FC2 doubtful quality?

[Jeremy Brown]

Andy Green wrote:

> Well I also noted this, although to be fair Dexter wrote a good and mild
>
>reply, but I see this defensiveness coming from their not being empowered to 
>do anything about the problem.  Only RH folks can do this because of the 
>project structure.
>

I've seen this topic pop up on the fedora-devel list before, and it 
seems to be a large source of frustration for Fedora contributors.  From 
what I read, for the most part Fedora Core still develops under many of 
the same processes RedHat 9 did (user reports bugs, RedHat software 
developer fixes bugs, releases a new package).  Users can contribute 
fixes via mechanisms like Bugzilla, but this is nothing new either; and 
ideally you want an issue resolved by a user to sit in Bugzilla for as 
little time as possible before being re-integrated into Fedora.

Maybe there needs to be an intermediate package repository, created and 
managed by users.  Some place where "unstable" packages (with 
user-contributed fixes) can reside, before they've been reviewed by 
RedHat software developers and integrated into Fedora proper.  This way 
Fedora users could fix the bugs they care about and get them posted 
without having to bug RedHat people.

>Some people who do great work helping on the ml are 
>threfore finding themselves becoming slightly shrill and embattled fanboys, 
>equating acknowledging the problem they cannot do anything about with heresy 
>against the project and the great RH people who lead it.  So they will not 
>acknowledge the problem and it is easier to talk about how FC is meant to be 
>cutting edge, unstable, not for everyone.
>  
>

It's not directly related...but I get the impression that a lot of 
people *are* considering using Fedora as a stable, server-oriented Linux 
distribution (gasp).  When you can piece together a fairly decent Linux 
server for $400 or so, it doesn't always make sense to spend $300 on the 
OS to run it; especially if you're strapped for cash (small business, or 
not-for-profit entity, for example).  I have the feeling a lot of people 
at one time used RedHat Personal on a lot of these systems to fill the 
need for a cheap, reliable Linux OS, and now these people are using 
Fedora because they don't have the money for RHEL.

I realize that RedHat has very little to gain by ensuring Fedora's 
stability for these sorts of customers (after all, they want paying 
customers, and you can't blame them), but it would be nice if the 
community could fill this gap.  For example, some sort of 
community-driven organization that did QA of packages would be a nice 
step towards offering a Fedora-based, stable, server-flavored OS.

Just some thoughts.

Jeremy