[Mageia-dev] Bye Bye Mageia

Mon Nov 26 19:48:03 CET 2012

On 26 November 2012 18:25, Joseph Wang <joequant at gmail.com> wrote:
+> One reason that I kept rather quiet is that e-mail conversations on
+> mailing lists
+> have a tendency to become flame wars, and I really want to avoid that.  It's
+> very easy in public conversations to come across as a jerk, and as a newbie
+> I really wanted to avoid that.  I've tried whenever finding myself in unfamiliar
+> social situations to just keep my mouth shut, and listen to what's going on
+> for a while before saying anything.
+>
+> The thing about communications is that it really doesn't scale.  One
+> thing that's
+> nice about the open source model is that you can go into your garage, work on
+> something, and you don't need anyone's permission or to communicate or
+> coordinate
+> with anyone.  Coordination is a real pain, and you really want to
+> structure things so
+> that you can minimize coordination. Communication is also a problem.  You say
+> one thing, someone replies, pretty soon you have a flame war, and you
+> aren't doing
+> and "real work."
+>
+> The thing that I'm working on in my garage is a linux workstation that
+> is set up for
+> hard-core astrophysics theory.  Packaging is a missing piece of
+> scientific software
+> since there are hundreds of scientific software packages that are not packaged.
+>
+> Rather than engage in vaporware, I just need some stable distribution
+> that is very
+> open to adding new items into some "bleeding edge" repository.
+>
+> I ended up with Mageia partly for historical reasons, but partly out
+> of a sense that
+> because it was a community distribution, it would have some easy mechanism
+> for accepting "bleeding edge" packages.  Once I got through initial
+> packaging learning,
+> I was planning to add things like a stellar evolution code and hard
+> core CFD code.  I'd
+> like to add some professional astronomical telescope tracking software
+> (like IRAF or
+> DS9), and to hard core astrophysics research.
+>
+> My assumption was that as a community driven project, there would be
+> some mechanism
+> for adding new packages to the system, and that I wouldn't have to
+> worry about getting
+> permission, I would just do it.  Fedora already has a mechanism for
+> doing that, but sense
+> I was already using Mageia, I had thought that Mageia would be at
+> least as open as
+> Fedora, and that it would be easy to add large numbers of new packages.
+>
+> Now if I'm mistaken about this, and this is not the goal of the Mageia
+> maintainers, then
+> I just need to find some other platform to work on.
+>
+> Again, it makes perfect sense to me not to put cinnamon into Mageia 3
+> core.  It's
+> unstable and buggy and it's going to be a pain in the rear end to get
+> it to work smoothly.  The
+> problem is that if it's not possible to put Cinnamon *somewhere* in
+> the Mageia tree
+> so that "bleeding edgers" can work on it, then it's going to be
+> impossible to use Mageia
+> as a distribution mechanism for even more bleeding edge experimental
+> software, and if
+> that's the intent, then I've just got to find another distribution to work on.
+>
+> I'm not trying to be a jerk or to blackmail anyone.  It's just that if
+> there is no mechanism
+> for Mageia users to share bleeding edge software with each other, then
+> it's not going to
+> work for what I want to do with it.  urpmi and cauldron is a great
+> mechanism for two nuclear
+> physicists to share say the latest nuclear equation of states
+> libraries, and as something
+> that advertises itself as a community distribution, I was hoping that
+> Mageia could be the
+> center of that.  One problem that we have here is that everyone wants
+> to copy Apple OSX
+> and Android.  The Ipad and MacOS is a slick piece of software.   The
+> trouble is that it
+> only lets you do what Apple wants you to do, because if you do
+> something really different
+> you might break the box.  This is really, really bad for real hard
+> core, scientific research
+> since what you are trying to do is to push the machine to the point
+> where you are breaking
+> the box, and it's hard to communicate in advance what you are trying
+> to do, since you don't
+> know.
+>
+> If that's not what people want to do with Mageia, then I just have to
+> accept that and move
+> elsewhere.......
+
+The thing about communication and coordination is that unless it is
+there, and people are aware of what others are doing, then huge
+amounts of work will get repeated. Now I am not saying that you need
+to keep in communication over every single thing that is going on, but
+it is good to have a background knowledge and just to check in. The
+better informed we are about what you are doing, then the more that
+others can help you.
+As you say, sometimes it is hard to know what you are going to do, but
+it is still important to be aware of the projects goals, now it is
+unfortunate that you have done work on cinnamon, however, as in the
+other thread, it seems that there is a possibility that it can be put
+into updates/testing. And as you said, it is not ready from the prime
+time, so that offers a very good solution.
+Now I feel that there would be a far greater reward to start on the
+other packages, as there is far less in there way, and infact we
+welcome scientific packages, there was a drive a few months back to
+get as many included in the distro as possible, there is a lot of GIS
+stuff, and I am sure that the astrophysics software you have in mind
+will have a place.
+Bear in mind that we have switched to a new rpm group policy, so
+please make sure that the groups that you put the software in fall
+into them, similarly for the libs policy. This is not trying to
+conform or limit your work, but trying to guide things so that they
+fit in with the rest of the distribution, it is really important that
+we offer as uniform method on these things to aid the user in
+installing the software.
+
+Schultz
+