[$] Relocating Fedora's RPM database

The deadlines
for various kinds of Fedora 36 change proposals have mostly passed at
this point, which led to something of a flurry of postings to the
distribution's devel mailing list over the last month. One of those, for a seemingly fairly
innocuous relocation of the RPM database from /var to
/usr, came in right at the buzzer for system-wide changes on
December 29. There were, of course, other things going on around that
time, holidays, vacations, and so forth, so the discussion was relatively
muted until recently. Proponents have a number of reasons why they would like
to see the move, but there is resistance, as well, that is due, at least in part, to the
longstanding 'tradition' of the location for the database.