Fedora Extras is extra

Matthew Miller mattdm at mattdm.org
Mon Nov 29 20:24:37 UTC 2004


On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 01:42:45PM -0500, William M. Quarles wrote:
> Matthe hat's not we are suggesting.  You are replying to our statements 
> out of context. Later on in Chris' same message he does suggest a more 
> mature approach, as did I.  You jumped on me for "not having any 
> suggestions" when I clearly had made suggestions.  Calm down the 
> impulsivity and have a more open mind, please.

Sorry; I mean to be harsh. However, the original post had quite an
inflamatory tone.

> Fedora Extras was supposed to be a community project from the beginning. 
>  It did not come from Red Hat like Fedora Core did.  There should be a 
> community on Fedora Extras now.  And if this is a respected part of the 
> Fedora Project, I am sure having a hard time finding the link from 
> fedora.redhat.com to fedora.us.  The only way that I ever found out 
> about Fedora Extras was through this mailing list.

Check this out, from the devel list:

<http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-November/msg01170.html>


> Several of the other repositories of which we speak are far from "mini." 
>  They have been around longer and are still more popular than Fedora 
> Extras.  Some have more packages.  Most have much better designed and 
> more sophisticated websites.

This is definitely true. Others aren't and don't, though -- but some still
have very good packages. There needs to be coordination.


> Also, some include packages (like the ever-popular Xine) that were once 
> part of Red Hat Linux but were dropped in the transition to Fedora Core. 

This is an excellent example of one of the problems. One of Xine's main
features is playing DVDs, which is (sadly) on very thin legal ice in the US.
Fedora Extras as a US-based project would have to include a stripped-down
version -- and that doesn't seem very useful.


>  For some reason those packages never made it into Fedora Extras.  As 
> an aside, why are we still avoiding MPEG technologies in The Fedora 
> Project, especially when it is not a product that is bought and sold? 
> The courts already upheld the right of open source development and 
> distribution of independently developed MPEG software.

Because Fedora _can_ be bought and sold, even if Red Hat isn't doing it.
That's supposed to be one of the key features of open source.


> >(This is why DAG, FreshRPMS, et al. are also working on coordinating more
> >closely, which is _also_ a very good thing.)
> And why can't Fedora Extras participate in that same process like we 
> were suggesting?  Oh, I forgot, they're still trying to act like Microsoft.
                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Oh come on. What happened to the "more mature approach"?

> >Heh. Have fun with that.
> He's got plenty of worthwhile options to choose from.

It seems a funny thing to make a stand on, is all. Probably should stop
using the Fedora Core base too.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>




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