CentOS Administrator Reappears

str8edge sends word that Lance Davis, the CentOS project administrator who had mysteriously gone absent, has now returned and is working with the development team to get things back on track. From their announcement: "The CentOS Development team had a routine meeting today with Lance Davis in attendance. During the meeting a majority of issues were resolved immediately and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for remaining unresolved issues. There should be no impact to any CentOS users going forward. The CentOS project is now in control of the CentOS.org and CentOS.info domains and owns all trademarks, materials, and artwork in the CentOS distributions. We look forward to working with Lance to quickly complete all the agreed upon issues. More information will follow soon."

Comments

damn

[ionix5891]

and i was about to fork CentOS into PennyOS

Re:damn

[mrsteveman1]

You might have better luck with EurOS lately

Re:damn

[Linker3000]

VamOS would be more appropriate!?

Appalachian Trail

[yoghurt]

Hiking that Appalachian trail can be tricky. I hear it goes all the way to Argentina.

Re:Appalachian Trail

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Kidnapped by space aliens; managed to escape when they neglected to secure the Dilithium Crystal Hatch.

3. My grandmother died. No, not the one that died six months ago, or the one that died a year before that; this was my *biological* grandmother.

4. Didn't realize the batteries on my beeper died.

5. Met an old classmate from Yale, who gave me GHB and tried to induct me into the Skulls organization. Managed to escape by commandeering a single shell and out-rowing their eight-man shell.

6. Just came back from the Tour de France; found it tough to compete when you refuse doping.

7. Dog ate the Post-It notes.

8. Just came back from central Africa, where I was building makeshift shelters and administering medical supplies in the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. How was the last couple weeks for y'all?

Re:Appalachian Trail

[Martin Blank]

4. Didn't realize the batteries on my beeper died.

You put batteries in yours?

More likely

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Lance realized this very public oops wasn't going to do anything for his future employment prospects. A shame it had to come to that, but sometimes you need to upgrade from a feather to a cattle prod to get results.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, you do have a point. I don't think I'll be using CentOS for anything mission critical going forward either.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Me neither! My mission critical servers are too important to trust to open source. I am switching everything to Windows.

Re:More likely

[PixelSmack]

I totally agree, unfortunately i administer a few centOS boxes at work. This will be bought up and i will argue for moving to a more open community distro which is a shame because i quite like centOS - however if it can not be relied upon like that it just looks bad.

Re:More likely

[Vellmont]

And CentOS relying on one person for as much as seemingly their very existence (by their own tone over this issue) has absolutely guaranteed that I will never use CentOS for anything important.

If by "CentOS" you're talking about the Centos.org domain and some IRC channels, you're right. If by "CentOS" you mean updating and developing the operating system, you're wrong. Any open source project is always about the developers behind it. There are many developers involved in this project, and the project itself isn't dependent any any one of them.

My guess is the thing you care about is the OS and not a domain name. Drawing conclusions from tone and not facts is just a bad practice in general.

Re:More likely

[sabernet]

"relying on one person for as much as seemingly their very existence"

Ssssh! Do you want to start a flamewar with the Apple fans too?

....sorry, had to :)

Re:More likely

[operator_error]

The philosophy that has been applied to Debian development has served it well over the years. Consider using either it, or a derivative like Ubuntu. Since I have chosen this path, I've had no regrets.

This is a complete debacle for CentOS.

Re:More likely

[Attila Dimedici]

And CentOS relying on one person for as much as seemingly their very existence (by their own tone over this issue) has absolutely guaranteed that I will never use CentOS for anything important. This entire thing should never have been news in the first place for two reasons: 1. If the health of the company and their product is absolutely dependent on the well being of Lance, then they should have done everything they could to keep this story quiet, as it is embarrassing. 2. A cranky engineer screwing off for a few days is common enough that it was a non-story to begin with.

Ok, I'm not real familiar with everything that is going on. However, it appears that this happened as a result of the rest of the CentOS development team pushing Lance to work with them in setting things up so that they weren't absolutely dependent on him. He appears to have been resisting this step.
Rather than saying, "Too bad, CentOS is my baby and I'm not giving up control" he appears to have said, "Yeah, you're right. We need to have backups and I'll get you an accounting of the money we've raised." Then he never took any of the steps that would have allowed that to actually happen. When the phone calls and emails from the rest of the development team got insistent, he just stopped answering the phone or his emails.

Re:More likely

[Linker3000]

Do you not think that the issues at the heart of your (very valid) concerns are now being addressed - albeit a little later than they should have been?

I think the situation with CentOS's command and control structure merits monitoring for a short while to see how things settle down.

FWIW I have around 10 servers running various versions of CentOS and am keeping an eye on developments.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, RedHat ES is only $349 a year. You could just migrate to RedHat ES and enjoy full support while still having the same features and environment as CentOS...

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

I have only ever used CentOS for associated Dev/Test/QA of our production environment and other various machines needed to support the environment. CentOS never had a chance of making it into the actual mission critical environment. I love CentOS and if it were my decision and mine alone it might have, but RedHat has the backing of a large company with much money and time to support what they deliver. Management insists on paid support for the prod environment. Whether or not we have ever actually used support is not important. We/I have never calleed RedHat support for anything ever. I guess it is what allows them to sleep at night.

Re:More likely

[Macka]

1. If the health of the company and their product is absolutely dependent on the well being of Lance, then they should have done everything they could to keep this story quiet, as it is embarrassing.

They did. Washing your dirty laundry in public is never pleasant, but in this case they needed to find a way to get Lance to engage and had run out of options. Shining a public spotlight on him seems to have done the trick, so it was the correct move.

2. A cranky engineer screwing off for a few days is common enough that it was a non-story to begin with

They've been trying to resolve this quietly for about a year and they were getting no where.

And CentOS relying on one person for as much as seemingly their very existence (by their own tone over this issue) has absolutely guaranteed that I will never use CentOS for anything important.

Hm, I smell the fresh scent of manure in the air. From your tone I'd bet that you never have used CentOS for anything important, or you wouldn't be so quick to give it up. Not that this is going to be an issue for much longer, which makes your objection pointless.

Re:More likely

[iggymanz]

you're a little late. now the project domains, artwork, materials, trademarks are under control of project team (which were the people who's product you were using) and not Lance anymore. And by the way the issues were ongoing for *months* not weeks. So you weren't really paying attention anyway, and not until a slashdot news article did you even know what was going on. Your servers might be in danger, but not from Centos. More like your lax attitude.....

Re:More likely

[jjohnson]

Your loss.

First, the existence of the project was never in doubt, and it didn't all depend on Lance--he owned the domain and had access to the PayPal accounts. Important bits, but not at all project-threatening.

Second, CentOS isn't created by a company, it's created by a set of volunteers relying on donated hardware and time. If Lance was found in a ditch, they'd create a new domain name and a new PayPal account, and continue as before with no disruption to the distribution.

It's regrettable that they had to resort to public pressure to get Lance to hand over those parts for which he was solely in control, but they did it, and it worked, and they'll go forward with the foundation setup that works so well for a variety of other OSS projects.

Re:More likely

[jjohnson]

What's not to rely on? The distribution itself was never in danger. The only thing Lance controlled was the domain name, some IRC channels, and the PayPal account. Now Lance has handed those things over, and they'll move forward with a foundation to control the project.

Re:More likely

[ZorbaTHut]

1. If the health of the company and their product is absolutely dependent on the well being of Lance, then they should have done everything they could to keep this story quiet, as it is embarrassing.

Quality developers care more about the quality of their product than about a little bit of embarrassment. I would call this a mark in their favor - they care so much about CentOS that, if it's the only option remaining, they're willing to publicly drag themselves into the spotlight to solve a major problem.

On the other hand, if you'd rather give money to a classic not-our-fault everything-is-fine the-ship-is-not-sinking oh-btw-we're-bankrupt company, which would always choose the least embarrassing option even when it means the death of the company and all its products . . .

. . . well, then I suppose you'll get exactly what you hope for.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

you should know that when /.'ers say things like "I'd never use that for anything important" they mean either they wouldn't install it on the slack box they have set up with 6 years uptime on it or they would never use it to find/download/store pr0n.

It's been my experience that most people who say things about not trusting this or that to mission critical production environments are not actually in any position to chose what happens in a production environment or are in fact not in need of any sort of production environment being as they don't actually *do* anything.

Re:More likely

[noidentity]

So now that he's back, the development team has promptly ensured that he won't be a single point of failure in the future by giving other developers the same access as him, right? Right???

Re:More likely

[yttrstein]

Here's how you deal with the Lance situation, if what you're saying is true:

You fire him before his immaturity costs the company any money, which seems to in this case be about a year ago.

So you break open the servers and the code that runs them and its a pain in the ass. Keeping an immature brat on as the "main web guy" is insane, as there are so many very talented "main web guys" currently looking for work. Give the job to someone who appreciates it, and grow some balls.

Re:More likely

[Bandman]

As soon as I heard about the management practices at CentOS, I immediately began shopping around for another distro.

I've so far come to the conclusion that if I stick with RH based distros, I'll probably go with Scientific Linux, and if I make the break, it'll be Ubuntu Server.

Of course, CentOS can keep my loyalty by immediately implementing a large amount of transparency in their operations. I wish this had been brought to light much earlier, but hopefully it will the the catalyst that fixes things over there. I really don't want to have to redeploy 70 servers.

