On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 00:28:43 -0500 (EST), Cristian Gafton wrote: > [...], I will attempt to make happen in the shortest possible time: > > - Fedora developer and contributor forms. These include things like > establishing qualifications, credentials and requirements for issuing > various accounts and access levels - in short the formal aspect of getting > those interested the "commit" access to Fedora Project bits; I'd like to see early communication about the Fedora Extras package submission and approval policies and its development model (i.e. questions such as whether Extras will be release-based and freezed in sync with Core and who will overlook the experimental and stable stream?). The sporadic criticism of the fedora.us QA system has not been taken as an opportunity to discuss it and develop it further or change it completely. The community is surprisingly quiet, almost as if everyone is waiting for Red Hat to make the first step and publish something which can be torn to pieces then. There must be developers and package maintainers [other than ESR] with precize ideas on how they would like to contribute packages. Similarly, there must be people--in particular users of the software which is being packaged--with precize ideas on how they would and could help deciding on when a package is approved and whether an updated package get released. There is one particular thing I don't understand. Once an arbitrary repository contains a new package, people don't hesitate to download and install it. When it's broken or not as usable as expected, they either downgrade or try the next repository (this experience is based on comments seen in message boards), repeating this procedure regularly. But when a package of the same software is in a public queue of packages to be reviewed before they get published, people avoid such packages like the plague and don't give the packages a try and don't leave feedback. I think the community can do better than that. But the Fedora community has a long road to take to realize that--like with the Debian GNU/Linux project--it's better to spend a combined effort on a primary source of reliable and maintained packages than to either want everything maintained by Red Hat in "Fedora Core" or to keep an excessive list of repositories maintained by individuals and live with interoperability problems. --
