That ole Livna Problem/That ole VLC Problem

[Les Mikesell]

Michael Schwendt wrote:

>>>> I'd call this a recipe for disaster,
>>> You misunderstood. It's not a recipe, it's the situation we're still in.
>> You say 'still' as though you think the situation could change.
> 
> This thread won't change it. ;)

No, but it might make some users' expectations more realistic.

> Some of the things written here are only the tip of the ice-berg.
> Proposed solutions are missing. 

Or impossible.

> Ask yourself, how would you fix the problems instead of only pointing
> the finger at the Fedora Project and its Forbidden-Things-Policy?

Not just forbidden-things.  It's forbidden things _and_ refusal to 
cooperate with repos where they aren't forbidden.

> How
> would you eliminate overlapping contents in multiple repositories
> without merging the projects or without copying packages unmodified?

I see two possibilities that could work, but they have to start with the 
fedora project recognizing that they don't and can't supply everything 
from their own repository.  One is that some independent-but-compatible 
repository be maintained for the parts that fedora rejects by policy. 
Livna is sort-of like that and requires instead of replaces anything 
needed from the base repos.  However it is not clear what their policy 
is on accepting additional packages from other 3rd party packagers and 
this approach would require them to accept about everything.  The other 
way is to make sure the fedora packages don't conflict with popular 
existing 3rd party locations.

> What binding policies would inter-repo collaboration need? And would
> the volunteers like them? It's not the non-free add-ons that cause
> problems, more often it's redundant/overlapping/conflicting packages.

It probably can't be 100% compatible because in some cases the conflicts 
exist for a reason - like a package in a repo needing some additional 
library options enabled or newer versions of support libs.  But it could 
consolidate all the typical stuff like the Nvidia/ATI drivers, Sun Java, 
and the codecs for the common media players.  If you needed some 
specialty stuff like Planet CCRMA's audio tools you might still have to 
be careful or keep it on a separate box.

> What started as just another 3rd party repo for add-on packages became
> a community project, later became part of the Fedora Project, then
> merged with Fedora Core and hence increased the "core" package base.
> It would be natural to not replace any packages in that base
> distribution. But how are you going to convince long-time productive
> 3rd party packagers that they should stop packaging anything that is
> found in the base dist nowadays?

There was an opportunity for that to happen but it is probably too late 
now - and couldn't have worked without a repo willing to accept their 
packages anyway.  The cooperation would have to be in the other direction.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com