[CentOS] Re: Re: Re: are RPMForge and EPEL compatible?

Sun Dec 9 17:04:20 UTC 2007
Dag Wieers <dag at centos.org>

On Sat, 8 Dec 2007, Johnny Hughes wrote:

> Les Mikesell wrote:
>
> > There is a distribution-related issue here whether you care to
> > acknowledge it or not - and the solution isn't going to be to wait until
> > the whole world decides on only one version of everything.  Incompatible
> > repositories should be allowed/encouraged to exist and we need a way to
> > deal with them reasonably.
>
> THIS IS NOT A CENTOS ISSUE ... IT NEVER WILL BE A CENTOS ISSUE
>
> When people use RHEL, they are not even allowed to use 3rd party repos
> without making their service contract void if it causes any problems at all.

Johnny, that is incorrect. Red Hat customers don't void their service
contract for using 3rd party repositories or 3rd party packages.

A lot of Red Hat consultants have been using RPMforge packages at customer
sites to fix problems or offer solutions and they were not voiding their
service contract.

What kind of operating system would not allow alien software anyway ?

And even when you are loading 3rd party kernel modules, Red Hat will still
have to support you for issues that are unrelated to this particular
kernel module. Otherwise one could not use ClearCase, GPFS, some of your
hardware without loosing support from Red Hat.

I understand CentOS's position to simplify user-related issues, but the
use of 3rd party software on top of CentOS is as much a CentOS user
problem as it is a 3rd party software problem in most cases. Users should
be able to discuss problems, work-arounds and solutions on a CentOS
mailinglist (even when it is not something that can be fixed within CentOS
itself).

-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at centos.org,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
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