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Scientific Linux's Troy Dawson Leaves FermiLabs For Red Hat

Posted by timothy on from the long-way-around dept.

First time accepted submitter EponymousCustard writes "On a day of big resignations, we also hear that Troy Dawson of the Scientific Linux project is joining Red Hat, and will no longer be working on Scientific Linux. It will be a big loss. thanks to Troy for all the great work!"

49 comments

  1. Fermilab. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fermilab.

    His homepage still says "17 years of Fermilab service and counting" :)

    1. Re:Fermilab. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seconded. The full name of the national laboratory located in Batavia, Illinois and housing the Tevatron collider is the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and the nickname is Fermilab. Not Fermi Lab, FermiLab, Fermi Labs, FermiLabs, or even just Fermi. Everybody say it with me. Fermilab. Fermilab. Fermilab.

    2. Re:Fermilab. by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 0

      Fermilab! Fermilab! Fermilab! Now explain why my coworkers are looking at me strangely

      --
      If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
    3. Re:Fermilab. by humphrm · · Score: 1

      If you worked at Fermilab, they wouldn't be.

      --
      -- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
    4. Re:Fermilab. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you need to get out a lot more. Maybe get a wife. Fag,

  2. I think I speak for everyone when I say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who?

    1. Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cum-crusted fingers you say? Not shit-crusted?

      Well it could be worse, at least he's not Goatse.

  3. His Resignation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hear he went out with a bang!

    1. Re:His Resignation by youn · · Score: 1

      would that be the big bang theory? ;)

      --
      Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that :p
  4. With the LHC, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And Fermi shutting down, he HAD to go somewhere!

  5. The graviton of corporate suck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We will all be working for Oracle eventually.

  6. Good Luck Troy! by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 3

    As an ex-Fermilab employee myself who was lucky enough to work with Troy (and able to just email him when I needed a feature stuck into SSH in SL), congratulations! Best of luck!

  7. It's FermiLab. Not 'labs' by nan0 · · Score: 1

    how about spelling things correctly in the title at least ? it's Fermilab. not plural. while there is a lot of stuff there - it is one lab. fnal.gov

    1. Re:It's FermiLab. Not 'labs' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's also not CamelCased. Fermilab, not FermiLab... And (you got this right) it does not take the definite article. "Fermilab", not "the Fermilab".

    2. Re:It's FermiLab. Not 'labs' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hah.. that's what they want you to believe, and you fell for it.

    3. Re:It's FermiLab. Not 'labs' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everyone understands what was meant to be said. Give him a break. Pointing out the mistake was enough, you don't need to be rude.

  8. Apparently it's not just death... by thepike · · Score: 1

    Things always come in threes, right?

  9. WTF? by scheme · · Score: 2

    Fermilab is not shutting down. The tevatron is but Fermi is actively participating in the CMS detector at the LHC and has a few projects looking at neutrino physics and other things in the intensity frontier.

    --
    "When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
    1. Re:WTF? by behindthewall · · Score: 1

      Illinois, on the other hand, is shutting down. Get out while you can!

  10. Re:Good riddance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Didn't know they accepted 13 year olds at Fermilab.

  11. Right when SL increases in popularity... by loftyhauser · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, just as SL is increasing in popularity due to the (perceived) problems with CentOS, Red Hat pulls the main SL developer away. Coincidence? Perhaps...

    1. Re:Right when SL increases in popularity... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's more than that.

      Troy was also contributing personal time to Ascendos, a totally open project in light of problems with CentOS' closed development (open in the development project, so anyone at any time could fork the whole development and all the tools involved).
      http://lists.ascendos.org/pipermail/ascendos-dev/2011-July/000000.html

      Apparently he won't be able to continue contributing to Ascendos (or Scientific Linux, but that was a paid gig), but is going to finish up the 6.1 packages for Ascendos:
      http://lists.ascendos.org/pipermail/ascendos-dev/2011-August/000151.html

      While CentOS is nice, you get what you get, and they're not about to share all the secret sauce they have figured out which you'd need to fork your own CentOS-like build process.

      I suspect if Ascendos takes off, it could easily replace CentOS and/or cause many more CentOS build-process forks.

    2. Re:Right when SL increases in popularity... by love2hateMS · · Score: 2

      Troy isn't the main SL developer, he is one of two main developers. SL's original developer is still there, and it's pretty likely Fermilab will find a potential replacement for Troy from their pool of Linux talent.

    3. Re:Right when SL increases in popularity... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      While CentOS is nice, you get what you get, and they're not about to share all the secret sauce they have figured out which you'd need to fork your own CentOS-like build process.

