Seems to me Darrell has it right. First thing must be a clean handover and base.
The future discussion is what Linux is about. Many distributions and many packages. And a reaction from the original e-smith boys warning how a big a job it is to move distro's. E-smith may be too tightly integrated with the distro it rides on. Given all I see when I use it is web interface (and I know enough to set up the same things with no e-smith present). I think it's an application. I'd separate the web interface code/scripts from those that configure the underlying packages so that the package support can be made easier to work with (as in hackable). As a user I don't care what distro nor what mail program or database it rides on. The package support scripts would be setup for the original distro and packages with easy change to suit. A bit of smarts would let it find and use whatever packages exist on the distro (that it knows how to). We release it as it's done now (a full system including distro) and as a stand alone application. We document real clearly how the package/distro interface works and is configured for new setups. As a developer that's what I care about. All the individuals with bents for particular distros will then provide the updates necessary for our e-smith "application" to support their own flavour. We'll get all this work done naturally by these individuals and hopefully we'll get it back in the pool to make our application stronger. As for updates, a "blades" style panel is great and could use either apt or rpm - as a user I wouldn't care which so I'd not even tell the average user what we use. Again the package section of the scripts could whichever is available on the distro beneath it (at contribs we maintain packages in multiple format). Given we're now RH the first "new" release would use RPM. And again provided the documentation is good the community will apt support etc (and the packages re-formated and back on the contribs site). Hope I can help. Peter Lambert -- Please report bugs to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] (only) to discuss security issues Support for registered customers and partners to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Searchable archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/devinfo%40lists.e-smith.org
