Collaboration

[Tim Jackson]

Johnny Hughes wrote:

> I would think that for the vast majority of packages, we could work out
> a viable definition and build them in one place.  That one place could
> be any of the major players ... and without a good reason, we should
> make assignments of master repos for individual packages.  

I'm not so sure about this. However, what I think many people (myself 
included) do agree on are your following points:

> It is not good for users to have incompatible versions of packages
> hanging around, unless there is a specific reason (IMHO).

and

> We should at least, in my opinion, agree on a consolidated group of SPEC
> files.

Absolutely.

> I am not trying to be negative, but "it seems that" EPEL just assumes
> that they will be the defacto standard in this space ... 

I don't think that's the case; I think users will decide that.

> Yet it seems that a new player comes into this space and all the current 
 > people are supposed to stop what they are doing and start doing things
 > the new way.

It's not all that "new"...not if you have been involved in FE, which is 
already quite a mature project in some ways, even if it was a relatively 
late starter compared to some other efforts. (And remember that some 
parts of FE were preceded by fedora.us).

> It just seems backwards to me is all ... maybe I am missing
> something?

You're missing the fact that although EPEL may "on paper" have 0 users 
right now, it is not coming from nowhere out of the blue: it is an 
extension of Fedora Extras which is a very popular project.  The repos 
you mention have lots of users, true (I assume), but they have a notably 
small group of "owners". So if you add together the *collective* time 
that has gone into Fedora Extras from the many contributors, it's at 
least possible that it may already exceed that of (Dag + Axel + Matthias 
+ Dries + ...) But anyway, arguing over numbers isn't the point. It's 
probably fair to say that what 3rd party EL repos really have going for 
them is deep technical knowledge and extensive real world deployment 
experience. What EPEL may lack in that area, it probably makes up for in 
the community/participation aspects *that already exist* and 
infrastructure. In that specific sense (and only that sense), some of 
the 3rd parties may have had it *RELATIVELY* (I don't mean to belittle 
the efforts in the slightest) easy, because those owners have had the 
freedom to do what they wanted in their repos without having to decide 
by committee. Now, the end results are good (and one can argue that's 
all that matters), but to be fair, that acknowledgement should work the 
other way too, and the inherited experience & infrastructure of FE in 
EPEL ought to be at least acknowledged.

Tim