Re:More likely

[MoralHazard]

OK, how the hell did the parent poster get modded to +5, informative? He has the wrong facts on virtually EVERY important point. He could have read yesterday's Slashdot. article, or just Googled the damn story, but I guess he didn't have the time.

Let's correct his factual problems, shall we?

  1) The CENTOS organization is not a "company", nor is the distro a "product". It's an informally-organized open source project, and the Linux distro they produce isn't sold or supported for profit by the project, itself. (There are many other companies that do provide CENTOS support contracts, though, and some of the developers may own/work for some of those companies.)

  2) The health of the CENTOS distro and organization were never "absolutely dependent" on Lance Davis. He controlled the project's domain name registration, the Google AdWords account, and a few other important resources. But these were inconveniences, at worst: Had Lance not responded to the open letter, the rest of the developers would simply have registered a new domain name, set up new repos/wikis/blogs, and copied the project data over. Lance would have been forgotten as the speed bump that he was. (And if Lance breaks his promises AGAIN and fails meet the latest deadlines, this is what we'll see happen.)

  3) Lance Davis didn't "screw off for a few days"--over the course of a year, he repeatedly made and broke promises, and failed to either provide accounting for the project's finances or to turn the relevent logins over to other group members. Then, he just stopped returning phone calls and emails, and he quit attending real-life and IRC meetings. Meanwhile, the Google AdWords account was raking in a few thousand dollars per month, and to all outward appearances, it looked a lot like Lance was just taking it for himself.

THE REAL STORY:

The lack of a formal structure (a la nonprofit incorporation, like Fedora or Debian) seems to be CENTOS's biggest problem, and the community's perception of this dispute does cloud the project's future. But like any open-source project, it's impossible for one person to be anything more than an inconvenience.

  * The source code repos and packages are globally mirrored by dozens of independent organizations, and Lance Davis never had control over any of them.

  * Domain registration, hosting, and such are cheap--even if some of the AdWords money were misappropriated, the developers could still pass the hat and/or offload bandwidth to the mirror providers. Hell, they could always move to SourceForge for free, if they were really desperate.

  * As long as the CENTOS core community learns its lesson, here, they can recover and grow stronger than before. They need to incorporate as a not-for-profit foundation, establish a board of directors, executive roles, accounting practices, and all the other structural crap that goes with it. It's not a trivial amount of work (in the US, at least--I don't know about the UK), but this episode demonstrates why successful, influential, long-lived F/OSS groups like the GNU, Debian, etc. have all decided to go this route.

Finally, on a personal note, I would like to ask yttrstein why he feels compelled to burden the rest of us with his un-informed opinions on this topic. He could have easily researched the issue, in about 5 or 10 minutes, and perhaps contributed something worth reading.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop overreacting, already. You sound like a typical juvenile who's response to any disruption in a business is "OMG!!1 Fire teh id10t!". Thankfully, the real world doesn't work like that, and canning otherwise useful people over non-catastrophic issues is counterproductive to your goals.

Re:More likely

[Bandman]

The problem of this is scale. Especially for a small company like mine, where we don't have the budget to put out an extra few thousand per server, especially now that virtualization is the new hotness.

I admin a network that is on the large side of small.....50-70 servers, both physical and virtual. That's going to be around $18k-$19k per year for the infrastructure. No way will that work with our budget. So we run CentOS, which is (supposedly) as stable as RHEL and has full binary compatibility with it. We just don't have support from Redhat, and apparently we're at the mercy of stuff like this happening.

Re:More likely

[Bandman]

I think you're probably right. The manner in which this was brought to light probably guarantees that CentOS won't have this problem again. But yes, I'll be watching too.

Re:More likely

[Albanach]

Does RedHat really require a separate license for each VM?

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server licenses per CPU - with multi-core CPUs counting as a single processor. A three year multi-processor license is about $1000 so you're paying $333 per year per box, even if it's a quad CPU box with 16 cores running 20 individual VM hosts.

Re:More likely

[Tubal-Cain]

Does RedHat really require a separate license for each VM?

RHEL is supported for up to 4 VMs and 2 sockets ('Benefits' tab at the bottom). RHELAP, on the other hand, has no such limitations.

Re:More likely

[richlv]

are you trolling or just plain stupid ?
you have no idea about the basic facts regarding the thing you are commenting on.
i'd expect most slashdot readers to know what centos is, even if they haven't ever used it themselves (like me). i would expect the rest to go and quickly find out, especially before commenting.
hint - centos is an opensource project.

Re:More likely

[MsGeek]

Debian is your friend.

Re:More likely

[ckaminski]

Didn't Linux go through this same thing way back in the day when Linus was the gatekeeper of all and sundry?

Re:More likely

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

Finally, on a personal note, I would like to ask yttrstein why he feels compelled to burden the rest of us with his un-informed opinions on this topic. He could have easily researched the issue, in about 5 or 10 minutes, and perhaps contributed something worth reading.

He's probably 12 years old or 45 and lives in his mom's basement. His mindless gurgle resulted in your interesting post, so perhaps he'll learn something before his 8pm scheduled online/pr0n wank session...

Re:More likely

[jez9999]

Finally, on a personal note, I would like to ask yttrstein why he feels compelled to burden the rest of us with his un-informed opinions on this topic. He could have easily researched the issue, in about 5 or 10 minutes, and perhaps contributed something worth reading.

You must be new here.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Some moron will rate you funny but that'd be a lot more safe than CentOS right now.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu has the backing of Canonical, and paid support is available if you need it - I don't see why people'd want to pay for it before they need it though.

Re:More likely

[jjohnson]

All mature OSS software does. It always starts with a key person (or a few key people). The ones that survive and become mature are the ones that gain their independence from those key people through a co-operative coup where the leaders abdicate and hand over control to a committee/foundation.

Re:More likely

[thetoadwarrior]

Not really. CentOS never would have went away. Who cares if it would have had to get a new domain name and change a few other things. It's not like the guy was doing all the work himself and no one else could ever replace him.

Re:More likely

[bennomatic]

I'm an Apple fanboi, and I think this is both funny and insightful, although a little bit funnier than it is insightful, just because Tim Cook seemed to do a pretty good job at the helm for a few months.

As sad as it will be when Jobs retires, even sadder when he passes, it is certainly possible, maybe even probable, that the passing of the torch will not be the gelding of the company. Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch.

Re:More likely

[gilgongo]

This is a complete debacle for CentOS.

Amen to that. I now feel have no choice but to spurn CentOS as I would spurn a rabid dog.

Re:More likely

[jfp51]

Yes because the switch-over to whatever the 'new' distribution would have been called would have been so complicated, I mean the developers even stated in the open letter that: "(...)hot machines exist to allow for a cutover with a simple one time installation of one RPM package." Debacle indeed...

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

$349 * 150 boxes = $52350
$50000 = full time sysadmin wage
$2350 = useful donation to CentOS

You could just migrate to CentOS and enjoy somebody managing your boxes full-time whilst having better support than RedHat ES

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a complete debacle for CentOS.

Yea, sort of like when Ubuntu rolls out another broken upgrade whilst yelling 'We're leading edge! We're the coolest!' Debian's been good, but we're moving core machines to FreeBSD now that the 5.x lesson has been learned. The recent releases peg out very nicely indeed.

Re:More likely

[Bandman]

But each of the hosted VMs needs their own license, as I understand it. I could be mistaken.

Re:More likely

[itzdandy]

except that the distro was not in jeopardy, just the domain. CentOS could have simply morphed into MentOS(My Enterprise OS hahaha) or LentOS(Linux entOS) etc etc.

Also, you can convert CentOS into RHEL so if you really needed to jump ship you could ask google.

Re:More likely

[jawtheshark]

Not really... They kick out drivers where the firmware need to be uploaded.... That's fine for a laptop, but when I'm installing blades, I don't want to mess with firmware and have to create new initrd's just because.

Re:More likely

[itzdandy]

I wouldnt say that is true. Apple can be a company without Stevo, they just cant be a profitable one. They would certainly exist and the would exist simply for PeeCee users to mock like we did when Jobs was of running Next. I miss the days of mocking apples, go away steve!

Re:More likely

[itzdandy]

Apple - Jobs = (company in the RED)

Seriously, Jobs is apple. His name might as well be Steve Apple or the company Jobs Computer.

Re:More likely

[Klivian]

As CentOS is a repackage of RHEL, you should have at least one RHEL license if you are doing anything close to mission critical. If you get a problem on one of your CentOS servers, you can recreate it on your RHEL server, and get support from RedHat. Subsequently when the bug gets fixed, also get the fix for your CentOS servers.

For anything mission critical it's insane not to do that, otherwise you are gambling that not only some random RedHat customer get the same problem as you, but also that they report it so it has a chance to get fixed.

And in case you get a problem on CentOS that do not exist on RHEL, I'm betting the CentOS developers are quick to help fix the issues.

Re:More likely

[itzdandy]

Debian is my Linux *Server* distro of choice. Ubuntu is great for 2 years or so, but after a LTS expires you start to loose apt repositories. This seems to imply that server hardware and software deployments should only last 3 years or something. What ubuntu gets wrong in the server department is that they provide 3 years of support for a distro FROM RELEASE DAY instead of 3 years support from retirement day. If you run u6.04LTS, it should be retired when 8.04 comes out and have 3 more years of support. How many people are really installing their server on day one??

