Re: will apt-rpm be officially included in RH in the futurereleases?

["Andrew Smith" <rhml k1k2 com>]

> I suppose we can reason along this line and conclude that only
> M$ products be installed on a windows machine, or nothing but
> slackware built packages on a slack box or SuSe rpms on . . . .
> 
> I don't agree with this at all.  I agree that redhat needs to make
> money, and that they support the distrobution they sell as far as
> configuration and redhat developed apps or tools. But asking them
> to support all software and refusing to install any third party
> software or rpms is not my idea of a flexible system nor do I want a
> system locked into only the software specificly released by the
> distro compiler.
> 
> I also agree that your not going to see an official apt-rpm
> anytime soon.
> 
> dTd
> Daniel T. Drea
> dandanielle mindspring com
> http://dandanielle.home.mindspring.com
> 
> On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Martin Stricker wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>> Panu Matilainen wrote:
>> >
>> > On Wed, 2002-01-16 at 23:55, ext Christopher Keller wrote:
>>
>> > > If RedHat is  planning on staying with up2date, great. No
>> > > problems. However, is it possible to point up2date at a non-Redhat
>> > > directory/website and have it work? Seems that you specifically
>> > > need a up2date server configured on the other end? Can I point
>> > > up2date and have it work off of Matthias's freshrpms? Basically
>> > > resolve all the dependencies given a certain location rather than
>> > > a master profile in the up2date servers?
>> >
>> > I've seen one or two comments about something called up2date-proxy
>> > which would allow local customizations etc to what's available to
>> > you locally and also some comments about mirror support being not
>> > there *yet* But.. it's been a while since I last saw anything about
>> > those two and the proxy was/is to be something you'll have to pay
>> > big bucks to get anyway.
>>
>> Two points to consider here:
>> 1) As others have already mentioned Red Hat needs to make money so all
>> these nice developers have something to eat. If someone comes up with
>> a solution which ensures Red Hat is payed for the use of up2date I'm
>> sure they will consider it.
>> 2) Red Hat provides also support for their systems. The more
>> non-distributed packages are installed the more difficult it is for
>> Red Hat Support to find and eliminate the problem. Some months ago
>> there was a heated discussion about kernel memory problems while using
>> the binary-only nvidia kernel module and Red Hat's (correct) denial of
>> support for it. So chances are Red Hat isn't too fond of the idea
>> introducing a tool to install non-Red Hat packages easily.
>>
>> While I would really like the idea of apt-rpm or a similar tool (like
>> enhanced up2date) in the official Red Hat Linux I understand the
>> reasons why it is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Martin Stricker

Actually,
this is not at all what RedHat said or did with regards to the nVidia
driver and other comments made by them at the time
(I'm surprised nobody from RedHat has corrected this email)
The whole issue of the nVidia driver is that it is a kernel module
(or whatever the correct word is) and also is not open source so
it CANNOT be supported by RedHat at all.
I got the impression they had no issue with supporting systems with
basically ANY non-kernel module products installed on them and would
be helpfull with kernel module packages that were open source (or at
least point you in the right direction :-)
-- 
-Cheers
-Andrew

MS ... if only he hadn't been hang gliding!