Revealed: How Fedora And The Community Interact

bakwas_internet writes "Konstantin Ryabitsev sent a funny message in form of a irc chat log, revealing how Fedora and the Community Interact, to the development discussions mailing list related to Fedora Core.The story also appeared at lwn.net and OSnews."

Comments

Community

[hawkeyeMI]

I am also a bit bewildered about community input. What happened to the old Fedora packages, the project with which they merged? I still use Freshrpms on the Fedora machines I administer. Setting up apt-rpm repositories with them is the first thing I do after an install.

I really think their quality is improving. FC2 test3 is a nice system, and I think adequately simplified for most home users. It's great that they're almost right on the edge of the major stuff (KDE, kernel, GNOME, X, etc), most distributions seem to lag pretty heavily. In additon, the access to ISOs has been pretty spectacular, not something I could say for RH8, RH9.

business model

[gandalphthegreen]

Actually, what else could a software company want? Think about it, they're basically developing a product that has features that will eventually be sold to generate revenue. But the best part (for redhat anyway) is that they have a huge and completely free testing and bug-fixing population. What a deal.

Re:How is this news?

[wavecoder]

Okay, at the risk of hurting my "karma"...

One has to ask oneself, here, why one really expects to be part of a community of open source developers when the project in question is run by a for-profit company and there are thousands of people who want to help and think they can.

What I'm saying is, with the decision to split Fedora from the core product lines, Red Hat essentially removed their own motive for expending huge amounts of time in evaluating user input, particularly user-submitted code.

It's simple economics: where's the money in it? "User loyalty," you say. Really? Aren't Fedora users the ones who don't need RH Enterprise or just don't want to pay for anything? Seems to me that they're the same ones who, if they convince an employer to go OSS, will also try to do it all themselves, to avoid "evil" licensing fees.

It seems to me that Red Hat is just looking out for number 1 by not spending huge amounts of time with non-paying users; even when those users have valid input, the time involved in building a trusted developer base makes it prohibitive.

Comments?

-Ed

Re:-1 Troll - Do you even know how Debian works???

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"RedHat et. al need to meet release deadlines because they have to shove out "the latest and greatest" to make $$$. Debian has no such problems - that's why Debian Stable puts all other distros to shame when it comes to reliability and stability. It may not have all the whiz-bangs, but it is *_rock solid_*."

RedHat makes no money on Fedora whatsoever. Fedora essentially *is* "RedHat Unstable". RedHat's stable line is their bread-and butter.

"Debian has no such problems - that's why Debian Stable puts all other distros to shame when it comes to reliability and stability."

I have had no problems with Fedora Core 1 with either reliability or stability. My system has been up for months without issue.

"It is rock solid. No holes, no bugs, nothing."

Bullshit. Software *always* has bugs, and it *always* has security holes.

"Debian has a *VERY* firm concept of a release - that is, a Debian relase is *STABLE*."

Translation: Debian doesn't regularly release with fresh packages. Their only releases are filled with stale packages like GNOME 1.4 and KDE 2. Their "testing" release is actually an ongoing release which constantly changes.

Sorry, Debian nuts. Your favorite distro frankly sucks from a business sense.

If you want to run modern packages in a business setting, Debian makes it far more difficult to keep every system in sync. With Fedora, you can run Fedora Core 1 on every system and recieve security updates as they are released - just as you can with Windows. With Debian, you have to run Stable if you want a single set of packages with only security upgrades.

The whole "Stable"/"Unstable"/"Testing" thing runs completely counter to the rest of the industry. Microsoft releases a new OS every few years and then only releases incremental bug-fixes and security upgrades. Thus, when you are running "Windows XP", you are running a specific set of packages with a specific configuration system and specific interface. How is a business supposed to get support for "Debian Unstable"? Are they supposed to thell the support company the versions of every package on their system? What if they want to get security upgrades without signifigantly changing their system?

With Debian, a business would be forced to use Stable if they wanted a stable, supported platform. Unfortunately, stable is filled with old packages. Fedora Core 1 is tested and stable. You can call up LinuxCare (or another corporation), tell them that you are using "Fedora Core 1", and get support for configuration and other issues. You can't do that with Debian Unstable.

"That said, this is why most people in the know *do* run Debian Unstable and apt-get update && upgrade daily, because it is desktop where stability is not as mission critical."

You just admitted that Debian's releases are so old that people "in the know" are using an unstable release. With Fedora, you get a tested, polished release with modern software. There isn't a need to worry about your packages changing (or not working) tomorrow because you ran "apt-get update && upgrade". You can get security patches and still keep everything the way it is.

Re:Funny and scarry [but definately true]

[tyler_larson]

If you want to develop a new tool and have have the bazaar dev model work like ESR told us all it should, then Fedora is a great place. I remember when Fedora was first getting started, I offered to start development on a much needed tool, and I got no less that 7 different offers for help from other non-RH participants in just a week. The prospect of having your tool built under the oversight of RedHat, and almost guarantee that it will be included in the distro is enough already to get all the outside support you need. Fedora was a brilliant idea. It was executed horribly, however.

Offical support and direction was difficult to come by. "Read the docs," they said, but there was precious little written about how we were to proceed. Common questions were: how should we communicate, where should we host the project, how do we best get our product to integrated into the RH environment. All the "offical" Fedora components were hosted on RedHat's own CVS server and had entries in RedHat's official Bugzilla site. What about our project? We're writing for Fedora, for RedHat. We were even given the go-ahead by RH staff. Now when do we get CVS and Bugzilla? We want to start building here.

RedHat staff has been "very busy" trying to answer our questions and satisfy our reasonable requests. Apparently there's red tape everywhere--legal and logistical issues enough to make a man cry. Stuff can be fixed, but it takes time.

We sit and twiddle our thumbs hoping for some answers. Status updates are few and generally cryptic. RedHat is still "very, very busy" and is apparently making progress.

In the mean time, other commitments have commanded my time and I've had to abandon my post as a Fedora developer--at least for now. Now I look back and wonder how much I actually got to contribute.

It was a wonderful environment. Your work was almost guaranteed to be included in the distro (assuming you were filling a posted need). And I, a nameless nobody in the Linux world, had on multiple occasions asked questions and gotten prompt, insightful answers from both Eric Raymond and Alan Cox. I really felt like I was doing something important.

But the delays and disorganization, good heavens. What frustration is was to try to get any offical assistance or direction from RedHat. Their developer support infrastructure was nonexistant at best. To borrow an old metaphor, they were building a passenger jet in the air with Fedora, and we the passengers expected to be joining something a little more ..erm.. functional than we experinced.

Fedora's not a bad idea. It's a great idea. I was (and still am) fairly excided about the whole prospect. But it would have been nice if RedHat had prepared itself and built some sort of support system before bringing the rest of us on board.