Some EPEL thoughts (was Re: perl-Net-Telnet both in EPEL and RHEL)

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 09.08.2008 04:50, Michael Stahnke wrote:
> Could we add this to the next steering committee meeting?  Here are the issues:
> 
> 1.  "Layered" products, such as cluster server, ship some support
> packages like perl modules, etc.  Should those be allowed in EPEL?
> They are not part of core RHEL.  IMHO, as much software as possible
> should be available for everybody. [...]

I tend to agree. Heck most EPEL contributors don't even know what's in 
those layer products and have no way to check that. But OTOH it might be 
nice if possible without to much hassle to add them to EPEL with a EVR 
that is lower than the one in the layered product.

> 3.  What about products such as Free IPA vs IPA, Fedora DS vs RHDS,
> Spacewalk vs Satellite etc?  If there is a fully open offering, can we
> put it in EPEL and not officially be 'conflicting' with the RH channel
> for it?

The old goal was not to include those. But I'd now say we should. It's 
open source software; if people want it for free they will simply go 
somewhere else if people they don't get from EPEL. If they want support 
they'll pay RH anyway. Most are used to that concept from RH<->CentOS 
already anyway.

> 4. Firmware packages that are on the supplemental EL discs.  To me,
> this is just to make some hardware work, shouldn't that be easily
> available?  As an enterprise customer, it'd be a lot easier to have it
> in EPEL (which I am going to use anyway) than to have to
> download/import the supplemental disc.

Hmm. If they are free enough for Fedora/EPEL then why are they not free 
enough for the stock RHEL media?

> I am sure there are more questions and conflicts, and I don't want to
> stomp on Red Hat, but I would like to make EPEL as usable and complete
> as possible.

+1

Cu
knurd