[Fwd: Wikipidia - Goodbye Red Hat and Fedora]

[Horst H. von Brand]

Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-10-12 at 16:48 -0300, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> > Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2008-10-10 at 16:53 -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 4:35 PM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, 2008-10-10 at 12:38 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > > > >> Dmitry Butskoy wrote:
> > > > >> > Itamar - IspBrasil wrote:
> > > > [snip]
> > > > >> The fact that they switched to CentOS is *good* for Fedora.
> > > > > I can not disagree more - To me, it's yet another evidence of Fedora
> > > > > being on the loose.
> > > > 
> > > > You're going to have to expound on that. I do not see Centos in any
> > > > way as in competition with Fedora.
> > 
> > > EPEL drains away resources from Fedora.
> > 
> > Proof?

> Urgh, isn't that obvious?

No, it isn't.

Note: In my experience, getting hardware and such is cheap/easy, getting
people willing (and capable, and dependable) of doing the job is hard.

> E.g.:
> - Build server resources, mirror resources.

I don't see a great drain in build servers, and mirrors are voluntary.

> - People are using/testing EPEL instead of Fedora.

Either I run RHEL/CentOS + EPEL or Fedora. No loss at all, more of a win
(EPEL users /also/ test Fedora stuff).

> - Fedora infrastructure, e.g. EPEL enlarges the packagedb by almost
> factor 2.

Not that important, IMHO.

> - EPEL would force Fedora contributors to test on both RHEL and Fedora.

You sure? In any case, extra burden on contributors is a real drain... but
then again, EPEL and Fedora contributors aren't the same bunch, so...

> > > >  Centos is something everyone should be proud of.

> > > Well, to me CentOS is as important as any other arbitrary Linux distro.
> > > I am glad they are around, but not more and not less.

> > It is around becase RHEL is popular, and open source.

> And non-free

It /is/ free... you pay for support only.

>              - If it was free, the CentOS folks could start directly
> contribute to Fedora

No...

>                      or RHEL.

They do (funnelling bug reports and patches upstream to RH).

>                               Right now, it's them wasting time to
> workaround on RHEL being non-free.

As I told earlier, RH is going out of their way to make CentOS /easy/, not
hard. 

> > > > >> CentOS's goals are better oriented to the needs of someone 
> > > > >> that wants to deploy a system and run it for years. Fedora is
> > > > >> good for people who want to get the latest technologies from
> > > > >> upstream as soon as they're stable enough to integrate into a
> > > > >> running system.

> > > > > Right. But why can't Fedora do better?

Define "better"... "Good Fedora" is bleeding edge, not fully stabilized
software, experimental stuff that may pan out (or it might not, being
replaced by something else), changing APIs (literally and sysadmin-wise),
fast turnaround. "Good RHEL" is rock stable, unchanging (even in details)
for years. What is good for one is terrible for the other.

> > > > >                                        I feel Fedora could do better.

> > > > Sure. With more devs, servers, time, etc.

> > > ... less bureaucracy, less committees/less chiefs/more Indians,
> > > different people, different strategies.

> > Show how!

> Ease reviews, bodhi, packagedb, koji, bugzilla, track, re-consider FTBS,
> work-flow, trademark policy. 

Definite proposals that can be discussed?

What does "trademark policy" have to do with anything, BTW?

> E.g. right now, the tools being in use are a heterogenious mixture of
> separate tools,

Unix...

>                 are often broken,

Fixing hands are presumably wellcome...

>                                   are far from easy to use

Concrete proposals on what to change how?

>                                                            and aim at
> implementing a highly bureaucratic process/work-flow.

Again, proposals, please?

