Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
Michael Scherer kirjoitti: Le mercredi 13 octobre 2010 à 20:06 +0200, Olivier Méjean a écrit : Le mercredi 13 octobre 2010 19:31:44, Michael Scherer a écrit : Le mardi 12 octobre 2010 à 17:53 +0200, Olivier Méjean a écrit : == And DVDCSS, etc? What's in etc ? However, here in France we have a law Dadvsi on which the Conseil Constitutionnel (something like American Suprem Court) has statuted that the law could not prevent exception of decompilation and the exception of circumvention of DRM if this is for interoperability. In other words the use of libdvdcss is allowed for interoperability. So for me, Mageia can come with libdvdcss and other tools for interoperability And for the people hosting mirrors outside of France ? It's their own responsability, no one force them, and some in the world take the responsability to host mirrors with questionnable software. Let's give them the liberty to choose as we have the opportunity here in France to ship such software. No one forces several company, university, or other groups to mirror ArchLinux, PCLinuxOS, LinuxMint, PLF So I assume that you volunteer to find another Tier 1 mirror to replace ibiblio.org ? Well, ibiblio.org contains other distros that contain patented software (like arch and debian), and dvdcss (arch), and more than likely many others: ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/ (note: I'm still not suggesting having or not having such software, just noting this fact) -- Anssi Hannula
Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
Anssi Hannula kirjoitti torstai, 14. lokakuuta 2010 11:07:04: Michael Scherer kirjoitti: Le mercredi 13 octobre 2010 à 20:06 +0200, Olivier Méjean a écrit : Le mercredi 13 octobre 2010 19:31:44, Michael Scherer a écrit : Le mardi 12 octobre 2010 à 17:53 +0200, Olivier Méjean a écrit : == And DVDCSS, etc? What's in etc ? However, here in France we have a law Dadvsi on which the Conseil Constitutionnel (something like American Suprem Court) has statuted that the law could not prevent exception of decompilation and the exception of circumvention of DRM if this is for interoperability. In other words the use of libdvdcss is allowed for interoperability. So for me, Mageia can come with libdvdcss and other tools for interoperability And for the people hosting mirrors outside of France ? It's their own responsability, no one force them, and some in the world take the responsability to host mirrors with questionnable software. Let's give them the liberty to choose as we have the opportunity here in France to ship such software. No one forces several company, university, or other groups to mirror ArchLinux, PCLinuxOS, LinuxMint, PLF So I assume that you volunteer to find another Tier 1 mirror to replace ibiblio.org ? Well, ibiblio.org contains other distros that contain patented software (like arch and debian), and dvdcss (arch), and more than likely many others: ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/ Oops, didn't notice the above posts were about DRM only, not patents... anyway, ibiblio contains such distros as well. -- Anssi Hannula
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Marc Paré wrote: Thanks for posting the site Tux99. There was talk of more user groups doing the poll/survey. Does anyone know if this is being done? Great data for the devs to consider. Marc This in the Spanish-speaking Mandriva community BlogDrake: http://blogdrake.net/encuesta/que-tipo-de-ciclo-de-releases-deberia-tener- mageia In case the URL gets cut, here it is shortened with Bit.ly: http://bit.ly/am7Ivg Salut, Sinner
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Quote: Buchan Milne wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 15:27 What aspects of the Mandriva backports solution are not satisfactory? -The fact that not everything is available as a backport? Yes, more packages should be available (and as future packager I will do my part to make that happen) -That users don't know how to request a backport? It certainly could help publicizing backports and giving the user an easy way to request specific packages -That users doing network installs by default don't get the backport on initial installation? That would be very useful as it reduces bandwidth and speed up installation. -That users aren't aware of backports? Yes, backports should be promoted better in drakrpm and in the web site. -Something else? backports should be supported for security patches and bug fixes just like the main packages (if not instead of the main packages). Of course the security patch could be simply provided by backporting a newer version of the package, no need to make patches for each version. The end users need to do less than now for to get new versions of their favourites applications. Less than 'urpmi --searchmedia Backports chromium' ? CLI is not ideal for 'normal' users. Or, should it be more obvious in rpmdrake or similar? I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who DON'T want them can still always disable them. Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro provides them. -- Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Le 2010-10-14 09:08, Sinner from the Prairy a écrit : Marc Paré wrote: Thanks for posting the site Tux99. There was talk of more user groups doing the poll/survey. Does anyone know if this is being done? Great data for the devs to consider. Marc This in the Spanish-speaking Mandriva community BlogDrake: http://blogdrake.net/encuesta/que-tipo-de-ciclo-de-releases-deberia-tener- mageia In case the URL gets cut, here it is shortened with Bit.ly: http://bit.ly/am7Ivg Salut, Sinner Gracias Sinner: Is it me or is the poll different? The overall feeling on the Spanish Blogdrake is to like Mandriva a stable system with upgrades and backports at 58%. I imagine this means keeping to Mandriva release cycle with no changes. Wouldn't it make sense to have the same poll? I guess, this way we still get the results of a poll and a sense of the community feeling anyway. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Just to add to my last post: It would be useful if users could disable specifc packages from being updated via the update GUI. What I mean is basically when new updates get presented (which would include new backports) the user could untick specific packages (as is possible now) but also have a second tick-box to store the choice permanently in the skip.list. This would give the user more choice of which packages he wants to always update to the newest version and wich ones he/she prefers to keep frozen at the same version. -- Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Quote: marc wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 15:49 Is it me or is the poll different? The overall feeling on the Spanish Blogdrake is to like Mandriva a stable system with upgrades and backports at 58%. I imagine this means keeping to Mandriva release cycle with no changes. Wouldn't it make sense to have the same poll? I guess, this way we still get the results of a poll and a sense of the community feeling anyway. I guess the old rule of polls applies: depending on how you formulate the poll question and the description of the options you can hugely influence the results... Personally I think a poll without educating everyone about what exactly each choice would mean is useless. We first need to elaborate detailed alternatives before anyone can make an informed choice. -- Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
On 14 October 2010 15:41, Tux99 tux99-...@uridium.org wrote: Quote: Buchan Milne wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 15:27 What aspects of the Mandriva backports solution are not satisfactory? -The fact that not everything is available as a backport? Yes, more packages should be available (and as future packager I will do my part to make that happen) Well, backporting a package is a one-liner, so it takes less than minute to be done; that's not the issue. The issue is that a new version of package A may need a new version or package B to work, so package B needs to be backported too; and/or that the new version of A doesn't work with older libs/kernels, so backporting isn't too much time consuming for packagers, but making sure that that backport has a good chance of working(tm) is the bigger burden/responsibility. I've seen, too many times, trigger-happy packagers backporting packages that're not maintained by them (so they know it less than those package maintainer(s)), breaking those packages and annoying the maintainers of said packages. It's usually irresponsible to backport a package without taking that package maintainer's opinion into account. (an infamous example on that is gwibber being backported to 2010.1). -That users don't know how to request a backport? It certainly could help publicizing backports and giving the user an easy way to request specific packages New users who frequented the forums always got to know what backports are pretty fast. And bugzilla is the perfect system for asking for a backport, that worked pretty good. [...] -That users aren't aware of backports? Yes, backports should be promoted better in drakrpm and in the web site. -Something else? backports should be supported for security patches and bug fixes just like the main packages (if not instead of the main packages). Of course the security patch could be simply provided by backporting a newer version of the package, no need to make patches for each version. That's they way backports has always worked, no specific patches, just the latest cooker package pushed to backports as is with no official support, that's reasonable, packagers shouldn't promise to support backports when they can't due to various reasons (time, effort.. etc). The end users need to do less than now for to get new versions of their favourites applications. Less than 'urpmi --searchmedia Backports chromium' ? CLI is not ideal for 'normal' users. rpmdrake has a Backports filter that shows packages from backports repos, that's easy to use even for new users. Or, should it be more obvious in rpmdrake or similar? I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who DON'T want them can still always disable them. Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro provides them. Enabling them by default defies the purpose of having backports at all; it's not for new users, it's more for slightly experienced users or power users who want the latest versions of apps. -- Ahmad Samir
