Ryan Tomayko

Another example. Dag runs an extensive repository of packages for RPM based GNU/Linux distributions. There are two cults here: the Fedora Extras (fedora.us and livna repositories) and the “3rd Party Repositories” (Dag, freshrpms, NewRPMs, and atrpms [acuracy?]). The “3rd Party Repositories” are at the lowest level of the evolutionary chain. There is little barrier to releasing new packages. The Extras (fedora.us) repository plays in the middle of the chain. There are formal guidelines for package releases and tools for managing bugs and feature requests, etc. At the highest level of the evolutionary chain is the Fedora Core distribution itself—even more process around getting new packages established.

There are serious issues with this situation. The linked thread has Dag defending the 3rd party repositories existence. The Extras people look down on the 3rd party people because they have less process around packaging standards or quality control. What they fail to recognize is that having a level where these measures are less restrictive is healthy because it provides a place where people can play with packages on the ground floor. There's a ton of weeding out of useless packages that occurs here.

The 3rd party guys should probably be trying harder to push their stuff up through the next tier though. People finding packages they like in 3rd party repos should be shepherding them on the official Extras repos.