9:21 p.m.
Hallo,
I'm sorry to post in English, I can understand a bit of German, but sadly
I cannot express myself in German very well. My English is somewhat
better, although I would have prefered to do this in Dutch.
I just discovered the 'Fragen zu Synaptic' thread and feel I deserve the
right to answer Michael's new FUD. (And some of the FUD I've seen on the
official Fedora channels in the past months).
I don't mind Michael recruting people to help out the fedora.us project,
the more people helping out, the better. What I do mind is that he has to
trash other projects (3rd party repos) in doing so.
When Michael says my RPM collection is a work of only one person, he is
wrong. The packages I provide are put together by 4 people currently and I
guess around 200 people contribute in one way or another. The other 3rd
party packagers help out too, just like the fedora.us community is
working. (Actually, we're working to open it up more and automate the
process more to make volunteers much more productive.)
What Michael means is that 1 person is doing the actual packaging/signing.
This is more a matter of trust than it is a matter of control. I'm sure
the fedora.us packages aren't signed by everyone involved in packaging,
right?
I wouldn't be able to provide about 8000 packages for 9 different
platforms if it wasn't for the people that test and provide feedback and
the people and tools that help out in the process.
Unfortunately, because of the repeated FUD about the 3rd party
repositories, some news articles took over the same message spreading the
FUD even further, which is obviously harming these 3rd party projects.
It's nice we've been mentioned in almost all the Fedora related articles,
although I don't think the negative connotation often made is
well-deserved or honest.
Here are some facts that I haven't seen mentioned in these FUD threads:
+ We're providing packages for repositories that are not supported by
fedora.us. Red Hat Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Yellow Dog Linux
and for the x86_64 architecture.
+ We're working together with other Red Hat derivatives and help out
these communities. EL3 derivatives, the cAos project, the BLAG
project. So the community around these packages is larger than just
Fedora.
Both of these points are a clear distinction between my repository and the
fedora.us goals.
+ fedora.us is (and has been) forking packages from 3rd party
repositories (I don't mind, although I'd like to be informed of
improvements when they do). Obviously our packages improve too because
of work by fedora.us, although this cross-breeding could be improved a
lot.
+ fedora.us likes to stress that you cannot use other repositories with
theirs. They say it isn't possible. They are right, it isn't possible
because they don't want too. It's a protectionist measure from the
days that they had few packages and needed resources. It is in
fact possible to make all repositories compatible by investing in
communication and working together.
+ Michael likes to stress that we cannot possibly have quality packages
because we have that many packages compared to fedora.us. What he
fails to mention is that fedora.us is fairly young compared to
other repositories and during the inception months and the many
arguments later, the other repositories grew faster. fedora.us is just
catching up.
+ Some packages I provide are a work in progress and are provided
because people may find it useful nevertheless. It's better to provide
something that can be improved than provide nothing at all in these
cases. Often when they are available, people provide feedback which
wouldn't be there if they weren't available.
I would like to ask Michael and others to talk about fedora.us's merits
without FUDing other projects.
If Michael, Warren or anyone else happens to find something that can be
improved in my packages or wrt. compatibility I would appreciate if you
Cc: me so that I don't have to find out in the archives or via my
referer-log.
Kind regards,
-- dag wieers, dag(a)wieers.com, http://dag.wieers.com/ --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]
3:59 a.m.
Dag,
Am So, den 13.06.2004 schrieb Dag Wieers um 04:21:
I just discovered the 'Fragen zu Synaptic' thread and feel I
deserve the
right to answer Michael's new FUD. (And some of the FUD I've seen on the
official Fedora channels in the past months).
At the first place 100% ack to your posting. Some additional thougths
from me: The so called 3th part. repos were big contributors to the
success of the former RHL distributions as well as of the fedora
project. Their existence, the (Vielfalt) of their packages made (a big
part) of the difference to other distributions (beside the QA and
stability of RHL itself).
The downside of playing such an important role is always being subject
to a lot of gossip. Therefore, instead of spending your time on that
gossip, it may be more useful to concentrate on further improvements of
your repo. Regarding your users, most of them will do something which is
called in German "Abstimmung mit den Füssen" (unfortunately I'm not able
to translate it appropriately - something like voting by doing),
regardless of the "gossip of the day".
Just a wishlist from my user perspective:
If I read your web site correctly there is some ongoing work to
coordinate (at least some of) the various 3th part. repos - great news.
Instead of trying to coordinate with fedora.us, which seems currently to
be quite time consuming to say it at best, you may try to do your own
implementation of the repository principles which are outline by the
fedora project (mainly extras / alternatives), maintaining as much
compatibilty to fedora core as possible, and avoiding the problems use
may have using the repos.
