/usrmove?

[mike cloaked]

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Genes MailLists <lists at sapience.com> wrote:
>
>  There seems to have been a recent pattern (last year or so) of pushing
> premature pet projects rapidly without broader fedora engagement.
>
>  I know this little issue will get sorted out and its still
> rawhide/pre-f17. But its part of the pattern.
>
>  I suspect the pushers feel they are breaking ground and doing good
> things. I fervently believe many if not all of them are indeed good
> ideas - just often very premature and the process is poorly managed. All
> are well intended.
>
>  For many of us its a bad trend to see - and creates an impression that
> a few pushy folks are wresting control - rather than things being
> accepted based on merit and good work.
>
>  Its a very disappointing thing to see fedora spiraling in this way. I
> don't know what changed for this to happen but it is not a net positive.
>
>   Just a personal perspective from a long time fedora user (since about
> Redhat 3 or so). I don't know what it means for RHEL but I sincerely
> hope it can learn from these missteps when its facing the decision what
> to include from fedora .. but I fear its not practical for RHEL to take
> anything but all of fedora - so if there's a way to improve this, its at
> the fedora level.
>
>  That said, extra kudos to the kernel team who have made things better,
> more stable and still managed to keep pace with current kernel
> development providing solid, frequent and timely builds all the while
> contributing to kernel dev itself. Thank you.

Well said!  There are some fantastic and excellent developments in
Fedora - and some really superb developers and maintainers. The
selinux development and support springs immediately to mind and, as
Gene said, kernel support is superb. Wireless driver support is top
notch, and printing support and development is excellent.  Generally
the KDE sig do a great job keeping packages flowing reasonably close
to upstream developments - with only a relatively small delay for
example in releasing 4.8 which will likely be soon. There are others
too many to mention that are also superb and vital components of the
system that are maintained well and in a timely fashion when it comes
to bringing in necessary updates and particularly fixes for security
vulnerabilities that are discovered from time to time.

So far several major new project developments like pulseaudio, systemd
and udev have survived at the point of each stable Fedora release
though not without some serious bug squashing required in the
pre-release phase for several releases.  Some releases have been
better than others and in some cases fewer people have opted to move
stable platforms to a release and skipped till the next one.

However it is really important not to become complacent. I spent 20
years as a private pilot and at times I took the "go" decision on a
flight when the weather was difficult and marginal, and I survived.
The problem is that it becomes easier the next time to make a similar
decision - and if each time you survive on a marginal decision then
you feel inside that you are safe when in fact you are carrying a risk
of failure - the more times that you tempt fate making such decisions
the more likely it will be that one day you won't make it. It is
important to not become overconfident that you are all-knowing and
immortal. In the case of the private pilot the consequence is that you
may not only lose your life but also take the lives of others with
you.

There have clearly been times when Fedora has "sailed close to the
wind" on "go/nogo" decisions on occasion. So far Fedora has made the
right decisions at the point of GA release. But just like in the case
of the pilots, the one time the decision is the wrong one will have
significant consequences. I hope that the latter does not happen in
the near future, and the decision making process should take account
of the risk of failure as well as the rewards of success.

I have been a devoted Fedora user since FC1 - but I am ever more
acutely aware that some projects are pushing the boundaries pretty
hard - and it is important to listen to the user community when the
final button is being pushed.  I expect many will say this is already
the case - and I hope that they are right.

-- 
mike c