I've got $1.00 that no-one from RedHat responds to this thread, anyone care to counter?
--erik
Hey, Richard didn't claim the dollar when he replied. But I'll take it. I hereby reply on behalf of Red Hat. Pay up.
Actually, keep it and tell me what we can do to fix it.
I understand why people are always picking on Red Hat, I hear it all day.
We can act on things other than "we're f*cked up and should quit open source", of course. (Let's think of all places open source wouldn't be without Red Hat.)
As for our ability or perceived willingness to deal with outsiders, Seth's got a solid point. There are things that are still a mess. I can only say that we know it and are working like hell to fix it. Our communication on that too has many qualities resembling suck.
So, let's have it. Open season on Red Hat.
--jeremy
I understand why people are always picking on Red Hat, I hear it all day.
We can act on things other than "we're f*cked up and should quit open source", of course. (Let's think of all places open source wouldn't be without Red Hat.)
As for our ability or perceived willingness to deal with outsiders, Seth's got a solid point. There are things that are still a mess. I can only say that we know it and are working like hell to fix it. Our communication on that too has many qualities resembling suck.
So, let's have it. Open season on Red Hat.
Listen to the people who have been screaming this for the last 6 months. Listen to the people who have been trying to interact and be involved in whatever process there is.
Ask johnsonm what problems he ran into before he left, ask gafton what problems he's seeing.
Timely notices of what's going on not just a terse notice once a month or so about when the freeze deadline is.
Right now there is NO involvement outside of the level where Red Hat Linux was before.
If that's how it's going to be fine, but SAY IT.
-sv
Ask johnsonm what problems he ran into before he left, ask gafton what problems he's seeing.
He sent me that, Cristian's hearing it too. I'll make sure others hear it as well.
Timely notices of what's going on not just a terse notice once a month or so about when the freeze deadline is.
What if we hosted blogs, or a blog aggregator? On our site and in the open.
Right now there is NO involvement outside of the level where Red Hat Linux was before.
Agreed.
If that's how it's going to be fine, but SAY IT.
Agreed again. I know that's not how we want it, but it's how it looks.
--jeremy
On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 17:06, Jeremy Hogan wrote:
Ask johnsonm what problems he ran into before he left, ask gafton what problems he's seeing.
He sent me that, Cristian's hearing it too. I'll make sure others hear it as well.
Timely notices of what's going on not just a terse notice once a month or so about when the freeze deadline is.
What if we hosted blogs, or a blog aggregator? On our site and in the open.
guess what? we already have one running:
http://fedora.linux.duke.edu/fedorapeople/
got quite a number of people who either had some involvement in fedora.us, have some involvement in red hat or fedora core.
fedora.linux.duke.edu also hosts lots of other things for fedora core to function. The reason it exists is b/c it's taken nearly 9 months for a cvs server to be brought up - let alone a web server.
If that's how it's going to be fine, but SAY IT.
Agreed again. I know that's not how we want it, but it's how it looks.
Then talk more and get more people at red hat to talk more.
-sv
What if we hosted blogs, or a blog aggregator? On our site and in the open.
guess what? we already have one running:
http://fedora.linux.duke.edu/fedorapeople/
got quite a number of people who either had some involvement in fedora.us, have some involvement in red hat or fedora core.
I've seen that, I was thinking we should do likewise on our site. Or at least link back to that prominently from fedora.redhat.com and aggregate non-Fedora stuff elsewhere.
We already have MoveablType running (currently just the world tour blog at blogs.redhat.com), so having blogs hosted here for those who don't already elsewhere isn't a big deal. It would encourage more RH folks to blog, and it can be added to the aggregate.
--jeremy
I've seen that, I was thinking we should do likewise on our site. Or at least link back to that prominently from fedora.redhat.com and aggregate non-Fedora stuff elsewhere.
if you want it - just take it - I've offered it before - it's a tiny tarball - just requires python and libxml2.
it's trivial - it's the same blog aggregation software most of the free software related planet-sites are running: planet gnome planet apache planet debian among others.
I know adrian likins has all of the templates and the code that is used. I sent it to him about 2 weeks ago.