Go debian for servers, ubuntu for desktops. I do like CentOS simple because so much linux software is well supported on RHEL and theirfore CentOS and because it really is a nice, solid OS.

I will continue to support CentOS despite this.

Oh, and SLES being owned by Novell is just plain wrong. I would touch SLES with Lance Davis' d1ck.

Re:More likely

[rohan972]

Amen to that. I now feel have no choice but to spurn CentOS as I would spurn a rabid dog.

With a load of buckshot? That's a bit harsh!

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Any open source project is always about the developers behind it.

Yeah, RedHat wasn't going anywhere.

ducks

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

But I can use that 10 * $349/year for other important things.

Re:More likely

[hairyfeet]

What irks me is I RTFA (yes I know, but I got bored AND curious, which is a bad combo) and it doesn't explain the question on everyone's mind: WTF happened with Lance? Was he blowing the cash to pay for his own stuff, or maybe his business was failing? Did he get hit by a car, or just quit giving a crap? WTF was going on there?

I don't blame anybody that wanted to run away from CentOS like the clap after this mess. First the publish that "open letter", drawing attention the how badly run the org was, and now that Lance has finally walked through the door and handed them some titles they just want to act like it was another day at work. WTF? IMHO the CentOS guys started this with that "open letter" crap and now they need to finish it by coming forward and telling what the hell was really going on, and none of that Sanford style "hiking the trail" crap. I'm wondering if there wasn't some fraud and pocketing of funds, because something smells at CentOS. How they expect anybody to trust them after this little stunt is beyond me.

Re:More likely

[digitalchinky]

I would suggest you walk up to any random person you see with an Apple product and ask if they've ever heard of one Mr Steve Jobs, even better, try this in any country that is not the USA. Nobody cares who created the 'look', just that it exists and is in limited quantity with high demand so they can look cool in starbucks or wherever, the same as everyone else :-)

Re:More likely

[jjohnson]

I doubt you'll hear about what happened to Lance, in part because I doubt it was anything more than Lance wanting not to deal with his CentOS obligations after doing it for many years. It sounds like he was just ignoring them, and the speed with which he appeared and surrendered the key properties implies that he was never seriously prevented from participating.

Also, resolving the issue means getting the key properties back, and repairing the damage caused by the open letter, which was IMHO necessary to resolve it. If they slag off Lance after this, they're re-opening a wound freshly closed. If this is all there is to it, and they keep up their release schedule, then six months from now this will all be forgotten.

Of course, all bets are off if there's malfeasance with the PayPal money. I imagine, though, that they need Lance's co-operation to get that handed over, and they're trying to do it nicely.

Re:More likely

[setagllib]

For servers it's 5 years, which is more than reasonable for Ubuntu's target market. Desktops are obsolete after 6 months, saying nothing of 3 years. An LTS comes out every 1.5-2 years so at worst you get 3 years of server support for the old LTS while deploying the new LTS. If that's not long enough, your management infrastructure is probably a much bigger problem than your support contracts.

Re:More likely

[SIGBUS]

CentOS could have simply morphed into MentOS

Just don't spill Diet Coke on your server!

Re:More likely

[Albanach]

Yes, it seems that RedHat have a limit to the number of VMs allowed per license, with some licenses covering four redhad instances and some covering ten.

That makes Suse a lot more competitive for those running lots of VMs and using software that is certified on it. It is licensed on a server basis and you can run as many SLES VMs as your hardware can cope with.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy one RH support license. I have had RH support tell me they turn a blind eye to this in deference to SOHO and non-prof limitations.

Re:More likely

[itzdandy]

I guess I dont understand why your comment is below my post? I dont deny your statement but I didnt really say the people buy apple because they know steve jobs is there.

I'm saying that people buy apple because of what Steve does, the policies he pushes, the style he demands. People dont care who inovates, and who designs stylish products. Steve makes Apple the go to place for stylish computers.

Re:More likely

[Mozk]

or LentOS

Wouldn't people just give it up faster then?

Re:More likely

[ADRA]

The fact that you're concerned over this merits the thought that you should really be investing into a commercial offering of the product, say Redhat Enterprise. I doubt they'll be walking away any time soon. This is just business, really. If you want -confidence- in who you're buying from, then don't pay for fly-by-night operations. CentOS is open source, and nobody (or not many) people get payed to stay around and keep the machine running. I love open source, and I love using OSS developed technologies, but you must realize that there could be a day in the unknown future that said OSS vendor XYZ won't be around anymore. What is your contingency if the CentOS community just decided to stop making releases / updates?

Re:More likely

[itzdandy]

excuse me for not jumping on the newest release for my server deployments.

look at the release cycle. for 8.04 it starts mid '08 and ends mid '13. The problem here is that the next LTS is mid '10. So what if you need a server in February '10? you install 8.04 and get just 2 years of support. Also, it is a common enough practice to not install a new server release until it hits its first update/service pack. On ubuntu that is 6 months and that is were serious sysadmins will start installing it for production.

Also consider that by february '10 the old LTS is getting pretty long in the tooth which means that your brand new server may not even run the *CURRENT* LTS release. There is a gap here. need a backported kernel in there around the odd year october release.

This is not just theory. I have been forced to run 7.04 instead of 6.04LTS because of hardware support. I have a 6.04LTS that was install in early '08 and am now looking at the end of updates on it in a year and a half. They litterally shut down the apt repos and you cant even install old packages.

To clarify my issue here:
ubuntu does not include enough DOT releases. They stop doing dot releases when the next LTS comes out when they should do these releases through the next LTS. The example here is to not stop at 6.04.4 just because 8.04.1 came out. Run up to 6.04.06 with the .05 and .06 one per year. If you need a 2 year schedule on the LTS release then you should support for 6 years to fill the potential gap at the end of an LTS cycle.

This way setting up a server near the end of an LTS cycle will still get you 2 years of dot updates.

btw, LTS comes out every 2 years on the dot. get it?, 8.04 is 2008 April.

And 3 years is a very low, very non-typical lifespan of a server and the majority of companies. I routinely see servers running RedHat9 and later which is 6 years and unix systems that were deploy in the last century. I dont expect updates to support new hardware, but keeping the old repos online and providing security patches for more that 3 years is important.

I think that the markets speaks clearly for me on this. Redhat completely dominates the linux server market. Ubuntu may be a heavy hitter on the linux desktop but it does not in the server market despite better genetics(debian) than redhat.

For me, everyone at the local LUG, and many people around the internet, ubuntu's server release cycle is close but not close enough. extend support 1 year and add a couple more dot release, even if you push those to 1 per year instead of 2.

If ubuntu does that, solid gold. seriously, ubuntu is a great server OS for a few years and then it becomes difficult to maintain staying within the package manager and not having to switch to source for updates.

I would also point out that running a non LTS for a server is just about server suicide. Where talking access to repos for 18 months then nothing. apt spits out errors for missing files.

Re:More likely

[itzdandy]

I think that is some sort of sideways analogy to overclocking your server. Im not sure how the physics work but it probably involves 17 dimensions.

Re:More likely

[itzdandy]

more like take a hiatus for 40 days. interesting enough, it seems like maybe Lance is well ahead of us on LentOS with his recent hiatus.

Re:More likely

[Martin Blank]

CentOS is in production use on more than three dozen servers where I work, and I have friends at IT support companies that support hundreds of CentOS servers across dozens of clients. It has made it into mission-critical environments, and it's quite popular there because relatively few people want to pay Red Hat's prices, and because most third-party companies write for RHEL.

Re:More likely

[hairyfeet]

And if there IS malfeasance with the PayPal money, would you trust CentOS if they pull this "everything is okay now, ignore what we said before" attitude? Because to me one of the things that makes FLOSS attractive is the "openness" of it. Pretty much everything from Linus' feelings on the direction of the kernel on up is out there ready to be read if you simply take the time to look.

And as we have seen from previous posts there are quite a few out there not only donating to CentOS, but also using it in production environments. Even a humble PC fixit guy like myself knows that trust is one of the hardest things to gain and the easiest to lose, especially if folks smell something shady. After all, if it turns out Lance was shady enough to take the Paypal cash and pocket it, what other shady things might he have done? Can you trust code put out by somebody that just "disappears" like that or by an org that acts like they just want to forget the whole thing once they get their way?

IMHO the trust of CentOS has been blown by Lance, and if they want to remain popular they had better come clean and do it fast. Because right now after this whole affair the entire org has a kind of shady undercurrent to it. And I don't know about you but I would not want anything to do with CentOS anything until they have come clean with what has been going on, along with some kind of explanation of where the donations went to. Right now the whole org has a fishy smell to it IMHO, and gaining control of the CentOS domain has done nothing to make that fishy smell go away.

Re:More likely

[jjohnson]

I agree that whether or not they recover depends a lot on what happened to the PayPal money. If Lance didn't steal it, it should all be there or accountably spent, and presumably the next committee in charge will make that public. If he did steal the money, and they publicize that as well (along with criminal charges), that'll also go a ways towards earning back some trust.

But I just can't figure why people here are freaking out about this so much. Embezzling donations is far less common in significant OSS projects than simple people drama causing a flurry of e-drama. And at the end of the day, as others here have observed, anyone using CentOS in the first place isn't (or shouldn't be) counting on a rock solid project that'll never self-destruct or go away. If that level of certainty is that important to you, you buy Red Hat or SuSE. You don't count on a free project where things like this can (and frequently do) happen.

