[Fwd: Fedora & openSUSE meeting / cooperation ?]

[Christopher Blizzard]

Luis Villa wrote:
>> I see them as somewhat separate things.  To your first point - making
>> things easier to install, I happen to completely agree, and it's one of
>> the reasons why I'm driving down the path of using bundles instead of
>> rpm or deb packages in olpc.  This much to the chagrin of people who are
>> heavily invested in rpm and similar technologies.
>>
>> I'm approaching this from the standpoint of "make it easier to find
>> software that's interesting and be able to give it to others" as opposed
>> to "making it easier and more convenient to make an rpm."
> 
> I agree that the first approach is a vastly superior one which should
> be prioritized given finite resources, but that is a very big problem
> space with a lot of barriers preventing a solution. Given that, I
> don't think you should so casually dismiss the second approach in the
> meantime- I think as an intermediate bandaid it possibly has quite a
> bit of value.

We're trying to make it pretty easy.  We have a bunch of tools that lets 
you build an rpm locally, a "local build service" if you want to play 
rhetorical games.  How we allow third parties be able to distribute and 
let other people know that they have compatible software is a different 
issue.  That's the kind of thing that I've been pushing us towards as 
well.  The pieces that Jesse and others are working on are the 
beginnings of that.

Our current system of centralized distribution _and_ information about 
what's available seems to make that harder.  i.e. the only way that 
people can find software that's compatible with Fedora is to find it in 
Fedora's repositories.  It's something that has scaled well for us with 
free software, but that makes it hard for other people who are producing 
- dare I say it? - non-free software, which can have great value.

> 
> Luis (who sometimes wonders if web + xpi means we should have moved
> the whole desktop to mozilla/xulrunner two years ago)

There's a huge amount to be learned from what Mozilla is doing, and I 
know I'm personally applying it.  But it's hard for others to see it. 
They don't quite have the inside view that I have had to both projects. 
  What's worked, what hasn't, what are the key success factors, etc. 
I'm trying to prove out some of using olpc as a mechanism, but it's slow 
going.

--Chris