Log from yesterdays (20070523) EPEL SIG meeting

[Axel Thimm]

On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 05:48:23PM +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> 00:06 <       nirik> | I don't like them, but dag, thimm, planetccrm,
> etc are all mad... if it will make them happy and we can do it some way
> easily I would do it just to make them all happy.

Repotags are dead. EPEL killed them, much to the distaste of all other
kids on the block. It was painful and ugly and consumed a lot of my
time to knock down something that did not replace slicing bread or
cubed ice, but made a lot of sense for a healthy repo ecostructure.

But it is not about repotags, not about whether they work perfectly,
not at all, half-way, kludgy or as a temporary workaround until rpm is
replaced by a next generation packager.

It is about *all* repos coming to EPEL, kindly asking to not destroy
the repotag system that was in place and EPEL ignoring it in return.

Now "they are all mad"? If all repos would come to me and ask me to do
something I would consider it and not arrogantly respond with "I see
no technical benefit" (original SC tone) and "We aim higher than you"
(also original SC).

No, this has left the plain repotag issue quite some time ago. This is
about EPEL (or some people inside EPEL) clearly showing the agenda: No
coexistance with other repos (other than a "doesn't fit in EPEL"
spinoff).

> 00:17 < mmcgrath> | nirik: after all, none of those people are even
> here right now.
> 00:26 < mmcgrath> | none of whom care about epel enough to be here.

Well, one by one they have been driven away, what do you expect? You
can bang you heart against some mad bugger's wall only so many times.

> 00:23 < mmcgrath> | nirik: that email seems to indicate to me that
> this is a completely political issue.  one that has done nothing but
> distract us.

Repotags were a political issue from the very beginning, the vote was
even tagged as carrying 99% political content.

In a single repo world repotags offer no added value, it's when there
is more than a repo that it makes sense to use them. It's all about
being nice to neighbors, e.g. politics. And it's about positive
politics when repos agree to accept a cross-repo defacto standard. And
it's bad politics when it shows that one repo is not interested in
working with the others.

You feel distracted? Just ask yourself who has been investing energy
and time into this? You? No, the people that are distracted are the
people that came to epel thinking that there would be some
cooperation, that invested in epel, that tried to talk sense to people
here, and now see that this was all in vain.

> 00:24 * | mmcgrath notes thimm is used to running a repo where his
> rule is law.

Now how helpful is this comment and what does this have to do with the
whole discussion? "thimm" has been bending his "rules" and "laws" to
accomodate Fedora "rules" and "laws" since quite some time. Slapping
me now in the face is both unfair and completely unnecessary.

But these are the kind of actions that alienate repos even further.

> 00:24 < f13> | Jeff_S: but if EPEL wants all software avialble to
> users, all said software has to be in EPEL, which really obsolets
> the other repos.

This is a valid logic. But the same is true for all other repos as
well. So projecting this to all repos, we would all be rightfully
obsoleting each-other and walk down to repo Darwinism. It does look a
lot like epel is taking that road. It's not like it isn't a promising
road, that's how fedora.us started off as well.

> 00:25 < rdieter> | f13: that's a bad attitude (EPEL obsoletes all),
> best to be avoided (no matter how close to the truth it really is).

No, don't avoid opening up any such agenda to the public. I was fooled
into believing that epel was going to play nice. Now the cards are
being layed on the table, and I know better. As well as all other repo
maintainers.

> 00:27 < mmcgrath> | hell, thimm was the closest person and he does
> not have a single epel package.

Hell, and mmcgrath manages the repo and does not even check what he's
saying, before he spreads false statements.

All my packages were imported and built for epel months ago
(accidentially even the ones that made no sense to build for epel like
fedora-package-config-*). I even had an epel bugzilla entry for an
already shipped package.

When I stepped down I asked dgilmore to orphan or remove them now that
I cannot commit anymore to EPEL. They are still in the repo though, so
I really wonder what makes you thing that I have (or had) "no single
epel package"?

You should really check your facts before making public statements.

> 00:29 < f13> | it's the same reason why Fedora Extras really
> obsoleted other repos aside from the illegal stuff.

Please be careful with pissing off people even across the epel
border. The "other repos" are far from obsolete and far from being
illegal.

> 00:39 < mmcgrath> | I know my approach isn't very diplomatic but
> this has gotten silly.

Not being diplomatic is probably the core flaw in epel's steering
committee.
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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