Re:More likely

[Swoopy]

"But like any open-source project, it's impossible for one person to be anything more than an inconvenience."

Tell that to the former users of ReiserFS, why don't you?

Re:More likely

[the_womble]

You mean you were using it for mission critical stuff while they had this dependency on one person, but now that the problem is being fixed you are going to stop using it for mission critical stuff?

Re:More likely

[hairyfeet]

Well I can't speak for myself, since I am just a humble fixit guy and not a Linux Guru, but I think the whole buzz around CentOS in the first place was admins wanting to eat their cake and have it too. I do have a few Linux server Guru types from my school days and talking to them and their friends they prefer the Red Hat way of doing things and toolkit over Debian. With CentOS they thought they could have the RHEL tools that they love, without shelling out the big bucks (compared to the many free Debian based server distros) for RHEL.

This episode just goes to prove IMHO why you need to buy from a corporation as opposed to running a free community distro for mission critical infrastructure. Because corporations like RH simply have their "shit together" when compared to the community based and they don't seem to have the "e-drama"(I'll have to remember that word. Thanks!) of the community based. Plus having a corporation to bitch at as opposed to a mailing list is always of the good.

It just goes to prove that you shouldn't go cheapskate with mission critical gear. If you want reliable and drama free, step up and pay the piper. After all RHEL is still cheaper than WinServer as you don't have to deal with the CAL mess, right?

Re:More likely

[treat]

You know, RedHat ES is only $349 a year. You could just migrate to RedHat ES and enjoy full support while still having the same features and environment as CentOS...

The support is useless in most cases. With 1000 servers, you're talking about a lot of money.

Re:More likely

[Provocateur]

He didn't want to wear the costume, that's all. In fact, first thing he did was slam it on the meeting table. He felt that it was too X-Meny and that the project won't be taken seriously if they were to make business presentations dressed like that. So he went back to his yellow and blue tights with the retractable silver claws.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic signs of someone who is undergoing Major Depression.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

We use a combination of RHEL and Ubuntu. RHEL so we can truthfully tell third party vendors (hi, Oracle) that the software is running on one of their "supported platforms", and Ubuntu for everything else, because it's so much more pleasant to work with than RHEL.

CentOS? Don't make me laugh! That gets you the downsides of Enterprise (few features and annoying to work with) without the advantages (support from the vendor, and the aforementioned "supported platform").

Re:More likely

[Hognoxious]

What is your contingency if the CentOS community just decided to stop making releases / updates?

Use one of the other distros that are debranded & recompiled versions from "a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor". Compile your own from the source supplied - as mandated under the GPL - by the aforementioned PNAELV.

Or fork out the dough to, ummm, Red Hat.

Re:More likely

[jjohnson]

I'm sure that getting something for nothing is a large part of a lot of admin's reasons for choosing CentOS over RH, and why a lot of the complaining here about a bit of turmoil in the project seems hysterical. They're the ones who chose a distribution run by volunteers, and implicit in that is that you might have to deal with stuff like this. They gambled on having no drama, and they lost. But all that means is that they might have to do some work to cover for the ups and downs of the project. If you spreadsheeted it all out, it's probably still worth it for a lot of them.

And really, if you ran several mission critical systems with CentOS, what would you have to do right now? Nothing. The core team is still in place, having seized control from a laggard volunteer. The schedule is still in place (and has been all through Lance's absence). The worst case is that CentOS freezes where it is, and one follows updates of RH to determine if one needs to do something while planning for an orderly migration--or simply signing up for the support agreement they were trying to avoid in the first place.

I've worked with customers who have large, mission critical systems, and the idea that they need a vendor who can constantly stream updates and fixes is a bit of a joke for most of them, because their IT best practices dictate an update process that makes even quarterly updates difficult at best. Most of them simply wait for a huge emergency update and make it cumulative, because it's too much trouble to do otherwise.

Re:More likely

[Wdomburg]

Erm, the project wasn't relying on him. If he hadn't resurfaced about the only real repercussion would have been moving to a new domain name. Things have been running smoothly for a long time without his active participation.

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic signs of someone who is undergoing Major Depression.

This was also my first thought. I've been there. You *really* don't want those things to happen but they do, so it all builds up in a vicious circle.

Re:More likely

[genik76]

A product does not have to be something, which costs money - just a "thing produced by labor or effort" or a "result of an act or a process". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_(business)

Re:More likely

[Trongy]

If I recall correctly, Hans Reiser stopped working on ReiserFS and was working no Reiser4 for several years before he 'left the scene'.

Re:More likely

[pdusen]

Are you retarded?

Re:More likely

[Knara]

That's all well and good, but seriously. If it's mission critical, it should have some support from the vendor and it's worth shelling out some money for.

Re:More likely

[Bandman]

I must be...I'm not sure what you're getting at?

Did he...

[jsse]

reappear in front of the team one day, with bloodstain and mud all over his body, and yelled "I'm single, AGAIN!".

I wish...

[cardsinhand]

I could just disappear for awhile and come back acting like nothing happened.

Just another day at the office?

[LaminatorX]

If this is what constitutes a "routine meeting" for them, I'd shudder to think what an extraordinary meeting would be like.

Re:Just another day at the office?

[Lennie]

My guess is the CentOS-folk have routine meetings, but he is usually not present, now he was.

Re:Just another day at the office?

[xouumalperxe]

Or that this meeting was a routine meeting that was already scheduled before this shit hit the fan, and he showed up for it.

Two weeks

[MaizeMan]

He'd been invisible for more than two weeks. Once you're in a position of responsibility like that the longest you can disappear without making prior plans is maybe a long weekend. Which sucks because sometimes you're going to want to crawl into a hole and ignore what has gone wrong with the world but you don't have that freedom when people are counting on you.

Re:Two weeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Two weeks is also the time it takes for the CIA to fully grow a clone, according to some conspiracy theorists.

Re:Two weeks

[Macka]

No. According to the Open Letter from Ralph Angenendt that kick started all this Lance dropped off the CentOS radar sometime in 2008.

Re:Two weeks

[Coward Anonymous]

Unless you are hiking the Appalachians!

Re:Two weeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom from responsibility. It is the sweetest of freedoms. Cherish it if you have it.

Re:Two weeks

[markdavis]

Anyone that CARES about their role can take any time off they need/want. Just LET EVERYONE ELSE KNOW that you are going on vacation or sabbatical or whatever and when you are expected back. Communication is the key. Just "disappearing" without telling people is not suitable behavior for anyone- a parent, a friend, a SO, an employer, an employee, a government official, even a volunteer. It is just plain rude, immature, and inconsiderate.

Re:Two weeks

[GaryOlson]

I don't think the CentOS revenue sources or computing facilities are significant enough to finance a small CIA democracy promotional action.

Re:Two weeks

[Tubal-Cain]

Two weeks is also the time it takes for the CIA to fully grow a clone.

Ridiculous. A long lunch is plenty of time.

Re:Two weeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you read the article you just linked to? They had been trying to TELEPHONE him for two weeks, unsuccessfully. That was no doubt after countless months of trying to contact him by IRC, email, instant messenger, Twitter and Facebook.

Re:Two weeks

[Anonymous Coward]

I did read the link and I thought that if they really tried to contact him since 2008, that's what they would have written in the letter instead of mentioning 2 weeks by phone which sounds less impressive. But hey, I track down the letter in question, it doesn't mention 2008 as claimed, but some guy on slashdot still has "no doubt" so let's disregard the contradicting evidence and call it a day.

Re:Two weeks

[Macka]

I'm subscribed to the Planet CentOS feed in Google Reader. Shortly after the Open Letter was published this blog post appeared. It's authored by Ralph Angenendt who is one of the 8 signatories on the Open Letter. In this blog he says: "Lance vanished from the project some time in 2008".

Re:Two weeks

[Late Adopter]

You're no fun. You should meet my friend Donald Draper

I needed something to cheer me up

[Linker3000]

Good news.

Here I am in my sickbed writing rsync scripts for cross-site backups between CentOS-based servers, and seeing the headline made me smile, in-between fits of coughing.

If by some amazing chance Karanbir Singh see this - I promise to rack up the dual Itanium server for IA64 testing and dev as soon as I get back to work and clean up a few other outstanding issues.

Re:I needed something to cheer me up

[kbsingh]

Hey,

Awrite then, let me know when that IA64 machine comes online :D)

and hope coughing isnt too manic.

Re:I needed something to cheer me up

[Linker3000]

Ha - thanks for that. I'll live!!

Signed off at the moment so lots of time to 'do stuff' at home.

Two other 'urgent' projects crashed my plans for the Dell server but I'll let you know when I get back on track.

Glad to see things seem to be moving in the right direction for you and the rest of the core team.

Re:I needed something to cheer me up

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean CentOS IA64 is back under development?? Wow! Fedora 8 was getting painful.

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem with using Centos 64 bit on that laptop, is that it doesn't have a 64 bit processor, what with being 12 years old and all.

Just like in Mr Benn!

[bhunachchicken]

"As if by magic, the Cent OS Admin appeared."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Benn

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Ex-Linux-Fanboy]

Sorry, I meant to say "2007".

Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[rikrebel]

This whole story is unnerving.

CentOS is widely used in datacenters due to it's red-hattyness, it's Long Term Support, and conservative adoption of whizbang.

It's by far my favorite distrobution for important servers.

I have already had two meetings over this and had my team start their proposals for alternate LTS distros and a migration plan. I am sure I am not the only one.

If the CentOS project manages to remove this single point of failure I think confidence will return. But I think I'll keep my projects going for a while just in case.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[Anonymous Coward]

alternate LTS distros

Ubuntu. It's not going anywhere.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[jjohnson]

Isn't that just what this article is about? Lance Davis is AWOL for almost a year, the rest of the project publishes an open letter, Davis shows up and hands over the keys. What more resolution is needed?

In a way, this gives me some more confidence in CentOS, insofar as the rest of the admins were willing to "break glass in case of emergency" and deal with Davis' erratic leadership. They spent a long time trying to deal with it quietly and internally, but when it came down to it, they basically removed him the way all OSS projects end up doing it, with public pressure.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[Anonymous Coward]

Until Spaceman's money runs out or he decides to stop investing in it.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[slyborg]

You know, the credibility of all the handwringing about people using CentOS in mission critical deployments all upset about the maintainer gone missing is kind of undermined by the fact that it's, you know, free stuff that some guys put out there, and that, you know, you don't want to pay for so WHY IS IT ON AN IMPORTANT SERVER??

So maybe this CentOS dust-up is a good thing to make people wake up and realize that perhaps they really should be on Red Hat Enterprise, which has commercial support and is developed by a real company. This whole thing is more or less an ad for Red Hat and completely validates their business model. If I were an CIO, I would also be wandering down into the dungeon to ask the moles down there just how many CentOS/Fedora/etc. servers are running, and just what is on them....

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[rikrebel]

PFFT!

It's about money. No budget for Redhat.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[GaryOlson]

Yep, Ubuntu's single point of failure just like CentOS was.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[arcade]

Grow a pair of balls.

Seriously.

They did what they had to do, to get control over some important aspects of the project - while all the main developers were still behind it.

If you had bothered to spend about one minute researching the topics before you had meetings with "your team", you would have discovered that the developers openly said that everything would continue as before. Worst case scenario: They would've have to move the domain-name and get new IRC channels, plus they would have lost some donations.

That you overreacted like some crazy clown .. well, that's entirely your fault, and nobody elses.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[rikrebel]

I am responsible for an extremely sensitive real time transaction system.

My company operates in a bit of a panic mode due to the nature of the revenue flow. We ma*e contingency plans for even tiny things. The CEO is absolutely brutal over any thing that smells li*e ris*.

What really burns is the lac* of a decent budget.

It's called being prudent. And you can *iss my hairy balls.

* my "cay" *ey just bro*e. Cats + water glass with straw on des* = straw-now-cat-toy and wet *eyboard.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[RotateLeftByte]

Yeah but CentOS does not really have its own codebase that would need forking. Ok, I'm ignoring the 'branding' stuff they change from RHEL but otherwise, in the main, they use the SRPM's downloaded from RedHat.

AFAIK, you certainly can't say the same for the Debian/Ubunto codebase.
 

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the character map and copy+paste the 'k' instead? Or copy it from your username?

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[jez9999]

You suc*.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[rikrebel]

Hah! New keyboard revenge:

No, sir, *you* suck.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[arcade]

No, it is not being prudent - it is being panicky.

Contingency plans in this case is simple. If shit hits the fan bigtime and the entire CentOS stuff gets swallowed into the earth, well, then it's time to cough up money to pay redhat. And the good thing? No reinstallation needed.

CentOS is just RedHat recompiled, and lacking two files or somesuch. Rather great.

Seriously considering migrating to another distro completely, with all the work that would involve, doesn't seem prudent at all.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[WuphonsReach]

I have already had two meetings over this and had my team start their proposals for alternate LTS distros and a migration plan. I am sure I am not the only one.

It's always smart to reexamine things every year or three when it comes to decisions like that. It's also smart to keep abreast of the other options out there.

I'm still sticking with my rule of thumb. If it's directly involved in revenue earning, go corporate (i.e. RedHat/Windows on HP / IBM / Dell / BigCorp hardware) and pay for fast reaction time support. If you can limp along without it for a few hours or even longer, go with the less expensive option (CentOS/Debian on whitebox hardware).

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[Hognoxious]

I already downloaded the isos and stored them on my kindle. So I'm 100% safe, no way could anybody erase the from th@no carrier

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[Wdomburg]

There are multiple re-spin projects (the most prominent being Scientific Linux). Not hard to import new GPG keys and point at new repos. Or just build the SRPMS yourself. It's rarely more involved "rpmbuild --rebuild ". And of course there's always the last ditch option of ponying up for a RHEL license.

The project itself isn't a single point of failure.

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[pdusen]

Seriously, are you people completely braindead?

A guy in charge of the website and donations disappears for a while, and the project developers write an "open letter" to get his ass back in line.

There is absolutely no change in the development of the distro itself, which is the part you supposedly use.

Yet for some reason, you're pissed off? To the point of considering migration to other distros?

Who the fuck are you? This was a completely internal problem. Any consequences were, as well, completely internal.

The only reason you even heard about it was because the members used the power of the internet to get to a webmaster who wasn't paying attention.

So please, explain to me: How is your reaction even remotely rational?

Re:Great way to piss off LTS userbase.

[Ex-Linux-Fanboy]

Calm down. Seriously. You're not going to resolve whatever is going on in your personal life that makes all of your Slashdot postings angry flames (like the flame you gave me) by posting more flames to Slashdot. Figure out what is wrong in your life and fix it.

They better watch out

[asherlev]

He could have been replaced with a robot completely powered by C#, just like they did with Reagan in '81.

Re:They better watch out

[FlyingBishop]

That's absurd, C# wasn't released until 2000.

Everyone knows the Reagan-bot's software was written in Lisp.

Re:They better watch out

[iggymanz]

that's silly, Reagan *always* was a robot, that's how he took the bullets and bounced back. But he was programmed in COBOL with a VSAM back-end.

Re:They better watch out

[yossarianuk]

Well it seems that the Robot suffered from a memory leak...

CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[cenc]

Everyone will jump on this as proof that open source projects can not be trusted or relied on. Now, that may or may not be true. This instance really is not a poster child for problems with FOSS projects. We are talking about a project based on repackaging and rebranding a commercial distro. The heavy lifting is done by RH and other projects.

This should be food for thought however about other projects, which there are many many instances of FOSS project management issues leaving users high and dry because of political issues.

We really need some better organizational standards for FOSS project management, not just high quality code. Remember the segment of society we are talking about. They might be great at programing or whatever, but they rarely have the leadership and organization skills to handle a project once it reaches a critical mass of popularity or use.

One of the first things I have to do, after years of using FOSS, is look at the project and see how healthy it is before deciding to implement it in my biz. I have to do things like look at how many projects have derived work from it, who is contributing to it, how alive is the forum community both for developers and users, development cycles, and so on.

What we really need is some sort of organizational certification. Something that an end user of FOSS or other FOSS project can with one glance determine what is the status of the organization and the project. Especially the large important ones. Are there for example policies in place to handle the death of the head of the project? Is there a formal system for order of succession? Is there policy for archiving legacy code and related information?

The worse thing that can happen to a FOSS project is a cult of personality forming around just one person ( that is more than just PR).

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[iggymanz]

utter bullshit, proprietary corporations have exactly the same issues, and even with world-wide scandals a thousand times worse than this even with murders and spy intrigue. Mountains compared to this little anthill chickenshit issue.

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[cenc]

Really?

Yes, corporations have these problems also. When they don't deal with them, they go under. There is a reason why corporations sink so much time and money in to insuring they don't happen.

These problems however are not so much similar to the problems you find in companies, but problems you find in none-profit organizations of any stripe. Places where ego is basis for much of the personal incentive for getting involved. Spend some time on your average neighborhood NGO board of directors, and you will see the very similar things happen to their projects.

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[QuarkofNature]

At my company, we vet the software we use, both proprietary and FOSS, prior to using it in our systems. I think you raise some good points here...one thing I have observed is that our "standards" for doing this analysis are very commercial-company-centric.

The folks who do trade studies "get" how to look at company financials, strength, size, etc., to ensure that we aren't going down a bad path with a piece of proprietary software. Yet, in most cases, I see people at a loss of how to do equivalent analysis for FOSS products. It might be surprising to some people around here, but many still don't grasp just how different a developer-and-user community for a product is, compared to a corporation that produces software. And even for those of us who do understand the differences, it's still sometimes tricky to do a fair comparative analysis.

Just as the OSI has tried to formalize what open source means, and helps vet licenses to make it easier for people wanting to use FOSS software, it might be very useful to come up with some standard measures of the health of FOSS projects, and start gathering that data in one place for popular ones.

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the segment of society we are talking about. They might be great at programing or whatever, but they rarely have the leadership and organization skills to handle a project once it reaches a critical mass of popularity or use.

Sounds like you're talking about them there emby-yay dudes. Round these here parts they're considered as barely better than lawyers.

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[Abuzar]

Yes, corporations have these problems also. When they don't deal with them, they go under. There is a reason why corporations sink so much time and money in to insuring they don't happen.

