Update strategy

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 15.05.2007 23:13, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On 5/15/07, Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info> wrote:
> [...]
> Ok my experience supporting RHEL at two government laboratories and
> talking with people at large organizations. There are multiple
> audiences for add-on repos that follow the classic markets
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm): innovators, early
> adopters, early majority, late majority,  and laggards.
> 
> 
> The innovators were the people who had to have RHEL-2.1 due to a
> programatic reason (the core app would only work on 2.1) but needed
> also the latest php modules on it. We could not support this directly,
> but helped out with a repository where they could put in alternative
> packages to replace items til they got what they wanted. Or they
> wanted RHEL-5 with Thunderbird-2.x. Or they are putting a 2.4.30+
> kernel on 2.1 etc. They normally use Fedora/etc but cant in some
> situations and innovate to make it work.

Well, as you say, those use normally Fedora or Fedora-like distribution.
No need for EPEL to target those.

> The early adopters wanted RHEL-5 with additional items and some level
> of replacement. They wanted the newest version of say moin, clustering
> application etc as they are usually wanting the best new experience
> for their 'customers'... but want more stability in the backend. Most
> are served by a Fedora or the Red Hat Global Desktop.. but may need a
> core set of items (glibc/kernel) stable for some programmatic reason

I'd say those people that only want some new apps and a stable backend
are best served with a local repo for the apps they need in up2date
version or other specific small repos. They can use the Fedora packages
as a base for it; EPEL probably can't serve those people with todays
tools (yum and co), as each and everyone defines stable backend differently.

> The early majority wants stability with updates occuring at known
> times. They want technology refreshes, but want a seal of approval of
> some sort that the organization is steady, has standards, or has a
> company that will stand behind it. They also want the same thing as
> close to possible on as many of their systems (as they will have
> RHEL-3,4, and 5 deployed as servers that they want to add stuff to).

Those are IMHO round about one of the targets for EPEL -- even if there
is no company behind EPEL, they get stuff missing in RHEL easily with EPEL.

> The late majority want stability over anything. They are the ones who
> are starting to cycle out RHEL-1 and RHEL-2.1 systems to 4 systems
> when they get new hardware. They want to have the same version of moin
> supported for 7 years (just in case they need to keep a server that
> long up).

They can use EPEL5 when RHEL6 or RHEL7 are out, as EPEL5 shouldn't move
much anymore and be quite stable.

> The laggards are moving from RHL-6.2 to maybe RHL-3.9 or RHL-4.5 in
> the next couple of years. If they want external stuff, they will have
> Oracle/IBM/etc do it for them.

:-)

> Which of the customer bases does EPEL want to look at?

Hope that clarifies it.

CU
thl