Maybe a bit off-topic: I would like to see a system where contributors
can volonteer to maintain a package (or two :-) ). I think it could be a
good replacement for contribs, since Mdk doesn't have the resources to
bring the contribs to the quality standard of cooker (otherwise cooker
would contain those packages). Seperate website being run by volonteers
won't work, it just isn't scaleable, neither are the current contribs.
IMHO we only need 3 distro's: cooker, contrib and plf.
Let the contributors decide which packages are worthwhile to maintain,
the rest can be put into the pound (same idea as an animal pound), and
put to sleep if nobody wants to take care of it. Nice natural selection.
I guess in order to let a large number of people maintain packages in a
secure way a few things need to be done:
What you don't want:
- uploading of binary rpms (by near strangers)
- shell accounts for each & every contributor
- a lot of manual uploading by a few people for a large group
What would be nice:
- "help yourself", register for an abandoned package, or submit a new one;
- if you want changes to a maintained package, some (web-) interface for
contacting the maintainer would be nice;
- uploading of src.rpm only (web-based, authentcate with cert?)
- rebuilding engine that processes the src.rpm's
- download the original sources (to prevent tampering with sources)
- a mdk person needs to aprove the changes (use some workflow for this)
- build the binary rpm's (multi platform?), and when things don't
build, inform the maintainer (send buildoutputs of what went wrong, etc)
The problem is most likely building the application that will enable
this... (anybody capable of making such a thing want to volonteer?)
I guess it's up to mdk to figure out how to best leverage the effort of
the contributors.
kind regards,
Stefan
Austin Acton wrote:
>Not the case.
>Volunteered RPMS will be freely available on regular MDK mirrors,
>provided they are GPL or similar. The only RPMS available only to club
>members will be those that are free, but not open source.
>New SRPMS will go directly into cooker if they are reliable.
>You should contribute this way, because it helps the distro directly.
>Austin
>
>On Sat, 2002-07-13 at 14:38, Ben Reser wrote:
>
>
>>Well I disagree with the idea of only making rpms that I build available
>>via the club. The club's fine and all. And it's nice to have them
>>releasing some commercial stuff that normally was only on the commercial
>>CDs. However, I disagree with the idea of locking RPMs of "free" programs
>>behind the club. Basically I don't mind contributing to the community.
>>But I won't do work for Mandrake that gets locked up for only a few for
>>free. Now if Mandrake want's to pay me to make Club packages that's a
>>different matter. But if I'm doing work for free then I expect my work
>>to be accessible to the public.
>>
>>--
>>Ben Reser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>http://ben.reser.org
>>
>>We tend to see all wars through the lens of the current conflict, and we
>>mine history for lessons convenient to the present purpose.
>>- Brian Hayes
>>
>>
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