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Quote: Ahmad Samir wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 16:00 I've seen, too many times, trigger-happy packagers backporting packages that're not maintained by them (so they know it less than those package maintainer(s)), breaking those packages and annoying the maintainers of said packages. It's usually irresponsible to backport a package without taking that package maintainer's opinion into account. (an infamous example on that is gwibber being backported to 2010.1). I agree it should be preferably the maintainer doing the backport, or he should at least be consulted. New users who frequented the forums always got to know what backports are pretty fast. And bugzilla is the perfect system for asking for a backport, that worked pretty good. The wast majority of 'normal' users never uses the forum. Backports shouldn't be something that only users who frequent the forum find out about. That's they way backports has always worked, no specific patches, just the latest cooker package pushed to backports as is with no official support, that's reasonable, packagers shouldn't promise to support backports when they can't due to various reasons (time, effort.. etc). But IMHO that should change in Mageia, we should promise support by the way of timely updates, especially when security issues are present. Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro provides them. Enabling them by default defies the purpose of having backports at all; it's not for new users, it's more for slightly experienced users or power users who want the latest versions of apps. That's exactly the crucial bit that IMHO needs to change, backports are very interesting for 'normal' users so we should make sure normal users can use them. Don't you see how attractive it is especially for 'normal' users to have access to the latest versions all the time? Sure, not everyone wants them, but by integrating the skip.list in the update GUI we could keep 'conservative' users happy too. -- Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
On 14 October 2010 16:14, Tux99 tux99-...@uridium.org wrote: Quote: Ahmad Samir wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 16:00 [] Enabling them by default defies the purpose of having backports at all; it's not for new users, it's more for slightly experienced users or power users who want the latest versions of apps. That's exactly the crucial bit that IMHO needs to change, backports are very interesting for 'normal' users so we should make sure normal users can use them. Don't you see how attractive it is especially for 'normal' users to have access to the latest versions all the time? Sure, not everyone wants them, but by integrating the skip.list in the update GUI we could keep 'conservative' users happy too. Then you're not talking about new users any more... -- Ahmad Samir
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Quote: Ahmad Samir wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 16:21 Then you're not talking about new users any more... I don't know what you mean by new users, but I was talking about 'normal' user by which I mean general users without technical background (like my wife for example :) ), people that have used a computer before, but not necessarily with Linux, just an average Windows user for example. -- Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Does anyone take notes to summarize and make a consistent proposal (be it in some way or the other) of what should be done, as well as defining some sort of personas for users (unaware, new, occasional, frequent, expert) for evaluation? Romain
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Le 2010-10-14 09:57, Tux99 a écrit : Quote: marc wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 15:49 Is it me or is the poll different? The overall feeling on the Spanish Blogdrake is to like Mandriva a stable system with upgrades and backports at 58%. I imagine this means keeping to Mandriva release cycle with no changes. Wouldn't it make sense to have the same poll? I guess, this way we still get the results of a poll and a sense of the community feeling anyway. I guess the old rule of polls applies: depending on how you formulate the poll question and the description of the options you can hugely influence the results... Personally I think a poll without educating everyone about what exactly each choice would mean is useless. We first need to elaborate detailed alternatives before anyone can make an informed choice. I agree. However, I would view these polls as both a way to inform people and a short measure of what the community members think at this point. It does hold a little value. I am not sure if we all really understand the meaning behind rolling distro, but the polls still do give a little value at this point in time. If we are going to poll communities, the community leaders should really get together and decide on the process and questions so that the information collected is valuable. But Ok, this way we still get a little data to look at. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Le 2010-10-14 09:53, Tux99 a écrit : Just to add to my last post: It would be useful if users could disable specifc packages from being updated via the update GUI. What I mean is basically when new updates get presented (which would include new backports) the user could untick specific packages (as is possible now) but also have a second tick-box to store the choice permanently in the skip.list. This would give the user more choice of which packages he wants to always update to the newest version and wich ones he/she prefers to keep frozen at the same version. This is a great idea. Someone should make a note of it. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Tux99 wrote: Quote: Ahmad Samir wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 16:00 Enabling them by default defies the purpose of having backports at all; it's not for new users, it's more for slightly experienced users or power users who want the latest versions of apps. That's exactly the crucial bit that IMHO needs to change, backports are very interesting for 'normal' users so we should make sure normal users can use them. I believe you are both right: * backports are for power users * Mandriva/Mageia are power users [*] [*] 1. they chose Linux. 2. They chose a Not Ubuntu distro So, what about? 1. Changing name of backports to something more dscriptive 2. Making backports part of official repos 3. NOT activating backports repo by default. Salut, Sinner
