On Fri, Dec 16, 2005, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> [...]
> > No, I see no real reason why your Kolab users _HAVE_ to register as
> > OpenPKG users, although it would great for us. But you are using just
> > a subset of OpenPKG for Kolab and for your users OpenPKG is just a
> > sub-technology. Your users feel they are Kolab users and not OpenPKG
> > users, so they will obviously refuse to register with OpenPKG, of
> > course. That's ok.
>
> Yes, I think you have stated one of the main problems that
> as a sub-system, OpenPKG is not of enough importance to our users.
> We are advertising this, though
> and after a while some people start to like it.
> It is different so people emotionally are sceptical a lot in the beginning.
> Some people will never like it, and hope to get it integrate in
> GNU/Linux distributions. This integration is a good development,
> of course, but OpenPKG has shown its advantages for me already.
Well, integrating Kolab directly into Linux distributions is cool for...
well, just the Linux distributions ;-). For all other platforms it would
be a major drawback, of course. I know some of those OpenPKG related
discussions within the Kolab community and I can fully understand that
from the raw point of view of the Linux-based people, OpenPKG is just
a piece of a nasty overhead. But Kolab has choosen OpenPKG because
it allows Kolab to run out-of-the-box on a large set of major Unix
platforms and this has some price. Some of the Kolab are just two
Linux-only focused and this way don't see the point immediately.
> > but in general we usually support those
> > distributions for which inside the OpenPKG Foundation we have both a
> > valid license, a hardware (physical or virtual) and at least someone
> > who maintains this setup. So, for instance RHEL3 we kicked out as our
> > license expired, nobody donated a renewal and the underlying machine was
> > already more reasonably used with RHEL4.
>
> Good to know: So if we get distributions to get you a license, you
> or somebody else finds a machine, and we find somebody to keep the
> installation going, OpenPKG would support it. I could at least ask
> RedHat and we could look for contacts within Novell and Mandriva.
Yes, we also plan to allow the OpenPKG Foundation build-farm to be
finally logically extended with remote machines (hosted somewhere else)
and then it is mainly a matter of having a machine and a license.
Currently our build farm hosting is fully sponsored and this way limited
and hence we also just investigate into licenses for the build farm we
really need.
> > Wait, wait. Kolab uses a *sub-set* of just about 50 OpenPKG packages.
> > First, you don't need a full-size OpenPKG mirror for this. Making your
> > sub-set of OpenPKG packages available to everyone on your server in the
> > form of a your "Kolab distribution" is both fair, license compliant and
> > fully ok from my point of view. Second, as I said, your Kolab users
> > don't _have_ to register with OpenPKG. We would like that you tell them
> > that in order to support OpenPKG they _should_ register, but there is no
> > requirement.
>
> Okay, if we can work with mirroring without mandatory registration
> and you (and whole OpenPKG) considers this fair, it takes a burden off me!
Yes, we're fine with it as long as you do not establish a full OpenPKG
mirror, i.e. ALL files of a OpenPKG RELEASE. Instead please keep your
mirror as small as possible and limited to the sub-set of packages you
are using for Kolab.
> As for security updates: We need to route them more through Kolab then,
> as we were encouraging people to directly get the updates from OpenPKG
> once they are available. But this is fine.
Well, your users have the choice: if they register with OpenPKG and
your "foo" package is 1:1 the official OpenPKG "foo" package, they can
download it directly from us, of course. But usually your are modifying
the packages to some extend AFAIK, hence because of this fact it already
makes sense that you provide the updates via Kolab (after fetching them
from us and optionally re-modifying, etc), too.
Ralf S. Engelschall
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.engelschall.com
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