Re: [slightly OT] rpm Vs deb [Was: Re: Moblin is dead, Fedora on netbooks?]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 9:37 AM, Michael Cronenworth <mike@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
inode0 wrote:
If after developing for your favorite open source project for years
the company "sponsoring" that project decided tomorrow that it was
merging with another project and you would need to switch to a
different packaging system I suspect your reaction would be different.

Grown men, some of which have been Debian users/developers since its
inception, are bickering over this non-issue. It's a very fun thread to
follow on how not to handle a serious situation.

I think it is largely misdirected angst resulting from the poor
community management practices that result in sudden changes like this
dropping out of a corporate news release one morning.

While it is true that there is a fair number of silly arguments about
the technical merits of the change, the real problem is that there was
no transparency in the decision process leading to the change. There
was no explanation that I have seen even stating clearly why the
change is being made. I'm guessing it is related to LSB issues and the
decision to have The Linux Foundation direct the project.

It's been explained. The Moblin part of the merger is being used over
the Maemo part. Simple as that.

Did they flip a coin? That is the way it worked out, that isn't a reason.

Rather than adopting Fedora's package management system what Nokia has
needed from the very beginning of maemo was to adopt Fedora's
community model.

Everyone's tied up with RPM vs. Deb that they can't think straight. It's
a big e-peen war that's not going to stop any time soon. The community
will be at a loss due to the bike-shedding that will continue for months.

Sad but true and the result of Nokia not understanding how to work
with an open source community.

Even if this merger somehow turns out well for its target audience I
think it is a very sad display of the mismanagement of an open source
project.

MeeGo is a *brand-new* project run by two businesses that want to get
started and produce a device with MeeGo in a few months. Should they
have started at ground zero and asked "What glibc do you want? What
shell do you want? What package system do you want?" That would have
pushed them past 2010 to getting a 1.0 version out with the level of
bickering already present.

It if were brand new they could do whatever they pleased to create it.
But it isn't brand new. And it isn't just two businesses who can tell
their paid staff what to work on tomorrow. Does Fedora bicker over
which shell it wants? Does Red Hat require the shell to be bash? Who
makes that decision? This is getting as silly as the arguments over
rpm now.

I think if we compare how Fedora's "corporate sponsor" has gone about
helping to create, foster, and empower its community and compare that
with the Nokia/maemo relationship there are valuable things to be
learned.

John
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