Re: Please don't email me and cc the list

["Michael W. Ryan" <mryan@netaxs.com>]

On Mon, 18 Jan 1999, Rebecca Ore wrote:

> The rpm in the current contributed releases on the mirror is for qmail,
> Nothing compiled of the *latest* procmail suited to sendmail -- so I used
> a tarball and compiled.
> 
> Typical RedHat fup-up.  Reminds me of the time they were releasing Gimp
> without the gtk and without letting folks know about the dependencies..

Sorry to nitpick, but I don't recall Red Hat every making any kind of
guarantees about the contents of their contrib tree.  Contribs are just
that:  contributions by others, and not in any way part of a "release".
The RPM in the contrib section for procmail being qmail centric isn't Red
Hat's fault, but the contributor.  Unless Red Hat Software has changed
their policy on the contrib tree (it's been a while since I've last
visited there -- I've been busy with other things).

> (See alt.sysadmin.recovery for further dissection of RedHat by two
> experienced Gnome beta testers).
> 
> It's the only upgrade that's available in the contributed section.
> RedHat is bad about some of the contributed tarballs.  I was hoping
> there was a halfway rational explanation but obviously it's just one of
> those RedHat things.  A compiled procmail from the latest tarball works
> just fine.

As I said above, if it's a contrib, it's one of those contirbutor things.
I always approach contrib RPMs with caution.  I've encountered contrib
RPMs that were built with static install roots that made gross,
non-standard assumptions about the structure of my filesystem.

And before anyone chimes in with the "well they should monitor...", let me
point out that Red Hat Software is a business attempting to make a profit,
not a volunteer effort.  These two things are governed by very different
economic constraints (i.e. paying someone to monitor the contribs would
not be financially worth it, which, like it or not, is the bottom line).
Yes, I'd like some quality control on the contribs on the Red Hat site,
but I honestly don't see how it would be viable for them.

Michael W. Ryan               | OTAKON Webmaster
mryan@netaxs.com              | Convention of Otaku Generation
http://www.netaxs.com/~mryan/ | http://www.otakon.com/

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