Fedora lifetime and stability

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Bill Davidsen wrote:
> 
> Having just seen such a problem in FC8, I have to agree to some extent.
> Solving the problems by removing and reinstalling packages is my usual
> solution, although I have had to manually run some RPMs, because the rpm
> package ignores the force option and insists it knows better than the
> user. I do see that as a failing of the package, at some point there
> needs to be a way to move forward.
> 
> But while I might like to see longer support (as in security fixes, at
> least) for each release, I fail to see how Fedora can "win" by doing so.
> It's hard to see what having more people not paying for the product does
> as a benefit, while the only reason I update most of my systems is
> security, and if I could get security releases for two years, I would be
> testing less new stuff.
> 
> There was some mumbling about value to stockholders in this thread, I'm
> a stockholder and I think that FC is a reasonably cost effective testing
> program for new stuff. That justifies its existance, and I think we have
> to be content with that.
> 
> Note: I don't see Fedora and Ubuntu competing for the same users, so
> there's not much "win" there, if I didn't run Fedora I'd probably go to
> CentOS for most things, certainly for servers.
> 
Before we can talking about Fedora "winning" anything, we have to
define what winning means. This is because "winning" means different
things to different people, and most of the post I have seen about
what Fedora needs to do to "win" would mean Fedora abandoning the
stated philosophy Fedora is based on. As far as I can tell, for
Fedora, winning has never been being the most popular distribution,
or being the most new user friendly distribution. Winning for Fedora
is not about making the most money or being on the most
servers/desktops. That may be what "winning" means to RHEL, but that
is another story.

I think part of the problem is that we have had dumbed into us that
"winning" means making/having the most money, or the largest market
share, or the most fans. But things are changing. For some people,
"winning" means creating a useful program, or having the reputation
of being the person to go to when you need help with a specific type
of problem. The GPL and Linux itself has defined a new way of
"winning". If nothing else, Linux users should learn that there is
no one right way of doing things. Linux is about choices, and the
way Fedora does things is one of those choices. If there are enough
people that are interested in a distribution that is somewhere
between Fedora and CENTOS, there is nothing stopping them from
creating one. As has been noted, the Fedora Legacy Project was one
attempt at this. But it did not have enough people that were both
interested in the project, and were willing to invent their time and
labor to the project.

When I read about "Where Fedora went wrong" I keep getting hte
feeling that the authors are missing something. Maybe that something
is that where Fedora is trying to go, and where they think Fedora
should be going are not the same thing. I guess you could say that
where Fedora went wrong was in not picking a destination that
matched the article's author's idea of where it should be going.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20071111/ea6934c4/attachment-0001.bin