fedora mission (was Re: systemd and changes)

Jon Masters jonathan at jonmasters.org
Mon Aug 30 19:09:06 UTC 2010


On Mon, 2010-08-30 at 09:03 -0700, Jesse Keating 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.

Jesse is absolutely right on this point.

Fedora is being ruined by this kind of behavior. You can have progress,
cutting edge, etc. without having to be unstable and unpredictable in
the process. It's called "rawhide" for a reason. It was always intended
to be the place to dump things, but not in "stable" releases. Instead,
we have people so opposed to a little sanity and so scared of 6 months
wait - like anything really matters in that small a timeframe in the
*real* world - that they want to cram things down the throats of the
users. That works fine if you're in college and have a lot of free time,
but some people like their computers to also work on a reasonably
predictable basis, which is not the ride that is Fedora today.

> 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
> break things, and often does.

As I've said, on systems not directly connected I just don't bother
doing updates ever. I suspect before too long some effort will get
formed to do a more stable version of Fedora (no, this isn't any
reference to Enterprise stuff - that's entirely different) and at that
point I give it not a whole lot of time before people gravitate toward
that, or there is some fragmentation, or something a lot worse.

> Every update takes for ever because there
> are so many updates.  Too many to review each one and see what it does,
> and how to maybe test it and provide feedback.  Updates runs just get
> pushed off longer and longer so that I have a block of time to A) apply
> the damn things, and B) spend a few hours recovering from any sort of
> fallout in my workflow.  If I don't enjoy using the product I'm
> creating, that doesn't bode well.

Again, I think everything you've said is well said, totally appropriate,
and I'm grateful that you spoke up and said it. Because you are
certainly far from being alone.

Jon.




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