These problems however are not so much similar to the problems you find in companies, but problems you find in none-profit organizations of any stripe. Places where ego is basis for much of the personal incentive for getting involved. Spend some time on your average neighborhood NGO board of directors, and you will see the very similar things happen to their projects.

Bullshit
Bullshit
Bullshit

Ego and Power related problems are much more pronounced in For-Profit structures. You talk about corporations throwing money and time in insuring that it doesn't happen, but what is that if not ego and power flexed another way? It just proves the point even more.

Nonetheless, it's debatable that the CentOS dude went AWOL due an ego problem.

The articles are biased. This is a more complex conflict. It looks like the dude just had it with some sort of (possibly passive aggressive) infighting and decided to say 'the hell with them' for a couple of weeks. I can understand that as it's something I've done in the past. Unpaid work is often very unappreciated, and it isn't unreasonable to simply trash all emails and phone calls until you can catch your breath and unwind the high anxiety tension. Seems to me like some other CentOS folks jumped the gun and turned it into a needless crisis. After all, it isn't like he defaced the site or blocked access. They were able to do all updates including the one denouncing his going AWOL !!

I had a vague suspicion when I read the first denouncement that some other folks at CentOS had power issues, and looking at how he's just come back to simply hand over access rather gracefully without demands or excuses just confirms my doubts. There's always more than one side to a story like this and I wouldn't be surprised if this 'new management' ended up trashing CentOS.

Remember, when power issues arise, the first ones to leave are the wisest.

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[cenc]

Dude, you are obviously missing the point.This is not about CentOS.

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[cenc]

Something like ISO certifications. Perhaps not exactly that, but the general idea. It would likly give FOSS a boost of professionalism, build confidence, and overall improve the reputation and adoption of FOSS in both public and private sector.

How often in using FOSS in biz and just average desktop use do we have software that really is the best thing since sliced bread, but we have to hesitate to adopt it because the project behind it is of questionable status? How often does that rub off on on other FOSS projects, either directly or indirectly related to them?

The dream would be to have an entire chain of core FOSS software that is for example has ISO or similar certification for all the projects under it. The vision would be to be able to for example pick a distro, and select stable repositories FOSS ISO certified tree, and know that all the projects under it and everything they are built on are stable open source projects that have certain standards. You can still add on project that do not meet those standards, but they can then be better managed and problematic ones evaluated for mission critical use.

The downside of this is that it has super committee written all over it, but at this point in the FOSS landscape what is one more standardization body among friends if it made a big leap forward in to adoption and kill the FUD?

This is after all one of the major arguments used by closed source companies to discourage the adoption of FOSS in companies. Essentially, 'FOSS is the unknown so don't risk your buisness on it'. Remove a bit of the unknown, and we pull the teeth out of those arguments. Done right, it could be the new standard of what is expected in software development.

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

chickenshit :)

Boy, it's nice to read that word every now and then. Made me laugh. Now back to work.

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[ADRA]

I think you're missing the picture here. You can throw any amount of certification at something and it wouldn't matter: CentOS is a piece of software that benefits my company. If CentOS or whatever product I use stops working (or deteriorates some way), I've got to maintain it myself, or migrate away from it.

I can't rely on CentOS, or Windows, or my IBM mainframe working perpetually. Thats why we pay for support, pay for the assurance that the software / hardware / whatever keeps on working as long as I need it. If I want more assurance, I'll spend more money. If I want absolute assurance, I'd hire an army of developers to maintain a CentOS clone myself.

It doesn't matter that CentOS or any other project fades away into dust. What should really matter is how this affects your business. If this type of collapse causes a severe impact, maybe you should start to consider why you're not taking appropriate protection / alternatives to heart. In this case it'd be pretty moot since the pain in migrating to other Redhat clones or just Redhat wouldn't be such a big deal. Regardless, if you just expect things to work forever (especially in the OSS world) then you're better off putting some capital down to cover your butt.

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're on crack, you realize your trying to build support for a piece of paper right?

We have a joke about new hires that have tons of certifications.... "We won't hold that against you".

Re:CentOS, FOSS, and leadership problems.

[iggymanz]

I can think of many corporations with the intrigue and murder as a business model that have flourished for decades in our petrodollar empire. Profit on the misery and death and exploitation of others works in this world.

Maybe they should update the frontpage....

[117]

of their website:

CentOS has numerous advantages over some of the other clone projects including....developers who are contactable and responsive

Re:Maybe they should update the frontpage....

[Anonymous Coward]

of their website:

CentOS has numerous advantages over some of the other clone projects including....developers who are contactable and responsive

So which of the developers you have contacted hasn't replied to you?

Re:Maybe they should update the frontpage....

[westlake]

developers who are contactable and responsive

a modest acquaintance with English spelling and grammar wouldn't hurt

Re:Maybe they should update the frontpage....

[jroysdon]

The developers we and are available and that never changed. Lance hadn't contributed in some time, and was really just wearing the "founder hat" and keys to the centos.org domain, irc found status, and paypal account.

Hate to break it to you...

[andre_pl]

.. but the Appalachain trail jokes arent funny. The first one wasn't even remotely funny, and the two dozen that followed it in the last post about this guy were annoyingly lame. This one is just way past the line. If I see the word Appalachian in this thread I'm going to stab my face with an icepick.

Re:Hate to break it to you...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. but the Appalachain trail jokes arent funny. The first one wasn't even remotely funny, and the two dozen that followed it in the last post about this guy were annoyingly lame. This one is just way past the line. If I see the word Appalachian in this thread I'm going to stab my face with an icepick.

If you were on the Appalachian trail, wouldn't you be better off using a walking-stick?

Re:Hate to break it to you...

[JCCyC]

.. but the Appalachain trail jokes arent funny. The first one wasn't even remotely funny, and the two dozen that followed it in the last post about this guy were annoyingly lame.

It's only unfunny for Republicans. For sane people, it's still funny as fuck.

Re:Hate to break it to you...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. but the Appalachain trail jokes arent funny. The first one wasn't even remotely funny, and the two dozen that followed it in the last post about this guy were annoyingly lame. This one is just way past the line. If I see the word Appalachian in this thread I'm going to stab my face with an icepick.

Appalachian!!!!

Please film your entire effort and post to Youtube.

Re:Hate to break it to you...

[kno3]

Please keep bigoted opinions to yourself.

Re:Hate to break it to you...

[RockWolf]

If I see the word Appalachian in this thread I'm going to stab my face with an icepick.

Appalachian.

Be a nice chap and don't make a mess.
/me offers towel

/~Rockwolf

Re:Hate to break it to you...

[csartanis]

Did you stab your face yet? Inquiring minds want to know.

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Macka]

While you can run CentOS on a laptop why would you want to? There are other Linux distributions out there (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, etc) that are designed to provide a better desktop/laptop experience using more up to date software. CentOS = Redhat commercial, and is really built to get the most out of server systems.

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say that you are talking a load of rubbish.
The suitability of CentOS vs lets say Ubuntu on the Desktop is more to do with what sort if things the user wants to do with the Laptop.
I run CentOS on a Dell 8600 (6+ years old) as I do development for Websphere & DB2. I can take my who dev environment with me when I visit customers who just happen (in the majority anyways) run RHEL on their servers where my software is targetted.
Which is more suitable, Ubuntu or CentOS?

On the otherhand, if I were just using it as a general purpose machine then the choice would be closer. Just what USP is there in Ubuntu that I need for browsing & email that running the same apps (Firefox & Thunderbird) can't give me?
I also use Windows Server 2003 on an IBM T43p. Everything runs fine and I have an OS with all the crud removed. What is wrong with running a Server biased O/S as a desktop? Not a lot really

So much for openess.

[westlake]

1. If the health of the company and their product is absolutely dependent on the well being of Lance, then they should have done everything they could to keep this story quiet, as it is embarrassing.

Substitute OSX or Win 7.

Watch from some safe distance the purple-faced geek shifting into high gear, frothing at the mouth and about to burst an artery.

Note the double standard and profit from the experience.

Dang

[LBArrettAnderson]

I use CentOS for most of my servers (except 2 nameservers), and was really hoping for a fork... mainly so that they rename it to something that doesn't suck, and so that they get a better logo and icon. Seriously... the CentOS logo and icon suck...

Re:Dang

[gmuslera]

A fork of a fork? Why dont go to an other RH derivative like i.e. scientific linux? As they are all based in the same distribution (basically a repack of it) all should be more or less the same.

Re:Dang

[Linker3000]

Jeez, your life must be one peachy rose garden if all you have to worry about is a logo and icon that appear sucky to you.

Re:Dang

[LBArrettAnderson]

Yes, a fork of a fork. Under the circumstances, a fork would have been at most a rebranding of the same "fork," (CentOS isn't really a fork, in my opinion... but we'll go with what you said), so everything I'm used to would remain the same.

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[farrellj]

Because if you are supporting CentOS systems in the field, it is easier to do so with a system that is running the same OS, as it, at very least, provides a system you can experiment with. It also means you will have the roughly same software load, and you won't be used to running apps that are not on the server. As well, replicating your server on your laptop also means having a system you can replicate a problem with, even if you are travelling. Of course, now that a 4 Gig laptop is possible, you could be running that replica system in a Virtual machine...I've been running Slackware 64 on my Laptop, and it is running very nicely. My main server also runs Slackware, but 32 bit, and has been running for a few years, with a few updates...it also has an AMD64, so I may move to that as it's next update.

ttyl
          Farrell

Four weddings and a funeral

[westlake]

it looks like CentOS is working on decentralizing their leadership so we don't get issues like this and the delayed 5.3 release because a key member was getting married.