We already have MoveablType running (currently just the world tour blog at blogs.redhat.com), so having blogs hosted here for those who don't already elsewhere isn't a big deal. It would encourage more RH folks to blog, and it can be added to the aggregate.
all the red hat folks can use gnome-blog with advogato or livejournal right now, for free, not sure why having an in house moveable type server will encourage them anymore but <shrug> if it helps get more communication, have a blast.
-sv
On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 17:15:29 -0400, seth vidal wrote:
What if we hosted blogs, or a blog aggregator? On our site and in the open.
guess what? we already have one running:
http://fedora.linux.duke.edu/fedorapeople/
got quite a number of people who either had some involvement in fedora.us, have some involvement in red hat or fedora core.
Sorry for being serious and a fun-killer at times, but a good percentage of the blog entries merged there are about entertainment, culinary delights or private life and personal interests. So, more "boring" blog entries, which are directly related to the project, would be interesting. Similarly, when I've let my IRC client log activity on the #fedora-devel channel, most of the daily logs contained small-talk or traffic created by impatient users who wanted help for a problem nobody could--or wanted to--answer on #fedora. I would also like to be able to get a better picture on things like current direction of development, milestones, short-term and long-term goals, conclusions derived from the Test releases and from bugzilla feedback, as well as issues which could need investigation and community commitment.
On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 05:06:46PM -0400, Jeremy Hogan wrote:
Right now there is NO involvement outside of the level where Red Hat Linux was before.
Agreed.
If that's how it's going to be fine, but SAY IT.
Agreed again. I know that's not how we want it, but it's how it looks.
I'd like to try and focus on some practical things:
Leadership the draft has been there for months, the only vague timescale I've heard was from you on the World Tour which is after FC2. Can we have some commitment to this on the list, possibly a date. It's ok if things slip as long as the community know.
CVS/svn I know these are being worked on, can we have an official status update of these. Would it be possible to have a stop gap RO cvs of exploded srpms from each rawhide push - there are at least two Red Hat produced scripts to do this that we've seen on list.
Yes fc2 getting out there is a focus, but communication with the community is too. We were having the same conversations for fc1 - let's not have them for FC3.
There is still a great deal of frustration on both sides, the process is painful, but lets try and take small steps. Even saying no-news or whatever would be useful, more visible.
Paul
I'd like to try and focus on some practical things:
Good points, I've got them down now as well. FWIW he have a meeting this coming weekend/week with almost all RH personnel and these issues are going to come up loud and clear in front of everyone. So we'll have *something* concrete to say by the middle of next week.
I'll continue grabbing feedback in this thread, and post a summary back to this list by Friday to be sure I've got as much of it as I can by the meeting.
--jeremy
On Tue, 20 Apr 2004, Jeremy Hogan wrote:
Good points, I've got them down now as well. FWIW he have a meeting this coming weekend/week with almost all RH personnel and these issues are going to come up loud and clear in front of everyone.
0. I assume s/he/we/. Here's a list
1. Print the August 15 2003 piece from Havoc Pennington on rhl-devel-list@redhat.com with subject line Subject: Re: RHL Project Status? -- It appears stalled at the and place it in each attendee's pre-meeting briefing folder
2. Print the January 10 2004 summary email from Gene C. on fedora-devel-list@redhat.com with subject line Subject: fedora-d-rh] Re: QA process was Re: RPM submission procedure and place it in each attendee's pre-meeting briefing folder. Ask that each be read.
3. Brainstorm the action items and impediments preventing completion of the stated goals of those aspirational pieces. Winnow, and prepare a draft plan toward completion. Circulate a review draft report and action plan to a subset of the leading external beta RH testers for comment. Finalize and implement it by dates certain.
- - - -
The posting in item 2 says in part:
On Friday 09 January 2004 19:22, Michael K. Johnson wrote:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 02:42:38PM -0500, Gene C. wrote:
I am hopeful that the Red Hat folks will speak on the Fedora Extras subject soon (their lack of comment is very noticeable). Some of this discussion
Well, I have two reasons for not commenting: o We don't have the CVS server up yet, and I believe that action should come before talk here. o I'm doing a lot of listening. Overall it is important to me that it not be so hard or confusing to do that people don't do it. I think that the rules can be simple and exceptions worked out on an individual basis; that's what we've done internally. We need
... and so on. Michael's right -- Running code counts; talk is ... just talk. Passive listening has been possible for the eight months since Havoc's post. The time for listening is past. Solve it or say its not going to happen.