Peter
--
--------------------------------------------------
Dr. Peter Boy
University of Bremen
Centre for Social Policy Research
Research Methods and IT Management
email: pb(a)zes.uni-bremen.de
Tel. : +49 421 218 4374 / 4362
+49 421 230 757
--------------------------------------------------
9:31 a.m.
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 04:21:31 +0200 (CEST), Dag Wieers wrote:
I'm sorry to post in English, I can understand a bit of German,
but sadly
I cannot express myself in German very well. My English is somewhat
better, although I would have prefered to do this in Dutch.
First of all, I believe that "a bit of German" is not sufficient to
understand the thread on fedora-list-de correctly. "A bit of German" is
rather vague, but if it means that you skip some words or don't know their
exact meaning in special context, that can result in severe
misunderstandings.
I just discovered the 'Fragen zu Synaptic' thread and feel I
deserve the
right to answer Michael's new FUD. (And some of the FUD I've seen on the
official Fedora channels in the past months).
I feel honoured that you don't mention my lastname in your message at all
and crosspost the message to a list which I'm not subscribed to and
another list where there are lots of other Michaels and where hardly
anyone has read the thread on the German list (which is a month old by
now, btw).
I don't mind Michael recruting people to help out the fedora.us
project,
What does this refer to?
the more people helping out, the better. What I do mind is that he
has to
trash other projects (3rd party repos) in doing so.
Where exactly do I "trash other projects"?
Am I the bad guy already because--like some other users--I do recommend
fedora.us and rpm.livna.org only? I don't use any of the 3rd party
repositories, so I cannot recommend them. Mixing 3rd party repositories
with fedora.us/rpm.livna.org results in problems, as can be read in the
average message board where users seek for help with broken dependencies
or non-working multimedia packages.
But frequently I point to www.fedoratracker.org, which is an index of your
repository, too, and hence does advertize your packages, too.
When Michael says my RPM collection is a work of only one person, he
is
wrong.
What Michael means is that 1 person is doing the actual
packaging/signing.
Which is what I've written. A single individual packaging hundreds of
packages and releasing new packages (upgrades of packages in Fedora Core
even!) without an open QA/Testing process.
Unfortunately, because of the repeated FUD about the 3rd party
repositories, some news articles took over the same message spreading the
FUD even further, which is obviously harming these 3rd party projects.
Which news articles?
You write it as if the article authors don't have an own opinion, but have
been fooled by what they have picked up somewhere. Do consider the
possibility that article authors are open-minded and look behind the
scenes.
+ fedora.us is (and has been) forking packages from 3rd party
repositories (I don't mind, although I'd like to be informed of
improvements when they do).
That's something you could arrange if you talked to the respective
packager. The number of spec files in fedora.us which contain your name
somewhere in the changelog is small. It's possible that someone started
with one of your packages, but during early package development changed
the spec file completely and should have dropped old changelog entries.
+ fedora.us likes to stress that you cannot use other repositories
with
theirs. They say it isn't possible. They are right, it isn't possible
because they don't want too.
Fedora.us builds upon Fedora Core and itself only. When 3rd party
repositories upgrade Fedora Core, this breaks dependencies and/or results
in untested configurations. Additionally, repositories upgrade eachother
due to competing version/release numbering schemes. Or they conflict with
eachother due to different package naming guidelines.
It's a protectionist measure from the
days that they had few packages and needed resources. It is in
fact possible to make all repositories compatible by investing in
communication and working together.
It's not as simple, unfortunately. People on fedora-devel(a)fedora.us
mailing-list have spent months on discussing the preparation and roadmap
of a community packaging project. A few repository maintainers never
wanted more than inter-repository guidelines, so since day one fedora.us
had fundamentally different goals.
+ Michael likes to stress that we cannot possibly have quality
packages
because we have that many packages compared to fedora.us.
Almost true. Except that if ripped out of context, you put rather strongly
worded words into my mouth. And you neglect the possibility that packages
are improved after release (which I do point out), based on feedback by
users who run into problems and who take the time to submit bug reports.
In one message board (don't remember its name of the top of my head),
someone described the difference between the release-cycle of fedora.us
and 3rd party repositories like this:
fedora.us : new package -> fix, fix, fix, fix -> release
3rd party : new package -> release -> fix -> release -> fix -> release
-> ...
Which seems to hit the nail on the head. Though, nowhere do I claim that
this is true for every package.
What he
fails to mention is that fedora.us is fairly young compared to
other repositories and during the inception months and the many
arguments later, the other repositories grew faster. fedora.us is just
catching up.
Because it's easier for a single individual to pipe out new packages as
soon as they seem to rpmbuild and let any users deal with the first series
of bugs/problems/flaws. There's no guarantee, however, that the community
is willing to serve as guinea pigs.
I would like to ask Michael and others to talk about fedora.us's
merits
without FUDing other projects.