I am not convinced that decentralized leadership is leadership.

You need someone strong enough and knowledgeable enough to hold all the pieces together no matter what. You need a clear line of succession.

Re:Four weddings and a funeral

[init100]

So in your opinion, a board of directors is not good enough at providing leadership to a project/company? Only a dictator is good enough for you?

Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought an RHEL license yesterday. I'll probably keep using CentOS on the less important machines I have, but I'm likely going to switch to Ubuntu LTS where possible and RHEL where I need the RH layout for existing scripts, etc.

Hope they get a stable leadership organized.

In case of fire, break glass

[westlake]

Lance Davis is AWOL for almost a year

You punch up 911 when you first smell the smoke - not when your house has burnt down to ashes.

In a way, this gives me some more confidence in CentOS, insofar as the rest of the admins were willing to "break glass in case of emergency" and deal with Davis' erratic leadership

Confidence? Confidence?

To me this story reads more like a Chinese Fire Drill

Re:In case of fire, break glass

[jjohnson]

For all the handwringing here, it's worth remembering that this was a pretty small issue. Davis controls the domain, the IRC channels, and the PayPal account. Nothing about continuing to release the distribution was ever threatened by his absence. It's ultimately small potatoes. The house hasn't burnt down, and there wasn't smoke in the first place. They got 5.3 out the door with no help from Lance at all. This is about administrative issues.

Confidence? Confidence?

Sure. They had a problem with one of the team members. Over time they tried to resolve the problem in various ways, ultimately escalating it to a public confrontation that successfully resolved the issue. That means 1) there are guys on the project who care about it enough to bother, 2) they weren't afraid of taking some hard steps to solve the problem. Ultimately, CentOS will be improved by moving to foundation management rather than key person model.

Imagine instead if Lance's absence made the key maintainers drift away to other projects where they didn't have to deal with him. CentOS dies a slow death for lack of updates, like so many other OSS projects.

Every mature OSS project moves beyond the key figures that launched it, and becomes its own organizational entity. We just saw CentOS take that important step forward. Good on them.

Re:In case of fire, break glass

[thatkid_2002]

If you read the open notices of security breaches on the centos.org website - they are always calling 911 when they know there is a 9 year old with a lighter on the loose - and they are ready to do whatever it takes to control it when there is smoke.

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, someone found a use for the new Slashdot comment system: a replacement for Basecamp! Shall I assign this 'Disappear from world for a year while running 'round Manchester with a shotgun killing zombies' to-do to kbsingh?

writing rsync scripts for cross-site backups between CentOS-based servers

Should've used Debian. As Eddie Izzard says 'Debian or death'. ;)

CentOS the FRESHMAKER !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Machts es la fresh !!

Found him ...

[lbalbalba]

... Using Google Earth ! See ? Told you you could find people using Google Earth! Now, off to find Bin Laden...

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[nawcom]

None of these issues involve CentOS themselves. iwl3945 in the linux kernel supports every aspect of the 3945abg - from monitor support to the little slashy lights laptops have under the display that shows wireless activity. Alps is also fully supported in X11, configure xorg.conf for it.

Not a big deal; right now I'm using 32-bit Windows XP Home edition as my primary OS and 32-bit CentOS 5 is in a virtual machine for Linux open-source software development

You're hardly a software developer - you aren't willing to find solutions yourself - you expect some distro with a dickhead of an admin to make it so it magically works. Seriously, these issues you list don't exist and don't depend on the distro at all. You're a developer - compile your own kernel.

but I'm wondering if anyone has backported the newer Alps touchpad driver to work with CentOS's version of X

The source code is free. CentOS doesn't use an ancient version, so compile it. git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-input-synaptics/. That's what synaptics and alps use. Backported? wtf? CentOS uses X.org code so I'm a little lost on what the hell you mean.

Anyways, my point of this response is that your issues are bullshit if you are going to wear a developer's mask.

what about indictments?

[epine]

I get tense whenever I come across this kind of CYA posturing which tends to invoke more double standards than a house of mirrors.

More charges may be filed in HP case

Ousted Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and former ethics chief Kevin Hunsaker surrendered, were booked and released Thursday, a day after being charged -- along with three private investigators -- with felonies for their roles in HP's spying scandal.

Ethics officer dragged off in handcuffs, did it really hurt HP's business? What was it all about? It was about keeping their dirty laundry behind closed doors, no matter how appalling or borderline illegal.

I'm more of a KTB than a CYA. KTB = kill the bastards

CentOS is an example of "life happens". Interesting how many uninformed people who just caught their first whiff of this immediately chime in to explain that they should have tried harder to keep a lid on this, without even checking that maybe this box already had a tick mark.

The underlying assumption is that making an effort to keep a scandal behind closed doors will always work if the people involved warrant respect. Similar to the belief system of the HP executives. In their quest not to be damned by their knee-jerk shareholders for not trying hard enough to bung the leak, they went all the way to extra-legal.

I'm tremendously unimpressed by people who maintain their social standing by undermining the credibility of our public institutions.

Fundamentally, most support contracts are a tax on social insecurity. Am I the only person on slashdot with a vastly better track record at debugging failed software on my own steam than getting assistance over a telephone support hot-line?

I've had a few excellent external support experiences. On the other hand, in the time it takes to fight through the telephone support system of a typical company to a person who actually knows something I could have reversed engineered the antikythera.

Or in the case of HP, when one of their printer drivers made a friend's Windows 2000 machine unbootable, and their driver uninstaller refused to run under safe mode because it demanded a higher screen resolution that safe-mode VGA, and then my note about this on their support website (which took me 15 minutes to compose) returned "404 not found" after I pressed submit. So much for big, redundant iron. The dudes can't even keep their customer-support web server running (for customer_type==peon). Nothing screams "we care" like "404 not found".

That incident with HP cost me half a day of my life. End result of my support escalation: "404 corporation doesn't give a damn".

I once spent half a day debugging an obscure failure of EAccelerator in which tried dozens of Apache settings, ended up hand compiling, and then ended up running the whole thing under strace, finally filing a bug report which was incorporated upstream.

Which of those two experiences do you think I'm willing to repeat? Which of those experiences made me feel lower than an earth-worm? Which of those experiences made me feel like a useful member of the human race?

The most interesting property of the CYA reflex is how quickly and thoroughly it vaporises irrelevant considerations such as life quality.

The human brain was designed with a kill-switch on life quality. That's an amazing artifact from six million years of evolution under the parameters of nasty, brutish, and short. And still we marvel at the human capacity for genocide. Our CYA reflex is not the main player in this, but if you follow the wiring, I'm sure it's highly interconnected with the culpable wetware.

Where's the money?

[WombatDeath]

People have been donating money to centos.org, presumably wishing to further the goals of the project. Is this money (plus the advertising revenue) still available for its intended purpose?

Not accusing anyone of anything, but this question is quite important and doesn't seem to be addressed in the update.

* Warning *

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't read your own post.

nobody worries about Slackware like CentOS

[waterwingz]

Slackware has a huge installed base and is maintained by one man - the founder Patrick Volkerding. When his health failed several years ago, there was a lot of concern but things seem to have been pretty good since then.

Re:nobody worries about Slackware like CentOS

[iggymanz]

but slackware will probably die when Patrick does

Re:nobody worries about Slackware like CentOS

[Anonymous Coward]

And he has already been close to death with mystery illnesses:

http://www.unix.com/news-links-events-announcements/16764-slackware-please-keep-patrick-volkerding-your-thoughts.html

Did they ever figure out what he had?

Re:nobody worries about Slackware like CentOS

[iggymanz]

yike! was talking about something hopefully decades away, but the point is that slackware is more the one-man-band type distro than many others.

Re:nobody worries about Slackware like CentOS

[Cro Magnon]

More likely, its users will fork off something based on Slackware.

Who ya gonna call?

[__aagujc9792]

In some contexts, you need an actual answer to this question. Not such a bad thing.

--
olderphart

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Macka]

Ok if you're using it as a portable mirror of your customers configurations, then I can understand that.

Just what USP is there in Ubuntu that I need for browsing & email that running the same apps (Firefox & Thunderbird) can't give me?

I was specifically thinking about the benefits that newer versions of software and drivers would give you, for example with hardware support. I would be willing to put money on the table that Ubuntu or Fedora do a dam sight better detecting and configuring Wireless cards in newer laptops (and desktops) than CentOS. And that they deal with sleep/suspend better due to improvements in more recent versions of the kernel. And I know from my own experience on the Desktop that CentOS, being tied to the (old) RHEL versions of the X server does not do so well with newer monitors. I have a 19" GNR monitor at home that Ubuntu, OpenSuSE and Fedora will happily detect and use at the correct resolution. It's impossible to get the correct resolution with CentOS however because it's not supported with that version of X yet. It doesn't bother me that much because I'm using my CentOS boxen as servers and if I need a graphical login on those systems I just use NX Nomachine from elsewhere. But my point is valid.

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Macka]

All good, valid points in a work context. I expanded on my comments though in my previous reply to the AC if you wish to have a read (no point in repeating myself).

