Where are we going? (Not a rant)

["Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"]

On 12/07/2012 12:53 PM, Tomas Radej wrote:
> Hi everybody.
>
> Disclaimer: This mail is written from the position of a Fedora
> community member. Red Hat has nothing to do with this.
>
> I don't want to start yet another rant saying that everything is broken
> and we'd be better off if we aped Debian. Absolutely not. I don't want
> to put blame on someone, I want to improve.
>
> Fedora is all about passionate people doing what they want to
> do in a community of like-minded folks. That's probably the most
> awesome thing I've seen in my life - a bunch of folks not actually
> charging money to each other, while providing everybody with fruits of
> their efforts. It's probably trivial for you, because you've been doing
> that for years. But for me (as I've been a part only for one year now),
> it's something almost unimaginable. But reading this list showed me
> that often the passion goes, at least in my eyes, too far. Instead of
> constructive criticism, vitriolic scolding and personal insults are to
> be found. This only makes effort in Fedora fragmented and inconsistent.
>
> One of the results was a conversation I had with a few guys to
> whom I recommended Fedora as a development environment. It showed me
> that there's indeed something wrong. While they all said that Fedora's
> features were brilliant, they unanimously rejected Fedora as a
> primary system. The reason they gave me was, now quoting: It doesn't
> really work.
>
> While it's a simplistic statement with which I don't agree, it points
> finger at the tradeoff Fedora had to make to become the fastest updated
> Linux distro in the known universe - to give up much of stability. I
> sort of like that decision, but I propose to step back and look at the
> big picture to see if we aren't on the fast side a tad too much. Having
> a completely new system out every half a year is great, but having a
> system where various things crash for various reasons pretty much all
> the time isn't. I don't have a definitive way to fix this, but I have
> some ideas, and you people out there have better ones. Something like
> having a solid, tested core that updates half as often as the developer
> libraries springs into my mind, so I want to know what springs into
> yours.
>
> The threat for Fedora is that even in the FOSS, there is competition.
> Distros are competing for users - users that give back, users that
> report bugs, or users that are or become maintainers and developers.
> When the overwhelming response to Fedora is "Hey, they've got some neat
> features, but I need it to work, so that's why I'm using XYZ instead",
> the user/dev base is going to wither and move elsewhere.
>
> As I said, I don't have the knowledge, mental capacity, or mandate to
> give the answer to where Fedora is going and where it should be going.
> I am just worrying that if there is no change in how Fedora is done, it
> will be harder and harder for the community to thrive, and I wouldn't
> like that. So, through this e-mail addressed to all the Fedora
> community, I am seeking support for a movement, both collective and
> individual, that would improve communication, cooperation and generally
> the life of Fedora on the most fundamental basis.
>
> To conclude, I don't want this e-mail to be accusing, flaming, or
> mentoring. It is meant to be concerned, inspiring and accepted with a
> good, yet scrutinizing mind.
>

If we want to solve this we need to release an Fedora LTS release for 
our and the potential other user base that don't have to/want to update 
every 6 or 12 months.

That's the feed back I have received when I have asked both sysadmins 
and developers that don't already use Fedora and why they wont use it.

JBG