fedora-legacy-list Digest, Vol 3, Issue 24

[Howard Owen]

I'm using "unstable" as in the dictionary definition  "not firm or fixed
in one place : apt to move." (Although perhaps that should be "yum to
move?") There's overlap between that definition and saying that a slow
rate of change is not one of you goals. There's a pejorative sense of
the word meaning "unreliable," which I think is the impression that was
given by Red Hat marketing when Fedora was announced. As far as I can
tell, that wasn't true at all of FC1. My experience was that release was
that it was rock solid stable, in the sense of "reliable."

I was writing here from ignorance of the goals of the FL project to only
support two Fedora Core releases at a time. I was going by the
originally stated objectives of FC to release three times a year, and
doing the math. (My multiplication has been suspect today.)

 I still do think that if you decide to put FC into production, you have
to be prepared to upgrade more frequently than what you may have been
used to. That was my meaning in quoting point 7 of the FC objectives,
not to cast more "unstable" aspersions. 

Finally, I should have been clearer that the "businesses I have
knowledge of .." are big Linux fans. And looking at Unix server sales
figures for the last couple of years, it sure looks like  many
businesses I *don't* have knowledge of are too. Large enterprises that
want Linux aren't installing FC, and the ones I have first-hand
knowledge of are going with RHEL or SLES because of two things. One is
the stability offered by those distributions, and the other is support.
(I don't count ISV support in my list because that's really another
manifestation of OS stability in the form of frozen APIs.) Smaller
businesses that can't afford the fee for the enterprise distributions
may well consider Fedora Core. But they need to be prepared to face a
lack of SLAs now, and pressure to upgrade sooner than they would if they
paid up-front.

Now that I'm over the misconception about the number of FC releases that
have to be supported by FL at any given time, I'm a lot more comfortable
with the position of the project in that regard. Please forgive my
ignorance of matters that have clearly been hashed out before. I *will*
learn, eventually. 8)


On Thu, 2004-05-20 at 20:27, Eric Rostetter wrote:
> Quoting Howard Owen <hbo at egbok.com>:
> 
> > "3. Do as much of the development work as possible directly in the
> > upstream packages. This includes updates; our default policy will be to
> > upgrade to new versions for security as well as for bugfix and new
> > feature update releases of packages."
> 
> That is different than "unstable".
> 
> > This is less conservative than a distribution designed to run for years
> > performing a particular workload. The word "unstable" isn't mentioned in
> > the objectives
> 
> Of course not.  Who would intentionally create an unstable OS?
> 
> > but point one of the "non-objectives" is:
> >
> > "1. Slow rate of change."
> 
> It follows the open source dogma of "release often" is all.  That doesn't
> mean it can't be stable (if done properly).
> 
> > OTOH, point seven of the objectives is:
> >
> > "7. Promote rapid adoption of new releases by maintaining easy
> > upgradeability, with minimal disturbances to configuration changes."
> 
> That has nothing to do with stability of the OS.
> 
> > I can attest that the FC1-FC2 upgrade worked extremely well for me.
> 
> That has nothing to do with the stability of an install, only of the
> upgrade process.
> 
> > Businesses I have knowledge of have shied away from Fedora Core because of
> > the rapid rate of change issue.
> 
> Yes, and many large businesses I know have shied away from Linux and gone with
> a "real unix" also.  But what's the point?
> 
> > In my opinion, folks who have taken the
> > plunge with FC1 on production machines really need to seriously consider
> > upgrading to FC2.
> 
> Yes, they do, but should they be forced to do it on the FC schedule, rather
> than depend on FL giving them a bit more flexibility in when to upgrade?
> 
> FL doesn't want to extend FC 1 forever, just to about 1.5 years.  They
> will need to upgrade, FL just gives them more time to do so, so that they
> don't have to do it every 6 months (but say, instead, every 12 months).
> 
> > This is in line with the objectives quoted above. Red
> > Hat and the volunteers at the Fedora project seem to have tried awfully
> > hard to make that as smooth as possible. (c.f. *not turning on SELinux by
> > default.)
> 
> Yes, and that is good for some target audiences.  And FL is good for
> other target audiences.  Both have their place.
> 
> --
> Eric Rostetter
> 
> 
> --
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-- 
Howard Owen                      "Even if you are on the right
EGBOK Consultants                 track, you'll get run over if you
hbo at egbok.com    +1-650-218-2216  just sit there." - Will Rogers