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Ex-Linux-Fanboy]

You're hardly a software developer - you aren't willing to find solutions yourself

You know, I used to have this kind of attitude. Then I grew up.

Did you know Dennis Ritchie uses Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Outlook to read email and post to Usenet? Have you every thought about why?

The thing is this: everything works out of the box in Windows XP (well, except for the sound card, but the workaround is posted online and it about 15 minutes of bother to get going). I, at this point in my life, have better things to do with my time than to get things to work in Linux when they already work in Windows. Such as actually develop software.

This is the problem with the Linux community at Slashdot. It's a very immature and insecure community; when people mention they have problems and are using Windows instead because of those problems, people react with denial and attack the messenger instead of being mature and acknowledging the problems.

Excuse me, but I tried compiling various ALPS drivers in CentOS. I spent, oh, about 2 hours on it and, to make a long story short, it didn't work. If the Linux community wants to flame me instead of trying to help me (or, at least being civil), that's fine. Your message is clear: You don't want people using Linux. You want people using Windows XP. You do not want to make Linux a viable desktop operating system.

And, oh, about Ubuntu: It was very unstable for me, with constant crashes. I blogged all about it.

Thanks for playing.

Linux zealots piss me off.

Argentina

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone please clue me in about these Argentina jokes?

Re:Argentina

[thejynxed]

Ahhhh, young grasshoppa'. You shall be enlightened!

A certain Republican Governor of South Carolina, Mr. Mark Sanford, claimed he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when in actuality, he was in Argentina getting his groove on with his Latina hoochie-mama. He's married, and was quite vocal about being "Pro-Family".

Hence all of the jokes, and why 9/11 Repugs holding public office are hypocrites of the first magnitude.

Why does CentOS exist?

[afdsdklsrevvxv]

This FAQ http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=5 is very incompletion. I want to add next sentence on this webpage. "But this project is roled by a few people who are unbalance. So it's dangerous to use this distribution on your enterprise class computing platform."

Re:Why does CentOS exist?

[Slashcrap]

This FAQ http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=5 is very incompletion. I want to add next sentence on this webpage. "But this project is roled by a few people who are unbalance. So it's dangerous to use this distribution on your enterprise class computing platform."

1. Learn English.
2. Learn to troll properly.
3. Suck my dick.

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be willing to put money on the table that Ubuntu or Fedora do a dam sight better detecting and configuring Wireless cards in newer laptops (and desktops) than CentOS.

Again, as you're probably already aware, a lot of that likely has to do with the kernel version that CentOS is based on (2.6.18). I suspect that Red Hat's focus is on backporting security fixes and server-class hardware drivers, not desktop stuff.

CentOS/RHEL has never been my pick for a desktop distro.

RMS is right, 1 more time

[Ilgaz]

U remember the Mono fanboys trying to "prove" RMS is lunatic using his valid idea of 1980s where there will be absolutely no "single admin,password" rather than a shared password known by trustable and ethical people.

When I heard about admin going AWOL and they live problems, I just ask "What if 4-5 people knew the password?"

So it is better to think a second before joking with old school people's "lunatic" ideas, they eventually turn out to be right.

Was it a ...

[Pinchiukas]

Weekend in Vegas? :)

Think FOSS has leadership problems? Try companies.

[Concern]

Oh my god, have you never worked in a company?

Companies have vastly greater leadership problems every single minute of every single day. It is simply not news, it happens so prodigiously, so continuously. Because FOSS works so damn well, it shocks us when a project has a tiny glimmer of strife.

FOSS is a meritocracy. It's a popularity contest. By comparison, companies are based on money and the absolute, legal powers of those who posses it. You can, and do, have CEOs who make money every day at the expense of their customers/users. Corporate customer? You get fucked. You can, and do, have CEOs who are simply stupid or arrogant, and just fail to make money period. Corporate customer? You get fucked. Compare to FOSS, where no single asshole, no matter how powerful, can hold that power without others agreeing there is merit in it. Work can never be lost. Users can never be stranded. In fact, if some people like a leader and others dont, then you will have a split, two or more people in power, all without loss of work or disruption to customers. Then they may even cooperate sometimes, even if they hate each other. What parallels this, in the industry?

Torvalds has no power to take away the Linux software you use, or even control its future. All he can do is either lead effectively, or embarrass himself in public and watch the meritocracy pass the torch to another. Bill Gates can decide to take your platform (Windows XP), or your language (VB today, C# tomorrow) on a nose dive - even discontinue it - at any moment. You just get fucked. You have no recourse.

We go to the corporate marketplace for software because although the FOSS world is great, it will not naturally produce all the goods and services we need. It's just another set of trade-offs. It so happens that for software, they are particularly tricky. Would the market in cars be so efficient if it cost you x million dollars to change from being a Ford to a Honda customer? And where once you are locked in, Ford can charge you 10,000x cost for repairs? And then simply refuse to perform them when they feel the time is right for you to buy a new car? And they get away with it simply because (outside of FOSS) they make cars where opening the hood to fix it yourself is as hard as cracking a safe, and almost as dangerous.

This is the position software customers find themselves in. So you can start to see the appeal of FOSS, whose "leadership problems" are to being a corporate customer what a fucking afternoon spa treatment is to being Bubba's cellmate.

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Macka]

I suspect that Red Hat's focus is on backporting security fixes and server-class hardware drivers, not desktop stuff

Which was my point in the first place, that other distros do focus more on desktop features. So unless you have a burning need to run CentOS on your laptop, you'll get a more functional experience choosing something else.

Relax

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, men! Lance was just hanging out. Sometimes people are in need of disappearing, getting drunk, having sex and a lot of other things just for fun. Two weeks is nothing, why there are some much talks about that? Lance now is like a Sarah Palin in IT world :) Just relax... do the same.

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[pdusen]

I love you guys.

You're hardly a software developer - you aren't willing to find solutions yourself

You know, I used to have this kind of attitude. Then I grew up.

Hyuck hyuck!

Did you know Dennis Ritchie uses Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Outlook to read email and post to Usenet? Have you every thought about why?

No, but I'm sure you'll tell us.

The thing is this: everything works out of the box in Windows XP (well, except for the sound card, but the workaround is posted online and it about 15 minutes of bother to get going).

Unless you happen to be one of the few people who use SATA.

I, at this point in my life, have better things to do with my time than to get things to work in Linux when they already work in Windows. Such as actually develop software.

Part of developing software is learning to set up your environment. Period. If you can't do that much without someone holding your hand, you have no chance of wrapping your head around the internals of a project. You may as well switch to teaching.

This is the problem with the Linux community at Slashdot. It's a very immature and insecure community; when people mention they have problems and are using Windows instead because of those problems, people react with denial and attack the messenger instead of being mature and acknowledging the problems.

Oh, there are problems, to be sure. Some small, some huge. That's why most average users never consider Linux distros. But developers are not average users.

Excuse me, but I tried compiling various ALPS drivers in CentOS. I spent, oh, about 2 hours on it and, to make a long story short, it didn't work. If the Linux community wants to flame me instead of trying to help me (or, at least being civil), that's fine. Your message is clear: You don't want people using Linux. You want people using Windows XP. You do not want to make Linux a viable desktop operating system.

It's viable for me. It's viable for lots of people. Anyone who doesn't mind understanding their platform is usually ok.

And, oh, about Ubuntu: It was very unstable for me, with constant crashes. I blogged all about it.

That seems to be a typical Ubuntu experience for a lot of people.

Thanks for playing.

Linux zealots piss me off.

Well, garsh! Hyuck hyuck!

Re:I'm really glad to hear this!

[Ex-Linux-Fanboy]

[Windows XP doesn't work if] you happen to be one of the few people who use SATA

[...]

Part of developing software is learning to set up your environment. Period. If you can't do that much without someone holding your hand, you have no chance of wrapping your head around the internals of a project. You may as well switch to teaching.

Exactly. Now, why was it you aren't able to resolve something as simple as getting Windows XP to install on a computer with a SATA hard disk?

Or for that matter, before posting yet another flame, why have you have not taken five minutes to read my blog entry, which I linked to above? I investigated the situation. The result of my investigation: It would have taken me approximately a week to resolve the issue (taking a newer ALPS driver and backporting it to the older version of X used by RHEL/CentOS 5), so I decided I was better off just using Windows XP and using a VM for CentOS development.

This solved the problem for me: All of my hardware works and I'm able to develop the software in both Windows XP and CentOS.

The problem with Linux is this: It has an unstable driver model. Why is it that Windows XP, an OS that is seven years old, works just fine in my two-year-old laptop, with full hardware support, but a three-year-old version of Linux has poor driver support and missing drivers?

In the real world, there are a lot of things I have to prioritize: Spending time working (yes, I have a job); spending time with family and friends and my girlfriend; spending time relaxing; and sometimes spending time working on my open source project. At this point in my life, I don't have time to waste backporting a driver because the Linux developers are do not give me a stable driver ABI and API. If people want Linux to be on my desktop, they should spend more time giving it a stable driver API and ABI, and less time flaming me for daring to point out Linux is not perfect.

But what can I expect from someone who doesn't share his real name with us and has nothing better to do with his time than flame people who don't think Linux is God's gift to the earth. People like you are why I am happier using Windows instead of Linux today.

Again: Linux zealots (like you) piss me off.

Argh!