> >  Telling everybody here how awful things are going isn't helping
> > an iota. Everything has its limits, and for every desirable quality (newest
> > shiny toys, support for the newest fad in hardware in software) there is a
> > cost (can't be supported in the long range, fast turnaround, set procedures
> > to handle a huge stream of new stuff)
> > 
> > > >  But baring a sudden increase
> > > > in those, I would much prefer to see Fedora focus on dev and testing,
> > > > let other distros pretty things up.
> > 
> > > ACK. Unfortunately, Fedora is drifting away from this group towards
> > > single-user desktops (e.g. OLPC).
> > 
> > Then work towards drifting the opposite direction...

> One reason why I am agitating ...

"Agitating" doesn't help much.

> > Fedora (or any other large group of people) will move where the majority
> > wants to go... 

> Well, deployment of an OS to servers, will always be a "minority use
> case" and will always collide somewhere with mere desktop oriented
> developments.

So?

[...]

> > > > Why would they, after often suggesting that Fedora _not_ be used on
> > > > production servers, use Fedora on their production servers?

> > > Depends on how they mean it:
> > > - if they are referring to "long term maintained/everlasting support"
> > > servers, they are right.

> > "Servers" are "long-time maintained" by definition...

> To me, "server" is a "use-case of an OS" and is not at all connected to
> running the same OS for many years. 

That is "testing an OS with server workload", something different entirely.

> Yes, no doubt, running the same OS on a larger number of machines for a
> longer time helps maintenance, but I do not see how this is connected to
> a particular machine serving as "clients" or "servers".
> 
> Yes, no doubt, there are use-cases where "long-term API" stability is
> important, but this applies to client use-cases as well as to server
> use-cases.

Those /are/ the "server" use cases you want so badly! And that is at
fundamental odds with Fedora's goals, so it won't happen.

> ...

> Finally, yes, no doubt, Fedora is not the "shoe that fits all sizes" nor
> are CentOS or RHEL, but ... this doesn't mean that Fedora may not be
> applicable to server scenarios.
> 
> > > - if they mean it as "Fedora is technically too unstable",
> > 
> > Because there is no "long term maintenance"...

> Again, I don't see how "lack of stability" and "no long term
> maintenance" are linked together at all, nor how server and client
> use-cases matter.

Again: "stability" is /not/ "when run on 10 thousand machines only one
crashes a day", it is "runs for thousands of days before crashing", and
/that/ is as un-Fedora as it gets.

> What matters in use-cases of short lived-distros such as Fedora is:
> Upgrades "must simply work" and (admin-) personnel must be able to
> handle them in a particular scenario.

Sure. Test upgrading for a few months until everything is A-OK, and here
comes the next release, before we finished testing the last one. Nice idea.

> > >                                                            then this
> > > people should start working on improving the situation

> > Which one?

> Lack of stability,

Design objective.

>                    lack of usability,

Do the work of usability testing, feed it back. Many thanks will flow back.

>                                       deficiencies of the
> infrastructure,

Ditto.

>                 bureaucracy,

Ditto.

>                              short-livedness

Design objective, won't change.

>                                              ... tools

Huh?

> The lack of people to me is not a cause, it's a consequence of mistakes
> in Fedora's history.

Is there /really/ a lack of people? Are any statistics of contributors (and
contributions) at hand?

> >  Fedora is about /not/ "long term" but "bleeding edge"...

> "Leading edge" doesn't necessarily have to be linked to "bleeding" nor
> "unstable". It's sad, the latter is true wrt. Fedora.

It is true (sad or not) for /all/ "leading edge" endeavors, the more
"leading" the more "bleeding". Live with it, as you can't do without.

> > >                                                        or (better) quit
> > > Fedora.

> > Do so, then.

> I haven't given in, yet. 

Great!

> The cause for my current dissatisfaction is Fedora's infrastructure and
> Fedora's leadership. They have driven Fedora/have allowed Fedora to move
> into what I consider to be an unhealthy direction.

Just whining that everything is wrong and in bad shape doesn't help, does
it. Come back with concrete proposals of what to fix how, and volunteer
doing the work. Run for office in Fedora on your proposals.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: +56 32 2654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria             +56 32 2654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile 2340000       Fax:  +56 32 2797513