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote: I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who DON'T want them can still always disable them. If backports repository is enabled by default, it should be stable. How do you garantee that backports will never break ? Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro provides them. Just providing the latest version of apps is not enough to stand out from other distros. All distros could do it, and they usually already do it in their developement version. But the problem is always the same: adding new versions create instability.
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Tux99 wrote: I guess the old rule of polls applies: depending on how you formulate the poll question and the description of the options you can hugely influence the results... This is so true. I follow the politics blog FiveThirtyEight (warning! statistics nerd alert activated!) and again and again, strange-resulting polls are caused by poorly formulated questions, guided answers or lack of proper options. Personally I think a poll without educating everyone about what exactly each choice would mean is useless. We first need to elaborate detailed alternatives before anyone can make an informed choice. This is mostly what Romain has been asking: someone to provide clear definitions of what Rolling Release is. And why Backports does not work. Salut, Sinner
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, nicolas vigier wrote: On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote: I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who DON'T want them can still always disable them. If backports repository is enabled by default, it should be stable. How do you garantee that backports will never break ? Nicolas, please re-read old posts of this thread we discussed this already, the conclusion was that there are no guarantees in life. Experience tells us backports don't normally break any more than the regular security/bugfix updates. Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro provides them. Just providing the latest version of apps is not enough to stand out from other distros. I didn't say this should be the ONLY unique feature of Mageia. All distros could do it, and they usually already do it in their developement version. But the problem is always the same: adding new versions create instability. All distros COULD do it but they don't, the dev version doesn't count as that is obviously much more unstable, since it's meant for experimenting. Providing new versions usually gives MORE stability since newer version normally include loads of bug fixes too, but again we debated this already, see old posts in this thread.
Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
On Wednesday 13 October 2010 20:54:45 Dimitrios Glentadakis wrote: About codecs Codeina will be available in Mageia ? I find it very comfortable for new and advanced users. Yes. It is available on Mandriva and I don't see any reason to drop it from Mageia. -- Anssi Hannula
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote: On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, nicolas vigier wrote: On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote: I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who DON'T want them can still always disable them. If backports repository is enabled by default, it should be stable. How do you garantee that backports will never break ? Nicolas, please re-read old posts of this thread we discussed this already, the conclusion was that there are no guarantees in life. Experience tells us backports don't normally break any more than the regular security/bugfix updates. Experience tells me that backports break much more than regular security/bugfix updates. Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro provides them. Just providing the latest version of apps is not enough to stand out from other distros. I didn't say this should be the ONLY unique feature of Mageia. All distros could do it, and they usually already do it in their developement version. But the problem is always the same: adding new versions create instability. All distros COULD do it but they don't, the dev version doesn't count as that is obviously much more unstable, since it's meant for experimenting. They could do it, but they don't do it in the stable branch. Maybe there is a reason ? Providing new versions usually gives MORE stability since newer version normally include loads of bug fixes too, but again we debated this already, see old posts in this thread. The software itself can be more stable, but not the integration with the other software. This was debated already, but you're still not answering the question about how you can guarantee that it will be stable enough (the integration between all the software, not only the software themself).
Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
On 14 October 2010 17:04, Anssi Hannula anssi.hann...@iki.fi wrote: On Wednesday 13 October 2010 20:54:45 Dimitrios Glentadakis wrote: About codecs Codeina will be available in Mageia ? I find it very comfortable for new and advanced users. Yes. It is available on Mandriva and I don't see any reason to drop it from Mageia. -- Anssi Hannula But codeina only works with gstreamer based apps IIUC... -- Ahmad Samir
Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
Le 2010-10-14 11:02, Anssi Hannula a écrit : On Wednesday 13 October 2010 14:29:14 Marc Paré wrote: Le 2010-10-13 14:23, Michael Scherer a écrit : Le mercredi 13 octobre 2010 à 20:06 +0200, Olivier Méjean a écrit : Le mercredi 13 octobre 2010 19:31:44, Michael Scherer a écrit : Le mardi 12 octobre 2010 à 17:53 +0200, Olivier Méjean a écrit : == And DVDCSS, etc? What's in etc ? However, here in France we have a law Dadvsi on which the Conseil Constitutionnel (something like American Suprem Court) has statuted that the law could not prevent exception of decompilation and the exception of circumvention of DRM if this is for interoperability. In other words the use of libdvdcss is allowed for interoperability. So for me, Mageia can come with libdvdcss and other tools for interoperability And for the people hosting mirrors outside of France ? It's their own responsability, no one force them, and some in the world take the responsability to host mirrors with questionnable software. Let's give them the liberty to choose as we have the opportunity here in France to ship such software. No one forces several company, university, or other groups to mirror ArchLinux, PCLinuxOS, LinuxMint, PLF So I assume that you volunteer to find another Tier 1 mirror to replace ibiblio.org ? I was actually going to approach a university in Canada this week about mirroring but I think I will wait till this is sorted out. I don't believe I could convince them if they read this thread. They would most definitely have second thoughts. Indeed, as even Debian/Ubuntu do not ship libdvdcss (e.g. arch, gentoo do).. As for patents, Ubuntu already has 4 mirrors in Canadian universities. Yes, Ubuntu is riding a wave of popularism at this point. Their product marketing is working quite well. You find/hear of them constantly. It's something we should be doing as soon as we publish our first solid product. The first release is just testing the infrastructure and product so we still have time to organize. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
Le 2010-10-14 12:08, Ahmad Samir a écrit : On 14 October 2010 17:04, Anssi Hannulaanssi.hann...@iki.fi wrote: On Wednesday 13 October 2010 20:54:45 Dimitrios Glentadakis wrote: About codecs Codeina will be available in Mageia ? I find it very comfortable for new and advanced users. Yes. It is available on Mandriva and I don't see any reason to drop it from Mageia. -- Anssi Hannula But codeina only works with gstreamer based apps IIUC... However, it does lend legitimacy to the distro. I would also vote to keep Codeina both as a useful (if somewhat) source for codecs but also for public relations purposes. This is important from a marketing point of view. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Le 2010-10-14 10:56, Sinner from the Prairy a écrit : Tux99 wrote: I guess the old rule of polls applies: depending on how you formulate the poll question and the description of the options you can hugely influence the results... This is so true. I follow the politics blog FiveThirtyEight (warning! statistics nerd alert activated!) and again and again, strange-resulting polls are caused by poorly formulated questions, guided answers or lack of proper options. Personally I think a poll without educating everyone about what exactly each choice would mean is useless. We first need to elaborate detailed alternatives before anyone can make an informed choice. This is mostly what Romain has been asking: someone to provide clear definitions of what Rolling Release is. And why Backports does not work. Salut, Sinner Is there a dedicated mailist for the leaders of the different communities? It would probably make sense to have a closed list for them to coordinate projects such as polls, marketing, sharing of resource materials agreemtns etc. Just a place where they could meet and conference to build consensus on different issues. Does this exist? Do we have a list of all the communities that have come on-board to the project? Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Le 2010-10-14 10:50, nicolas vigier a écrit : On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote: I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who DON'T want them can still always disable them. If backports repository is enabled by default, it should be stable. How do you garantee that backports will never break ? Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro provides them. Just providing the latest version of apps is not enough to stand out from other distros. All distros could do it, and they usually already do it in their developement version. But the problem is always the same: adding new versions create instability. Actually, there is a thread on the Mandriva nntp where the latest CUPS in backports break the install. So we are passing the word to people about this. DO NOT INSTALL THE CUPS backports, it may break your Mdv installation. I think the Backport name should just be changed to a more descriptive name and an info button (bubble or Wiki link) describing its intended use to the users. There is a thread on the Mandriva nntp discussing the use of Backport (I started it) as many users had no idea what it meant or the reason behind it. We (users) are ill-informed of its purpose. But ... I like it, and I think it should stay, but in a renamed form and for all users to use ... maybe also add a user help link on that particular page where users could turn to for help. IMHO, what makes or breaks a distro is the communication and the help users get from their knowledgeable counterparts. Use-help and Documentation should be front and centre to the distro. IMHO, if you have enough experience, then you should be helping out on the user help mailists and user help forums to help out those in need of help. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 18:32, Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com wrote: Is there a dedicated mailist for the leaders of the different communities? It would probably make sense to have a closed list for them to coordinate projects such as polls, marketing, sharing of resource materials agreemtns etc. Just a place where they could meet and conference to build consensus on different issues. Does this exist? Do we have a list of all the communities that have come on-board to the project? You mean, the Mageia Community Council? or something else? We're in the process to setup the Council, but we will need each team to coordinate on its own first (so we're blocked by the mailing-list availability, which should come soon - we've been delayed because of hosting issues). Romain
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:33:31 +0200, Tux99 wrote: I have been using backports on all my PCs and enabled them on all PCs of friends whom I installed Mandriva and so far I have yet to see a single breakage caused by backports. Having never had Backports enabled, I was encouraged by postings here to try it. Several app's were updated (e.g. VLC, CUPS). However, I then found that the new version of VLC had problems with DVD menus, and the new CUPS introduced problems (not just in my installation but at least one other Mandriva user). So I have reverted my Root partition to its state before the Backports update, and all is well again. My experience tells me that I should only use Backports - temporarily - when looking for an update to some application, i.e. not as a source for regular overall software updates. -- /\/\aurice (Retired in Surrey, UK) Registered Linux User #487649 Linux Mandriva 2010.0 32-bit PowerPack (i686 kernel) KDE 4.4.3 Virtualbox 3.2.6 Firefox 3.6.10
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Maurice Batey wrote: However, I then found that the new version of VLC had problems with DVD menus, and the new CUPS introduced problems (not just in my installation but at least one other Mandriva user). I would put this down to the fact that currently in Mandriva backports are given little attention by the packagers (as has been mentioned by the Mandriva packagers here themselves). Of course if we make them more central to the Mageia strategy then more care and testing is needed before a backport is pushed out. So I wouldn't consider that a fundamental issue with backports, just a procedural issue. Also personally I would consider CUPS a core app so I wouldn't have included that in backports at all.
