2016-01-27

Whither EPEL (Talk at FOSDEM 2016)

If you are going to FOSDEM 2016 and use CentOS, Scientific Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or even Oracle Enterprise Linux.. you should be interested in a round-table talk we are having on Sunday to talk about the Fedora Project's Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) . EPEL is a repository which has a curated set of Fedora packages rebuilt for EL-5, EL-6, and EL-7. 

Things We Will Talk About:
  1. Who are our consumers? A consumer is someone who uses EPEL but doesn't have the time, knowledge, etc to help build, test, or curate packages. [This is a place for audience members to bring things they do (or don't do) with EPEL.]
  2. Who are our contributors? A contributor is someone who builds, tests, writes documnts, etc for the EPEL SIG. [This is a place for people who build and test packages in EPEL can speak up.]
  3. What are the "promises" that we as a SIG believe that we are making to our contributors and consumers? What are the "promises" that contributors and consumers think we are giving?
  4. Do our rules and guidelines still make sense? [When the project was set up, there were many debates about what people wanted and the projects rules were built out of a general consensus of what people would put up with.]
  5. What about other ways to get these packages? Atomic, docker, software collections, COPRs, etc. Are these meeting peoples needs better and what can we learn to meet those inside of EPEL or branch out to meet them in other ways.
In general tradition, we will have a reenactment of West Side Stories meetings of the Sharks and the Jets while we discuss repotags. [I kid, I kid.. it will be more of Montague's and Capulet's.

Brussels CentOS Dojo

This Friday (2016-01-29) there will be a great CentOS dojo in Brussels Belgium. I am going mostly to help out run the cameras and announce different talks. I will also be wanting to listen to people use who use EPEL about what they use it for and what they are wanting to see in growth. This will help me prepare for the talk on Sunday at FOSDEM which I will be moderating.

If you have questions please try and find me. I will probably be the one fellow in a tie and sports coat. [And because I am from the desert.. no rain coat which sounds like a minus currently in Belgium].

This is my first time in Belgium and I will be trying to see a little of Brussels on Saturday and a bit of Ghent on Monday. If I had a day or two more I would have been going to visit Veere in the Netherlands so that I could try and see some of the places written by favorite author Hendrik Willem van Loon. I will just have to do this next time I am visiting western Europe. 

[I would like to write a bit longer, but I am stuck in the Atlanta airport blaring some inane news channel talking about the 'latest' election non-crisis. ]