Trends - how to save Fedora ?

[JB]

Thomas Cameron <thomas.cameron <at> camerontech.com> writes:

> 
> 
> On 11/13/2011 01:15 AM, JB wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > every Fedora release is going downhill ...
> 
> Erm, no. Each Fedora release has brought in numerous technical
> improvements. Virtualization, clustering, directory services, more and
> more features and performance per release.

Yes, but at what cost to Fedora and its community ?
Read on.
 
> > Time for Fedora to decouple from RH and become quality UNIX-like distro on
> > its own ?
> 
> And what? All the engineers at Red Hat develop new tech in Fedora. Where
> do you propose those new technologies come from if Red Hat splits off?

Some from an independent Fedora devs, others from other distros by adoption of
those that are useful and not conflicting with its goals.
Read on.
 
> > Linux distros:
> > http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux/all/y
> 
> Without knowing a *lot* about how this information was gathered, it's
> meaningless.

We have to rely on them in formulating trends, which are approximations
anyway.
 
> > Fedora, Red Hat:
> > http://www.google.com/trends?q=fedora%2C+redhat&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
> 
> These trends are pretty meaningless. Less searches on a technology don't
> necessarily mean the technology is on the wane. It could very well be
> that people are more comfortable so they're not Googling as much. Or
> that they know to go straight to the most popular Fedora sites or the
> Red Hat portal.

Be careful in your interpretations.
Search engines are gold mines of data for which many companies are willing to
pay lots of money.
It is one of Google's main businesses, that is collecting, tabulating, and
interpreting, and selling it.

> 
> Red Hat as a company is poised to be a billion dollar company this year
> (FY12). The FY 2006 earnings were $278.3 million.[1] That's a 4X
> increase in just 6 years. That's *amazing* growth.

Yes, it is. But it is also a reflection of economic decline, financial crash,
IT crash that make "free" software attractive, even necessary for survival.

> Look at things like http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics, which
> indicate that downloads and torrents are going up with each release, not
> down.

That does not mean much - what sticks, counts.
I downloaded F16, it gave me a big kernel dump with other errors - it is good
for my dev machine as a reference of what is going on, but not good beyond
that.

> Statistics cobbled together from dubious sources don't really concern
> me. They probably shouldn't concern you, either. You can manipulate the
> same data to prove almost anything you want.
> 
> Remember, there are three kinds of lies - likes, damned lies, and
> statistics.
> 
> [1] http://investors.redhat.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=355567

Well, one has to be somewhat sceptical, indeed.
Read on.

The ladies protest too much :-)

You can follow the users' frustrations with the state of recent Fedora
releases here on this and other lists.
 
Fedora is unstable, release by release, progressively worse.
It is becoming a dump place for projects that are pushed by RH and
automatically sanctioned by its subordinates here at Fedora (some of them
admit to be torn between job loyalty and doubts), without consideration for
their sometimes questionable goals, quality, effects on system stability,
adherence to UNIX principles, lacking adequate testing, in short too
disruptive even to pre-conditioned Fedora community.

There is a lack of independent users representation in Fedora project's
governing bodies who should and would be able to be more critical and stop
some of this damage even before it enters the actual development, not to
mention implementation stages.

SELinux is a static, straightjacket-like security control system, badly
designed with its requirement for off-line system re-labeling, ineffective and
inflexible for ad-hoc installed packages, with incomprehensible/non-intuitive
psedo-scientific naming convention for control labels, difficult to use and
judge by an average sysadmin and user (which mostly results in accepting
problem cases as valid exceptions, or filing Bugzilla reports which makes
the maintainer and RH services unavoidable).
Yes, the maintainers are doing good job, but within those faulty perimeters.

GNOME 3 is an example of how not to do it, also influenced by RH devs.
If you think that this is an example of how to influence the state of Linux
desktop, then you live in a strange world.
People (many volunteers) have worked on it for more than 10 years to convince
users (inclusive the critical business community) to give them a chance.
The good results achieved even caused M$ to list Linux desktop as a danger to
their desktop business in its SEC documents.
Guess what ? They removed it recently.
All they had to do is just wait for the enemy within ...

With regard to Systemd, it is the most recent example of non-UNIX-like (or
more like old M$-like) approach to software develoment. It is obvious by its
goals, design, and reaction to criticism - they are not of UNIX mind ...
Linux API to be a new standard, over POSIX. Screw up everybody else ...
Integration of GNOME desktop and systemd in sight ... on the way to integrated
old style M$-like desktop and system that ironically M$ is trying to get away
from ? LOL !
There are still ca. 300 packages that are not converted from SysV/LSB to it by
their maintainers who resist or do not see a reason for the "progress" despite
all threats.
SysVinit/LSB primitive, "slow"/"unparallel" scripts are alive and kicking and
busting systemd in tests, but in a Knoppix distribution, thank you ...
One more example of pseudo-engineering, wrong goals, and how to make future
systemd maintainer and RH services unavoidable.
Me thinks these attempted non-UNIX-like and non-KISS approaches, oriented on
creating conditions for "authorized" support services only, will backfire.
 
I already expressed my objections to RH/Fedora's treatment of "default"
features here:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2011-November/407013.html
It is so block-headed to try to force these features despite test results and
users telling them clearly not to do it or revolting post factum (what else ?).

I already told you a year ago, when discussing SELinux and Linux security
models, that all "revolutionaries" will eventually become the "dictators" and
"oppressors" as soon as they are allowed into the salons.
It is a historical fact.
As a result, they will be resisted and eventually abandoned and considered
enemies by those who brought them in there ...

There are problems in CentoS land, already reflected in their users list
discussions and considerations of or actual migrations to other systems.
Scientific Linux is not 100% RHEL compatible any more, contrary to beliefs.
You already know of RH vice Oracle "unauthorized service" dispute and counter
measures.

Perhaps there is a light in a tunnel for GPL-style license ? It served RH and
others well, but they are in salons now ... And hiding some technologies from
competitors n the f uture would be useful too.

All of it is killing the average Fedora community and causing users migrating
away. That's why I said perhaps Fedora would be better off by becoming a truly
independent distro, and most important true to UNIX.

You think the trends are lying ? The users lists too ? Perhaps.

Yes, do become angry, fellas ...
And do not fall off your chair's edge -:)

JB