I do not "FUD other projects".
If Michael, Warren or anyone else happens to find something that can
be
improved in my packages or wrt. compatibility I would appreciate if you
Cc: me so that I don't have to find out in the archives or via my
referer-log.
For incompatibilities to be looked into and to be resolved, someone needs
to discover them first and then take the time to file bug reports.
1:57 p.m.
Michael Schwendt wrote:
First of all, I believe that "a bit of German" is not
sufficient to
understand the thread on fedora-list-de correctly. "A bit of German" is
rather vague, but if it means that you skip some words or don't know their
exact meaning in special context, that can result in severe
misunderstandings.
Understanding a text written in a foreign language is simpler than
writing an own one in this language...
I feel honoured that you don't mention my lastname in your
message at all
and crosspost the message to a list which I'm not subscribed to and
another list where there are lots of other Michaels and where hardly
anyone has read the thread on the German list (which is a month old by
now, btw).
What does the missing lastname mean?
If somebody is interested in this thread he/she can have a look at the
web archive of fedora-de-list(a)redhat.com.
>the more people helping out, the better. What I do mind is that he
has to
>trash other projects (3rd party repos) in doing so.
Where exactly do I "trash other projects"?
E.g. you should read again what you have written in
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-de-list/2004-May/msg00038.html
Am I the bad guy already because--like some other users--I do
recommend
fedora.us and rpm.livna.org only? I don't use any of the 3rd party
repositories, so I cannot recommend them. Mixing 3rd party repositories
with fedora.us/rpm.livna.org results in problems, as can be read in the
average message board where users seek for help with broken dependencies
or non-working multimedia packages.
If you do not use 3rd party repositories, you should not judge them as bad.
>When Michael says my RPM collection is a work of only one person,
he is
>wrong.
>What Michael means is that 1 person is doing the actual packaging/signing.
Which is what I've written. A single individual packaging hundreds of
packages and releasing new packages (upgrades of packages in Fedora Core
even!) without an open QA/Testing process.
*You* do not have to use a repository if it replaces or upgrades
packages from Fedora Core.
> + Michael likes to stress that we cannot possibly have quality
packages
> because we have that many packages compared to fedora.us.
Almost true. Except that if ripped out of context, you put rather
strongly
worded words into my mouth. And you neglect the possibility that packages
are improved after release (which I do point out), based on feedback by
users who run into problems and who take the time to submit bug reports.
Read the second and third paragraph in your mail which I have mentioned
above.
In one message board (don't remember its name of the top of my head),
someone described the difference between the release-cycle of fedora.us
and 3rd party repositories like this:
fedora.us : new package -> fix, fix, fix, fix -> release
3rd party : new package -> release -> fix -> release -> fix -> release
-> ...
Which seems to hit the nail on the head. Though, nowhere do I claim that
this is true for every package.
Not everybody wants to use packages which only have double checked bytes...
>I would like to ask Michael and others to talk about
fedora.us's merits
>without FUDing other projects.
I do not "FUD other projects".
Really? Read your mail I mentioned above, it only is an example.
Kind Regards,
Stefan
6:02 p.m.
On Sunday 13 June 2004 16:31, Michael Schwendt wrote:
In one message board (don't remember its name of the top of my
head),
someone described the difference between the release-cycle of fedora.us
and 3rd party repositories like this:
fedora.us : new package -> fix, fix, fix, fix -> release
3rd party : new package -> release -> fix -> release -> fix -> release
->
...
Which seems to hit the nail on the head. Though, nowhere do I claim that
this is true for every package.
This is actually a really good summary of the
working style, but it should be
more detailed:
fedora.us: new package -> fix (now 90%perfect), fix (95%perfect),
fix(97%perfect), fix(98%perfect) -> release
3rd party: new package (80%perfect)-> release -> fix (now 90%) -> release
may I quote you: "nowhere do I claim that this is true for every package."
Often 3rd party packages start with more than 80%, and often fedora.us
packages may end with 100% (if one doesn't negate 100% being possible at
all).
But I think most users are well satisfied with 80-90%. And everyone knows that
the last percents are the most expensive.
I don't mind if some people like to put that much effort into packaging QA (as
in fedora.us, which is from my impression higher than inside RH, for example
complete BuildRequires were not very common). But please don't bash others
for not doing the same.
Fedora.us could be much better if it adopted parts of the 3rd party style.
No/low QA for testing/unstable repo, and a user voting system to move
packages to stable. (I'm suggesting this again, repetition seams to commit
things to memory and sometimes even minds change)
--
http://LinuxWiki.org/RonnyBuchmann
7255
days inactive
7255
days old
de-users@lists.fedoraproject.org
4 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Dag Wieers -
Michael Schwendt -
Peter Boy -
Ronny Buchmann -
Stefan Hoelldampf