long term support release

[Les Mikesell]

Jesse Keating wrote:

>> Yes, it would be a big win for the fedora 'brand' perception to make
>> it actually usable instead of just a rolling alpha/beta for RHEL.  If
>> you are going to argue that such a perception shouldn't exist, just
>> say so instead of claiming that it's too hard or that failed earlier
>> attempts prove it can't be done.
> 
> I think there would be some value to having CentOS associated with the
> Fedora brand...

I believe the CentOS team has made some effort to isolate/generalize the 
'rebranding' work they have to do.  It might be easy to replace with 
fedora's even if they aren't interested in converging.

>> Now for a *really* warm/fuzzy about the free
>> software community, you could just converge this version's update
>> repo with the corresponding EPEL/centos/centosplus repo contents and
>> make them end up the same without a re-install or any duplication of
>> infrastructure at all. 
> 
> Now you're talking about something different, a migration plan for
> Fedora -> EL based on said release. 

It's not necessarily different, depending on what you imagined a fedora 
with LTS would be like.  Having a centosplus-like kernel would be a key 
factor so as not to break on hardware or filesystems that RHEL doesn't 
support.

> That I could see some great value
> in, and it shouldn't be too difficult to start working down this path,
> and getting into the heads of the EL creators that this is something
> we'd like to see made possible, rather than difficult, by the EL
> development.
> 
> Sounds like a SIG to me...

Going this direction will probably emphasize the already-existing need 
for an additional/optional variation of an EPEL-like repo that has newer 
replacement apps for RHEL/Centos.   These are separate but equal needs. 
  That is, some situations will require/prefer the frozen versions and 
feature set of the enterprise distro, but many, perhaps most, would 
really like to have a current firefox and openoffice without replacing 
their kernel and device drivers on working systems.  The scheme that 
would make sense to me would be to make the update switch to 'stable 
mode' at end of life by default, retaining the app versions supported in 
the enterprise disto since this takes essentially no extra effort, and 
concentrate new volunteer effort on building current 'fedora-version' 
apps that could optionally be installed over the enterprise base.  If 
the latter effort fails, you've still got a solid, working version.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com