* Wolfgang Rosenauer <wolfgang@rosenauer.org> [2011-03-01 20:01]:
I think I'm not the only one who is confused about today's status of Contrib. This project probably needs some respecification because policies around the openSUSE project changed since Contrib was started.
The Factory distribution is pretty open nowadays and I hear a lot of people saying that Contrib is not needed anymore and everything useful should enter Factory but I'm not sure if that makes sense or can work out at all.
IMHO Contrib is obsolete and should just go away. As you noted it does not have a clearly defined purpose and there are a number of other reasons why I think it is a bad idea.
There are different types of packages in Contrib currently, including - packages dropped from Factory because security maintenance is very hard (e.g. some php apps)
If packages constitute a security risk or are hardly maintainable they should be clearly identified as such so people are aware of what they are getting into, e.g. by putting these packages in a separate repo. Everything else is just a disservice to our users.
- packages dropped from Factory because they are outdated immediately and nobody likes to use them for two years from $DIST
I'd say such packages fit the way Packman operates and so be maintained there, in fact as somebody noticed on the Packman list there is already duplication between some Contrib and Packman packages.
- packages dropped from Factory just because they haven't been touched upstream for years (but are still doing their job well) (e.g. abook)
If they work and have a package maintainer looking after it I see no reason why they should not be in Factory. Apart from the three categories you mentioned there is a fourth category, namely many packages of both obscure and fairly mainstream software which seems to be in Contrib for no good reason at all. And what is really bad about this is that some of these packages are of awful quality and badly maintained, something that could have been prevented by proper review and the high quality standards applied to Factory. This alone is for me the decisive argument why Contrib should just die.
I would like to hear from Factory maintainers what their thoughts are about the above types of packages. Probably nothing changed here and therefore the statement "everything should enter Factory" is not realistic?
I believe it is realistic, the few packages that fit your first and third category could easily be moved to a separate repo or Packman respectively while the rest should just be migrated to Factory. It would raise the quality of the distribution and be a benefit to users. -- Guido Berhoerster -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org