Hi Dag, first of all I would like to thank you for your repository. Your repository and Matt's NyQuist are the best two repositories available for Fedora users. Once the repository is open to contributions and the process automated, your repository would become what fedora.us should have been. Keep up the good work. Regards, Nadeem It is unfortunate that there isn't better cooperation between repositories at least for a core set of packages. On æ, 2004-06-13 at 04:21 +0200, Dag Wieers wrote: > 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@xxxxxxxxxx, http://dag.wieers.com/ -- > [Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors] > >
