Hello,
I was re-reading the third party software policy (and also the FESCo ticket:
https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/1617#comment:10), and happened to
notice that it looks like WGs are currently intended to be the final
arbiters of what repositories are and are not allowed to be included in
particular Fedora editions, particularly this comment:
"The submission process is edition-based. Acceptance into Fedora
Workstation, for instance, does not guarantee your software will be as
easily available in another Fedora Edition or in a Fedora Spin. It is up to
each working group or special interest groups how to make available any
software in their system."
I realize I'm a little late to bring this up, but this seems potentially
concerning if, say, the Workstation and Server WGs both want to include a
third party repository that packages the same software but differently. This
would then potentially make the editions incompatible, which doesn't seem
ideal.
Perhaps this is an implementation detail to be worked out, but as it's not
otherwise mentioned in the policy... it seems like in the interests of
standardization it would be better if a single group (FESCo? perhaps another
WG dedicated to this purpose?) were the final arbiter of whether or not a
third party repository could be included in the distribution at all, and
then it would be up to the WGs to decide if and how to ship it. Or, at the
very least, if a single group had some oversight over the entire process
even if they did not have to approve each and every third party repository
themselves.
Skimming through the discussion on the subject it didn't seem like this
point seemed controversial to anyone else. So maybe other people have
already thought about this and decided it's not a big deal. But I figured it
couldn't hurt to ask.
It isn't considered a problem for a couple of reasons:
1) Editions are not meant to be combined so they are in many ways
'mutually' exclusive at least at the 'top' level. Yes the packages are
built from the same builders but it is meant that package choices or
lifetimes could be different.
2) The 3rd party software is not installed from the Fedora media but
is up to the person who chose it to install. And people are already
doing this sort of crazy combinations now. People wander onto various
help places daily saying "I just enabled repo X and repo Y and now I
can't do Z". All the groups are doing is trying to cut that down to a
smaller number by curating a couple of known ones.
--
Stephen J Smoogen.