[CentOS-devel] CentOS Interoperability SIG

On 01/28/2014 03:46 PM, Clint Savage wrote:
> One of the major values of the EL rebuild ecosystem is the ability to
> interoperate, or the ability to fork from the upstream. This provides
> purpose in many ways, choice being the most heralded. Since the CentOS
> community has teamed up with Red Hat to allow for Special Interest Groups
> to join them, it seems that there might be a bit less of an ecosystem
> available. The goal of the Interoperability SIG is to ensure that the
> ability to fork and rebuild still exist.

I consider one of the goals of the new arrangement to be creating more
community, or ecosystem. However the way we've structured things so far
will (hopefully) homogenize things a bit. I personally consider it a bit
of a systemic failure that users have to hunt through any number of 3rd
party repos to accomplish what they're after, often getting themselves
into trouble in the process.

> Our communities already exist outside of the CentOS community purview. They
> are currently the GoOSe Project[1] and the Ascendos Project[2]. This shared
> community will serve as a "reference implementation", yet will still be
> operated and marketed as a product and community separate from CentOS.
> Consider it something of CentOS "embassy" of sorts.

It's been a stated goal from the beginning of the discussion (on both
sides) that we have no 'collateral damage' to other groups who don't
want to participate. For other builders, the only thing that should
really change would be the location of the source they get.

> It would seem that this SIG could be construed as contrary to the goals of
> the CentOS project. However, we believe there is value added to the CentOS
> project. We are interested in improving the CentOS community in at least a
> few ways.

I don't see this as contrary, I see it as independent verification that
we're living up to our stated objectives. It does however bring up a
minor point of concern. For GoOSe, I only see a release for 6.0 on the
download page, and no download option for Ascendos. I'd like some
assurance that if your project steps up as a 'validation entity' that it
won't falter. If we do this and it lags or dies off, that may reflect
poorly on us (the project). It might be construed as either failing to
live up to our goals, or intentionally killing it.

> * Providing feedback and collaboration on common issues. Including, but not
> limited to, reporting bugs, providing patches, discussing packaging
> techniques, rebuilding variants, QA, ISO building, etc.

Within the CentOS context or GoOSe? How are you proposing that we
orchestrate the collaboration between the two?

> * Collaboration on documentation of the rebuild process, rebranding of
> documentation, providing new documentation, etc.

Same two questions.

> * Build or maintain tools to ease rebranding of upstream packages as to
> ease adoption by companies who build upon and release software based on
> CentOS.

This would be useful, but could prove to be a Sisyphean task, given that
new packages get added, packages get updated, etc.

> * Providing tools to help monitor statuses of builds, repositories,
> releases, etc. Whether they be part of the CentOS community or otherwise.
> 
> With these goals in mind, we'd like to formally request an Interoperability
> Special Interest Group within the CentOS community. Please let us know how
> to further proceed.



I like the idea, and the fact that it provides independent validation,
but I'm not sure this fits with the idea of a SIG. The reason I say this
is because for code in the sig/variant model, it needs to live on
git.centos.org so that it could be built/signed by the project,  which
seems counter to the whole 3rd party validation this would provide.

Because what you're proposing would live outside the structure and exist
as an outside entity, does it make sense to be a SIG, or simply to have
an understanding between groups?



> Cheers,
> 
> Clint Savage
> 
> Lead Developer, GoOSe project
> 
> 1 - http://gooseproject.org (#gooseproject on irc.freenode.net)
> 
> 2 - http://ascendos.org (#ascendos on irc.freenode.net)
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS-devel mailing list
> CentOS-devel at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel
> 

-- 
Jim Perrin
The CentOS Project | http://www.centos.org
twitter: @BitIntegrity | GPG Key: FA09AD77