- - - - - - -
4. Assign someone to remove all remaining proprietary keying on the Beehive and surrounding code by a date certain, and GPL and release a tarball of it; The build submission tool clearly is passing in build options; what is its backing store and how is it maintained, beyond what is shown in the .spec, tarballs, and patches. What content is in it? If computer assisted control and reporting interfaces and integration to Bugzilla or other process management tools exist, describe the API or release the tools. Manual process documention (in electronic form) to the extent it exists would be nice as well.
5. Assign someone to sanitize the internal QA protocols used at RH for the (soon fully EOL'd) RHL line by a date certain, and publish them electronically. Weeks and weeks of flamage, and mish-mashed wiki could have been avoided on the mailing lists with this guidance alone.
6. Assign someone to set up a CVS with RW priv's upon application by a proposed committer, sufficient to do the checkout and build (probably not on the RH internal production builders), yielding testable 'as-is' results, by a date certain, and meet the release date. Mark each such binary with a Skull and Crossbones on install, but get a RW cvs with builder access in place so non-RH people can do at least familiarization with the RH builder approach.
- - - - - -
Much of this exists elsewhere by other Linux-ish projects -- Debian, Mezzanine, vserver+mach, cAos non-root one-off pristine build chroots, the RHEL rebuild outlines -- more in the (Free|Open|Net)BSD world; more still in general computing [Tinderbox, the SF test farm, the Compaq and IBM public buildfarms].
RMS and ESR may not see eye to eye, but each knows that free access to sources is crucial; each knows that many approaches to a problem and many eyes gets to better results faster. [well... RMS may not agree that 'vi' is a better result ')] Having implemented much of the foregoing over the last year with the help of others, I know that I learned much from the source availability of work of others. Won't Red Hat bring its tools to the party?
My $ 0.02
- Russ Herrold
Once upon a time, Paul Nasrat pauln@truemesh.com said:
Leadership the draft has been there for months, the only vague timescale I've heard was from you on the World Tour which is after FC2. Can we have some commitment to this on the list, possibly a date. It's ok if things slip as long as the community know.
Even something as simple as a fedora-devel-announce (or something like that) list that only the leadership group could post to. Things like "we're turning off SELinux for FC2t3" and simple status updates on CVS and such (a 5 minute weekly email from someone would be nice, even if it just said "no real progress made this week").
Le mar 20/04/2004 à 23:38, Chris Adams a écrit :
Even something as simple as a fedora-devel-announce (or something like that) list that only the leadership group could post to.
+++++1
These informations could be collected/formated by "Fedora News Updates" : http://fedoranews.org/colin/fnu/
This can be a start point for something like "The Wonderful World of Fedora Core 2". Something that goes more in depth than a release note.
Things like "we're turning off SELinux for FC2t3"
It's really better than : From: Build System buildsys@redhat.com Subject: rawhide report: 20040420 changes
fedora-release-1.92-1 ---------------------
And then read the new /usr/share/doc/fedora-release-1.92/README-x86-en .
Fedora is a mix of feeling. I don't like the current communication but I am really impressed by FC2. Te be honest I think the second point more important :-)
My 2 cents.
PS : sorry for my poor English.
On Wed, 2004-04-21 at 08:13, Matias Feliciano wrote:
Le mar 20/04/2004 à 23:38, Chris Adams a écrit :
Even something as simple as a fedora-devel-announce (or something like that) list that only the leadership group could post to.
+++++1
These informations could be collected/formated by "Fedora News Updates" : http://fedoranews.org/colin/fnu/
This can be a start point for something like "The Wonderful World of Fedora Core 2". Something that goes more in depth than a release note.
Things like "we're turning off SELinux for FC2t3"
Hmm, how about aggregating this information (Fedora news Updates, Fedora Developer blogs, fedora lists highlights, Internet news articles etc into say bi-weekly/monthly newsletter much like Red Hat's "Under The Brim" newsletter? This would be a great way to communicate latest developments, happenings, whatever.
Also, I would like to see more communication from the Steering Committee especially Cristian Gafton. He is the project's leader and so far there's been only one post (Intruduction from the new cheerleader) in January on these lists. Sure, he's probably real busy with mamnging the project et al, but this topic is about more communication and involvement with the community.. Maybe he could start a Fedora Project blog summarising the week's development issues.
Just some thoughts that come to mind..
Regards, -Matt
On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 04:44:18PM -0400, Jeremy Hogan wrote:
So, let's have it. Open season on Red Hat.
One thing I would appreciate is better follow-through in Bugzilla. Sometimes things get quick, good responses -- other times, issues/suggestions/bugs sit there for years.
Bugs shouldn't end up like this:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=120065
especially when the submitter went to some length to submit a helpful report.
On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 05:50:41PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
Bugs shouldn't end up like this:
[snip]
especially when the submitter went to some length to submit a helpful report.
(Just an example, by the way; not necessarily a whine about that particular bug, which was apparently fixed in a later X update.)
On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 05:53:20PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
(Just an example, by the way; not necessarily a whine about that particular bug, which was apparently fixed in a later X update.)
If I *were* to complain about a specific bug desperately in need of some communication from Red Hat, it'd be this one:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55193
Filed in 2001, and there's more than two dozen comments, none by anyone from Red Hat. The state is still "new". And there's a bunch of duplicates. And several suggested fixes. And it's a critically vital horrible problem that affects everything from ancient RHL to RHEL to FC.
On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 15:17, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 05:53:20PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
(Just an example, by the way; not necessarily a whine about that particular bug, which was apparently fixed in a later X update.)
If I *were* to complain about a specific bug desperately in need of some communication from Red Hat, it'd be this one:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55193
Filed in 2001, and there's more than two dozen comments, none by anyone from Red Hat. The state is still "new". And there's a bunch of duplicates. And several suggested fixes. And it's a critically vital horrible problem that affects everything from ancient RHL to RHEL to FC.
Here, Here! I was about to post essentially the same thing. Especially considering that at least one of the duplicates and a number of comments were added by me. The fact that this bug has persisted so long is embarrassing. Yes, it's easy to work around as long as you remember to never run authconfig again, but seeing as that's the "supported" method for changing pam/nss configuration, having to remember to make this one line change every time seems a little broken.
On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 03:23:26PM -0700, Shahms King wrote:
for changing pam/nss configuration, having to remember to make this one line change every time seems a little broken.
Looking over it pam seems to be a particular problem area. The old pam password length bug is in the 7xxxx range.
Alan
Jeremy,
re: communication at redhat.
to succeed you need to lead. to lead you need to motivate. motivation is driven from stating and pursuing long term goals. people can derive their own tasks if given clear goals.
fc1 and fc2 seem rather eclectic and short-term goals. what are the goals for fc(n)? what's the 3, 5, 10 year goal?
how will community developed projects integrate? not details, just vision. will yum move toward apt-get install? i've listened and read yet i see no vision, just handwaving about "extras".
can we get a community resource for compile/testing/integrate? this involves a compile farm, testing standards, and recognition and support for test leaders (similar to the linux's project leads). they should have a recognized relationship with fedora (e.g. nothing gets accepted until they accept it for their subsystems). what are the subsystems? who are the leads? in particular, who is considered the "linus of fedora"? the "morton of fedora"? will redhat support one "linus of fedora" fulltime?
how will fedora be branded? will redhat feature it on their site? will there be a branding team with a recognized lead? will there be an established relationship with cheapbytes or other copy makers?
will fedora establish joint goals with other teams such as SUSE, Debian, etc? can we take a lead role in trying to re-merge the various forks, at least getting agreement on "the standard subset"? there is, quite frankly, no obvious reason not to merge some redhat tools with other distros (eg rpm and apt, this would open rpm to the whole debian codepile).
in the spirit of a community-driven project the point should probably be made that whatever leadership and organization fedora has at the moment it has failed to paint "the grand dream".
who is the "linus of fedora"?
t