Re: An Open Letter to Red Hat: Guidelines for Fedora Core Releases

["Bryan J.Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

Aaron Kenney wrote:
>  I feel strongly compelled to offer a counter to this letter, because 
> I myself did not feel at all compelled to deal with Linux until Red 
> Hat 9 was handed over to the Fedora Project.

? I didn't catch your point there.

>  The promise was this - that the "community" Red Hat would become just 
> that, a Linux distro for the community, by the community. The good 
> part now is that we don't have to deal with the corporate Red Hat 
> anymore. They don't have their hands in the community cookie jar 
> anymore.

Don't confuse the greater Fedora Project with Fedora Core (FC).
FC's development itself is still *heavily* controlled by Red Hat.
The makeup of the developers have changed little, as Red Hat Linux 
always had significant community developers involved before too.
It is the lineage of RHL, which RHEL is still based on FC.

The ISV/IHV certifications are gone, the updates for every little 
revision (which was redundant) are too, and it's community distributed.
But otherwise, given the influence of Red Hat and the control the exert 
over Fedora *Core* itself, I was hoping the 0-1-2 was still there.

100 percent of my Letter was aimed at Fedora Core, *not* the Fedora 
Project.
If I want to help out with the Fedora Project, then I'll talk to Seth & 
co.
My point is that I don't like where Fedora Core is headed, and *only* 
Red Hat itself can change that.

Because what Red Hat does in controlling Fedora Core affects everything 
else in the greater Fedora Project.
So I can't do much from that ex-post-facto standpoint.

As someone who has been involved, the more Red Hat tears down the old, 
trusted model, the less I want to dedicate to it.
If every Fedora Core release is going to be a ".0" like revision, count 
me out!

> So it makes sense - flat out - that Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise will 
> take divergent paths. I hope they do, because quite frankly the 
> community focus is just more fun and interesting to deal with than the 
> enterprise.

Again, do *not* confuse the greater Fedora Project with Fedora core.
RHEL continues to be 100 percent based on FC.

I can't read the rest of your post because it is full of assumptions.
You have not put your trust in the legacy of the 0-1-2 release model.
Especially for those of us who have been around since RHL 3.0.3 and 
4.0+.

The only time I saw the community "taken out" was in some of the RHL 9 
packages, because Red Hat saw it as a product, and a "competitor" to 
RHEL.
That was resolved by breaking Fedora Core out of the "product" mold.
So I thought Fedora Core *was* going to be, to quote Red Hat, a "return 
to its roots."
When they said that, I thought of Red Hat 4.x, 5.x, 6.x and 7.x.

But now that Fedora Core 3.90 has gone to test 1 looking like yet 
another ".0" less than 1 year from the last ".0" (Fedora Core 2), I'm 
dumbfounded.
I can only hope there will be the same "retro-backgrade" we saw with 
RHL7.3.
Otherwise I will just assume every Fedora Core release is ".0"-like in 
nature.

There is always a good reason to stick with the trifecta - the 3rd time 
is perfect.
I don't want to use Fedora Core if it's always going to be like a ".0" 
revision everytime.
For now, I'm going to wait on Fedora Core 4 Release before I pass 
judgement.

And I'm especially going to wait and see what Novell does for its 
version 10 releases later this year.
Because I really like what they are doing to SuSE - ironic because I 
used to argue that SuSE received way too little scrutiny compared to Red 
Hat.
My how Novell has changed them!

I'd love to volunteer to change Fedora Core, but I can't.
I can only volunteer to change Fedora Extras or Legacy, which is 
after-the-fact.
Which is why I wrote this letter, to get Red Hat and the Fedora Steering 
Committee to realize that they are going to expense all the remaining 
RHL Legacy integrators if all we can look forward to is a ".0" like 
release everytime.

It's *not* a complaint.
It's just what integrators like myself are thinking.

--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Currently Mobile

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