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Le 2010-10-14 12:42, Romain d'Alverny a écrit : On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 18:32, Marc Parém...@marcpare.com wrote: Is there a dedicated mailist for the leaders of the different communities? It would probably make sense to have a closed list for them to coordinate projects such as polls, marketing, sharing of resource materials agreemtns etc. Just a place where they could meet and conference to build consensus on different issues. Does this exist? Do we have a list of all the communities that have come on-board to the project? You mean, the Mageia Community Council? or something else? We're in the process to setup the Council, but we will need each team to coordinate on its own first (so we're blocked by the mailing-list availability, which should come soon - we've been delayed because of hosting issues). Romain Merci Romain I guess this is it. Ok, work in progress. Do we have an on-going list the different communities published that have joined somewhere on the website? Just curious. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
Le 2010-10-14 13:05, Tux99 a écrit : On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Maurice Batey wrote: However, I then found that the new version of VLC had problems with DVD menus, and the new CUPS introduced problems (not just in my installation but at least one other Mandriva user). I would put this down to the fact that currently in Mandriva backports are given little attention by the packagers (as has been mentioned by the Mandriva packagers here themselves). Of course if we make them more central to the Mageia strategy then more care and testing is needed before a backport is pushed out. So I wouldn't consider that a fundamental issue with backports, just a procedural issue. Also personally I would consider CUPS a core app so I wouldn't have included that in backports at all. Yup. That was my comment on the Mandriva news group. If a package affects the core or a large amount of other sofware packages, I, myself, would avoid installing it from the Backports. If the updated CUPS was such a great upgrade, then I would imagine that the Mandriva devs would have included it as a normal update and not a Backport upgrade. Backport is great for VLC, Digikam, Amarok updates. But as Maurice mentioned the VLC didn't have the dvdnav plugin with the upgrade ... so there may be some hiccups from time to time with some of the software upgrades. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:29:28 +0200 Romain d'Alverny rdalve...@gmail.com wrote: Does anyone take notes to summarize and make a consistent proposal (be it in some way or the other) of what should be done, as well as defining some sort of personas for users (unaware, new, occasional, frequent, expert) for evaluation? Romain Initially, ALL Mageia users will be 'new'! But there are different types of 'new'... When I have persuaded people to try Mandriva in the past, if they were experienced Linux users I always suggested they join both the 'newbie' and 'expert' mailing lists - even if they knew a lot about other distros, they might still have needed newbie-level help with features that were Mandriva-specific. -- Margot ~~ **Otford Ducks Computers** We teach, you learn... ...and, if you don't do your homework, we set the cat on you! ~~
Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
Questions about patents is related to which law applies to Mageia. No answers to which law then no clear policy can be applied. For me, since Mageia.org will lead the project (and will own Mageia trademarks) is located in France, since build system of Mageia will be in France then French law is the law we have to consider for Mageia. Debian runs under SPI organization located in the state of New York, USA, thus is ruled by US Laws. As we keep going round in circles, do we have anyone on-board with firm knowledge on international patent/licence laws in this domain (lawyer)? Should we just check with the FSF.org and they could give us an opinion on this? Maybe someone from the Mageia core group could check behind the scenes with the FSF? If anything, the laws of most countries adhere to the notion that being ignorant of the law is no excuse. If we are to put questionable software on different servers, we should maybe get crystal clear facts on the ramifications of doing so. How did the other distros go about making their decisions? I would check with the MAJOR distros, as this is what Mageia is all about. People all over will clamour for our distro. We are going to be a MAJOR and influential distro. So we should behave this way as well when we are setting up our mirror network. So, it sounds to me, that a core group individual, should, as an official representative of the Mageia project, approach these organisations and FSF to check and to get advice/opinons. Just to make sure. