the danger of becoming a cargo cult

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 26.02.2007 21:18, Christopher Blizzard wrote:
> Something clicked in my head today when I was talking with Jonathan
> Blandford on the phone today.  He described to me the idea of the Cargo
> Cult, something I had never heard of:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
> 
> In fact, there's even an entry for use in computer science:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_software_engineering
> 
 > [...]
> 
> So far we've been good, I think.  We haven't lost our soul, or by mixing
> metaphors, our religious practices.  But there's still a lot of
> opportunity in the future to make a mistake like this.  So we need to
> keep vigilant and keep our sense of purpose.
> 
> That is all.  Carry on.

Agreed -- but nevertheless *I* still have the impression that Red Hat 
and Fedora developers work to much with upstream on improving the Linux 
software stack (which is a good thing in general, but: ) and don't care 
enough about our distribution specific stuff.

Ubuntu is much more active in that area and thus has some interesting 
stuff that we are already still working on (codec buddy) or have on our 
Roadmap (say: new initsystem). That makes them much more attractive 
these days afaics, as they also get the improvements Red Hat has worked 
out automatically, too (often before we ship them).

To say it in another way: In the past it was Red Hat Linux that lead the 
way (upstream and in the distribution) and others had to catch up under 
the risk to run into a "Cargo Cult". These days it seems to be Ubuntu.

Just my 2 cent.

CU
thl