fedora mission (was Re: systemd and changes)

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 10:03, Jesse Keating <jkeating at redhat.com> wrote:
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> On 08/28/2010 09:25 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>> Jesse Keating wrote:
>>> The cynic in me would expect that the people who want something different
>>> than the fire hose we have now are silently leaving, and those that are
>>> left are going to say they like the deluge of updates.
>>
>> You say that as if it were a negative thing.
>
> To me it is.  It's you and people like you that want to shove a ton of
> updates down the throats of our stable release users (including changes
> that alter behavior and sonames etc...) that have ruined the Fedora I
> helped to build.  I want my Fedora back, I don't want what you're creating.

The problem to quote a tv philosopher is:

The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

The changes towards a distribution that attracts people who live in
the moment happened a while back, and has been building momentum for
quite some time. Trying to erect barriers now is not going to help but
make it so nothing exists afterwords. The things that can be done are:
A) get out of the way, B) go with the flow, or C) figure out what you
can build on top of it.  [I am looking at option C]

> We've found our niche, but chasing away our previous niche (and having
> less users show up in our tracking mechanism for it)  It's getting to
> the point where me, as a long time Fedora developer and sometimes
> leader, is not enjoying using Fedora any more.  Every update run can

What was our previous niche? That is what people seemed so hard to
ever quantify beyond knowing "what it isn't". The people I know who
are running Ubuntu now instead of RHL or Fedora are doing it because
that distribution 'fills in the blanks' for them that RHL/Fedora never
seemed to answer. It has a vision, it has a single voice where they
feel it is needed. Fedora has never been that. (heck even RHL was
never that as you couldn't get any of the RH developers to agree on
much :)).


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
“The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things.""
— Herb Kelleher, founder Southwest Airlines