Fedora Rel-Eng Meeting Recap 2007-JUN-11

[Bill Nottingham]

Rahul Sundaram (sundaram at fedoraproject.org) said: 
> >They're complaining that it erodes the value that they provide to us.
> >And that if we do that, then there's a lot less reason for them to
> >mirror and help us out.  
> 
> If other mirrors are more occupied then does it erode the value of the 
> one mirror which is not being used as much? If I distribute the software 
> via Free Media program, online or retail shops, magazines and books, 
> does it erode their value?

You're not doing this *before they get a chance to help*, effectively
saying they're a second class delivery method for their users. What's
the point of them mirroring for their users if their users are going
to use their bandwidth to try and jump on a torrent earlier?

> We are always going to be distributing our 
> software in more than one way and if some ways are more faster or 
> efficient than the rest we should do that. This seems a rather odd thing 
> for a mirror to be complaining about. How many are complaining?

A large number complained when this was originally proposed.

> >And they don't like that they get it mirrored
> >and yet people at their institutions still end up using their _external_
> >bandwidth to get the torrent early rather than accessing the local
> >mirror which was explicitly set up to reduce local bandwidth
> >consumption.
> 
> Is there anything stopping them from opening their local mirror within 
> their institution?

What? You're expecting every mirror to reconfigure special access rules
based on IP ranges or domain names just because you want to torrent ISOs
early? How is that at all practical or sensible?

> >And no
> >matter how clear we are, it's still going to be muddy and make things a
> >lot more difficult from the standpoint of a launch with the press
> 
> How? Why would the press be bothered that we are doing a torrent only 
> release 4 days earlier?

Because, when is the release date? Earlier or later>

> Should we be more worried about the hypothetical 
> confusion in press as opposed to getting the release to end users faster?

If the torrent is earlier, then the end users who can't use it (which
is many) are going to be getting the release 4 days later.

Bill