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 09:57:03PM +0200, Olivier Méjean wrote: Le jeudi 14 octobre 2010 20:55:01, Anssi Hannula a écrit : On Wednesday 13 October 2010 20:22:01 Michael Scherer wrote: Le mardi 12 octobre 2010 à 18:02 +0300, Anssi Hannula a écrit : Hi all! Do people have any thoughts on what kind of repository/media sectioning we should use on Mageia, and what should those sections contain? Note that I won't talk about backports / private repositories in this post, only about the basic sectioning and packages in those. Some points to consider (I've written my opinion in ones where I have one): == Do we want a separated core repository? No separated core: Fedora, Debian, Opensuse Separated core: Mandriva (main), Ubuntu (main), Arch (Core) How do we decide what would be in core ? AFAICS the only reasonable reason would be to separate 'supported' and 'unsupported' packages (whatever the definition we will choose for those). What is a supported package or what is an unsupported package ? For Mandriva it was clear, packages on which Mandriva provides support is in main, if not it's in contrib. No, since there was unsupported packages in main ( think stuff like ld.so1.2 ), and support could perfectly answer to questions depending on the contract, even on packages in contribs. There is also weird stuff like php-yp ( in contrib ), who was built from the same source than others php packages, who was thus in main and supported. No to mention that there was no process for deciding what goes in main, except that it was required by something else in main. There is also issues of old packages that were never moved out of main, despites not really supported. So no, it was not clear. == What about patents? Almost no software with patents: Fedora, Opensuse - Essentially no media codecs except theora/vorbis/ogg/vp8 etc. - Strange exception: libXft, Cairo and Qt4 are shipped with LCD filtering support enabled, even if it is disabled in freetype No software with enforced patents: Debian - not included (at least): x264 (encoder), lame mp3 (encoder) - included (at least): MPEG/x decoders, H.264 decoders, MP3 decoders, AAC decoders, AMR decoders, DTS decoders, AC3 decoders, WMV/WMA decoders, realvideo decoders, etc Some software covered by patents not included: Mandriva - see below for more information All software covered by patents allowed: Arch, Ubuntu IMO we should alter our policy to match either Fedora, Debian or Ubuntu.. The Mandriva policy makes no sense (for example, no AAC decoder but yes for H.264 decoder and MPEG-4 encoder?). I'm really not sure which way we should go, though. WDYT? I would go the Debian way. Ubuntu and Fedora are tied to companies, and Debian is not, so their policies are likely more adapted to our own model. Debian way seems to be more pragmatic that Ubuntu/Fedora on that matter. Indeed, Debian's situation seems closer to ours. However, a bit more investigation shows that the Debian policy no enforced patents is not really a written policy and what it means in practice is not 100% clear. A clarification request [1] has gone unanswered for 1.5 years, and missing packages x264,lame,xvidcore are sitting in the NEW queue [2] without having been accepted or rejected yet (it has only been 2.5 months, though). BTW, other related 'missing' packages in debian are mjpegtools, faac, transcode, but the first two are missing due to license reasons instead of patent issues: mjpegtools contains source files that are All Rights Reserved by MPEG/audio software simulation group (Ubuntu has the package in multiverse, Mandriva in main) faac contains a limitation that it is not allowed to be used in software not conforming to MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio standards, which makes it non-opensource (Ubuntu has the package in multiverse, Mandriva doesn't have it). transcode is missing, but there's been no recent activity on it that would explain why it isn't there (IIRC its supported codecs are a subset of ffmpeg ones, and ffmpeg is in Debian). [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=522373 (note that debian had some encoders disabled in ffmpeg at the time of the above report; those have since been enabled) [2] http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html Questions about patents is related to which law applies to Mageia. No answers to which law then no clear policy can be applied. For me, since Mageia.org will lead the project (and will own Mageia trademarks) is located in France, since build system of Mageia will be in France There is no guarantee that the BS will always be located in France. So I think you should not make assumptions like this. then French law is the law
Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
2010/10/14 Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com: So, it sounds to me, that a core group individual, should, as an official representative of the Mageia project, approach these organisations and FSF to check and to get advice/opinons. Just to make sure. Although I may not speak as an official Mageia rep I will present this issue on the next meeting of our FSFE (FSF Europe) group (I'm a FSFE Fellow). Maybe I can report back some helpful facts to this discussion. -- wobo
Re: [Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc
Le 2010-10-14 21:55, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit : 2010/10/14 Marc Parém...@marcpare.com: So, it sounds to me, that a core group individual, should, as an official representative of the Mageia project, approach these organisations and FSF to check and to get advice/opinons. Just to make sure. Although I may not speak as an official Mageia rep I will present this issue on the next meeting of our FSFE (FSF Europe) group (I'm a FSFE Fellow). Maybe I can report back some helpful facts to this discussion. Sound good to me. If there is a Megeia core group lurking on this thread, could we delegate this task to Wolfgang or if it more of a pressing matter, someone could speak to the FSF directly for an opinion? Marc