      I suspect if Ascendos takes off, it could easily replace CentOS and/or cause many more CentOS build-process forks.

      Ah... CentOS as it is is useful to Redhat. Redhat makes RHEL hard to figure out how to build, and the CentOS team has so few resources that it took them a year to get a release out.

      But, Oracle has more resources and got theirs out way ahead of CentOS. That doesn't help RHEL. Ascendos looks like it has the right principles, and without strict binary compatibility won't be as attractive to some subset of CentOS users. I just wonder at what point Ascendos starts to become /as/ interesting as RHEL.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    4. Re:Right when SL increases in popularity... by sorak · · Score: 1

      Troy isn't the main SL developer, he is one of two main developers. SL's original developer is still there, and it's pretty likely Fermilab will find a potential replacement for Troy from their pool of Linux talent.

      Right. Garfunkle's still there. They just lost Simon.

      (Or is it the other way around?)

    5. Re:Right when SL increases in popularity... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Troy isn't the main SL developer, he is one of two main developers. SL's original developer is still there, and it's pretty likely Fermilab will find a potential replacement for Troy from their pool of Linux talent.

      This is correct. We already have someone lined-up to fill Troy's position.

    6. Re:Right when SL increases in popularity... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a message of Connie Sieh, who originated Feimi Linux and Scientific Linux
      http://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1108&L=scientific-linux-users&T=0&P=33214

  12. There can be only one by RLiegh · · Score: 0

    It looks like it's the end of the Gravy Train for people wanting a Free RHEL....

    1. Re:There can be only one by suso · · Score: 2

      Not if you jump in and help. Think I'm joking?

    2. Re:There can be only one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm fairly sure that with Fermi and Cern using it so heavily, and Connie Sieh still on staff that SL isn't going anywhere.....

  13. Sad day for SL, happy day for Red Hat. by LatitudesAttitudes · · Score: 1

    As a SL desktop user, I hope this doesn't negatively affect SL. But, I hope Troy and Red Hat do well together.

    1. Re:Sad day for SL, happy day for Red Hat. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As a SL desktop user, I hope this doesn't negatively affect SL. But, I hope Troy and Red Hat do well together.

      Well, Fermilab still has a large number of SL machines, and will continue to have, and support, a large number of SL machines. We will continue to need some kind of supported linux for scientific applications. Whilst in principle the lab and user community could migrate to something else instead of producing SL6, SL7 and so on, it seems unlikely that an alternative would involve less work.

    2. Re:Sad day for SL, happy day for Red Hat. by mug+funky · · Score: 1

      as someone who used an SL box to control a film scanner, what's the difference between SL and any other distro?

    3. Re:Sad day for SL, happy day for Red Hat. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Any other distro? I get to pick?

      Well, the difference between Arch and SL is that SL sucks. (e.g. System V overcomplexity all up in your init scripts, patches things too much, obsolete package versions, package manager that isn't the one I like.) All the sort of suckage that makes a typical enterprise OS unsuitable for my home PC.

      Or is that not what you meant?

      (And if anyone infers I don't understand the converse unsuitability of Arch for a typical enterprise deployment, thanks for projecting, we now know how stupid you are.)

    4. Re:Sad day for SL, happy day for Red Hat. by timbo234 · · Score: 1

      SL is based on, and closely tracks, Redhat's Enterprise Linux product, which has been designed to offer stability and very long support periods (at least 7 years after release I think). That's what makes it suitable for servers, whereas most other* Linux distro's have shorter release and support cycles (12-18 months) and tend to use more recent versions of software, which makes them arguably more unstable.

      * Note there are other 'enterprise ready' long-support cycle distros such as Debian Stable, or Suse Linux Enterprise.

      --
      Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
    5. Re:Sad day for SL, happy day for Red Hat. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And to expand a little, the difference between the RHEL clones are roughly:

      * CentOS: Changes as few and as little as possible on the SRPMs, instead they tweak the "buildroot" to match RedHat as closely as possible. They don't release anything until it passes their own automatic checks which makes sure every binary links with the same libraries as RHEL does. Anything beyond RHEL is put into the CentOS Plus repository.

      * Scientific Linux: A little more willing to edit SRPMs instead of doing reverse engineering on the RHEL buildroot if that's easier. Several packages will be linked with older and/or newer shared libraries than RHEL (and CentOS) uses (which could introduce new issues), several examples was provided on the CentOS list when people complained about CentOS 6 delays and asked why they didn't just look at SL (they DO cooperate both this way and by discussing issues). Releases betas during testing and with less testing sometimes tracks RHEL more closely. Upgrades, changes and/or replaces some packages in the main distribution if they feel it's warranted.

