetheless, our choices 
are likely to have features missing that some other piece of 
software that exists out there has.  It'll always be like that.
We can't ship every piece of software that exists in the OSS 
world and support it.

Since we can't support every piece of software out there, we have 
to make choices of what we will support based on various factors 
that are part of our own decision making process.  People can 
certainly make suggestions of course, those are always welcome, 
and in fact people suggested vsftpd at one point, and eventually 
it made it into the distribution.  Likewise for dovecot, and 
numerous other pieces of software.  However, there is a limit to 
what we will put in the distribution and support.

Software which is not part of the distribution but which a 
significantly large number of users out there are interested in 
having, is a prime candidate for Fedora Extras as Bill stated.  

The idea behind Fedora Extras, is that Red Hat will ship and
support a certain set of software packages with the distribution
"Fedora Core" and things that aren't accepted into the Core, but
which other people want bad enough, are candidates to be
considered for Fedora Extras if someone outside of Red Hat wants 
to maintain the packages, and is technically proficient enough to 
do so and meet whatever packaging standards and whatnot are 
decided upon.

This way, people can have more of the programs they 
need/love/want/prefer/etc. and the burden isn't on Red Hat to 
hire 1000 more people to package the stuff and try to support it 
when the alternative software largely is duplicating the 
functionality of one or more existing packages in the 
distribution "plus one feature I need".

Hope this explains things a bit more in depth from an insider 
viewpoint.



-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat