[Fwd: Wikipidia - Goodbye Red Hat and Fedora]

[Ralf Corsepius]

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?

E.g.:
- Build server resources, mirror resources.
- People are using/testing EPEL instead of Fedora.
- Fedora infrastructure, e.g. EPEL enlarges the packagedb by almost
factor 2.
- EPEL would force Fedora contributors to test on both RHEL and Fedora.

> > >  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 - If it was free, the CentOS folks could start directly
contribute to Fedora or RHEL. Right now, it's them wasting time to
workaround on RHEL being non-free.

> > > >>  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? 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. 

E.g. right now, the tools being in use are a heterogenious mixture of
separate tools, are often broken, are far from easy to use and aim at
implementing a highly bureaucratic process/work-flow.

>  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 ...

> 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.

> > > >> > This situation seems to be reflected in the Fedora project itself.
> > > >> > Guess, how many Fedora infrastructure servers are run under the latest
> > > >> > "stable" Fedora release?
> 
> > > >> As few as possible.
> 
> > > > IMO, a fundamental management/infrastructure mistake - If these people
> > > > were using Fedora, they would be facing the issues Fedora users are
> > > > facing everyday and likely would being to understand why people complain
> > > > about Fedora.
> 
> > > 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. 

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.

...

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.

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.

> >                                                            then this
> > people should start working on improving the situation
> 
> Which one?
Lack of stability, lack of usability, deficiencies of the
infrastructure, bureaucracy, short-livedness ... tools

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

>  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.

> >                                                        or (better) quit
> > Fedora.
> 
> Do so, then.
I haven't given in, yet. 

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.