      * Oracle Linux: Well... ORACLE! Does even more changes than the other two above combined, with little visibility into exactly what happens. "Value Added Features" are added into the core distribution (similar to SL), some visibly Oracle branded while others may not be.

      OL is the reason for RHEL stopping providing individual patches to their kernels, it's now one big patch which makes some of Oracles kernel antics much harder (CentOS "standard" kernel builds were unaffected, SL I'm not sure about but probably not that affected either. The CentOS Plus kernel probably did get slightly harder to make though, but the target was clearly Oracle's rebuild). Mostly RHEL is fine with CentOS/SL, their much less happy with Oracle Linux.

    6. Re:Sad day for SL, happy day for Red Hat. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SL allows you to download updates at any time and archive them yourself.

      This is important to me as it gives the ability to reinstall a system and update it to a known state.

  14. Troy was to be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I don't know if this had anything to do with it, but Troy was contributing time to Ascendos, a totally open project in light of problems with CentOS' closed development (open in the development project, so anyone at any time could fork the whole development and all the tools involved).
    http://lists.ascendos.org/pipermail/ascendos-dev/2011-July/000000.html

    Apparently he won't be able to continue contributing to Ascendos (or Scientific Linux, but that was a paid gig):
    http://lists.ascendos.org/pipermail/ascendos-dev/2011-August/000151.html

    While CentOS is nice, you get what you get, and they're not able to shart all the secret sauce they have figured out which you'd need to fork your own CentOS-like build process.

    I suspect if Ascendos takes off, it could easily replace CentOS and/or cause many more CentOS build-process forks.

  15. Congratulations Troy! by stox · · Score: 2

    I remember when Troy stated work at Fermilab. It doesn't seem like that long ago.

    It is gratifying to see how successful SL has become over the years. I know Connie and Troy have poured their guts into it.

    Best of wishes in the adventure ahead. I hope you don't end up taking Connie with you.

    Coincidence that he is leaving the same day as Commander Taco and Steve Jobs? I think not!

    --
    "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
    1. Re:Congratulations Troy! by Gothmolly · · Score: 1

      Commander Taco left Slashdot? So GNAA won ?

      --
      I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
  16. PUIAS Linux Peeps... by jcannonb · · Score: 1

    If you are down that SL Linux has hit this roadblock, check out PUIAS... http://puias.math.ias.edu/ I found it not too long ago, has Princeton University backing, and is extremely mature... I switched the moment I found it. SL and CentOS are not the only RH clones in the world.

  17. Here's his message to the mailing list by EponymousCustard · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1108&L=scientific-linux-users&T=0&P=30820

    Hi,
    I have loved all the years that I have been a developer and architect for Scientific Linux, but it is time for me to move on. I have accepted a job offer from Red Hat to work on their new openshift project. ( https://www.redhat.com/openshift/ )
    My last day working for Fermilab, and on the Scientific Linux project will be September 2, 2011.

    Thank you to everyone who has encouraged, thanked, and helped me over the past 8 years that I have worked on Scientific Linux. I have said it before, and I'll say it now, The Scientific Linux community is one of the best communities there is.

    Troy

    1. Re:Here's his message to the mailing list by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a message of Connie Sieh, who originated Feimi Linux and Scientific Linux (FNAL)
      http://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1108&L=scientific-linux-users&T=0&P=33214
      Scientific Linux is an eternal distribution.

  18. Best of Luck from the "New Guy"! by humphrm · · Score: 1

    Troy is a great guy and will be missed. I've only been here ~3 months and I've already asked him innumerable questions about SLF.

    Best of luck from MHD, Troy!

    --
    -- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
  19. Developer history for Scientific Linux (by Connie) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scientific Linux is eternal. The URL below is a messages entitled "Developer history for Scientific Linux" by Connie Sieh (FNAL).
    http://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1108&L=scientific-linux-users&T=0&P=33214

    Unfortunately anybody who has the intent on attacking this project
    will always use an announcement like this to spread misinformed fears
    that SL is also indeed dying.

    This distribution has been a great project and we hope the developers would
    continue on their hard work on making this project a great one.

  20. Scientific Linux is eternal ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1108&L=scientific-linux-users&T=0&P=33214

    Unfortunately anybody who has the intent on attacking this project
    will always use an announcement like this to spread misinformed fears
    that SL is also indeed dying.

    This distro has been a great project and I hope the devs would
    continue on their hard work on making this project a great one.

  21. Fermi Linux by ddiinnxx · · Score: 1

    Off topic: Still feel little off remembering the day my logo was not selected for Fermi Linux ... http://computing.fnal.gov/unix-users/Fermi_Linux_Logo_Contest_Winners.html