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Red Hat Software Businesses It's funny. Laugh. Linux Business

Revealed: How Fedora And The Community Interact 262

Posted by timothy from the they-flay-the-naysayers-with-evil-whips dept.
bakwas_internet writes "Konstantin Ryabitsev sent a funny message in form of a irc chat log, revealing how Fedora and the Community Interact, to the development discussions mailing list related to Fedora Core.The story also appeared at lwn.net and OSnews."
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Revealed: How Fedora And The Community Interact More

Revealed: How Fedora And The Community Interact

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  • Funny and scarry (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oo_waratah ( 699830 ) * on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:36PM (#9103079)
    The comments made about Redhat can be applied to many company supported projects. Now that is scary. It takes a lot more time to be "trusted" by a company than Open Source projects not run by companies. Funny, sad and scary.

    We chase away enthusiastic supporters that can really help by not having a process which they can follow to get real access to these systems and make a difference.

    • Re:Funny and scarry (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cylix ( 55374 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:45PM (#9103132) Homepage Journal
      What would have been nice is some good examples of why Fedora isn't the project it was touted as. Of course, since I have no involvement in the development process (end user), I'm not sure that the community really is being excluded as a whole.

      Yeah, it's a funny commentary on the problem, but without real subsequent features it makes it hard to get a full grasp on the situation.

      Obviously, it looks like there is some contention with CVS access of any sorts. Still, there are other means of involvement. Again, a rather lack luster article for those who are uninformed of the situation.

      • Re:Funny and scarry (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Nermal ( 7573 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @09:58PM (#9103448) Homepage
        Basically (and this is all explained in the follow-ups to the referenced post and elsewhere in that thread) there are people at RH who are working on setting up community CVS access but getting the machine, the space, the access and devising policies to prevent stuff that could get RH in trouble from being committed, etc is taking a frustratingly long time.

        By way of disclaimer, I am an "RH person", but I don't have anything to do with the Fedora and am no more or less informed on the matter than any other reader of Fedora-devel, but here's the short version as I understand it:

        The IRC log is funny and probably accurate, but it doesn't give credit to the people at Red Hat who really are trying to make community involvement feasable and doesn't take into account all of the extra red tape (much of it nescessary) involved in doing this within a corporate structure.

        • Re:Funny and scarry (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Cylix ( 55374 )
          Oh but I did RTFA ;) I guess we need a new anacronym... RTFT (the final word being thread)

          Indeed, I understand the problems as they are pretty much the same problems any corporate environement would have.

          I'm really interested to see how the solutions come about.

          The kernel is a fine example. As I understand it, Linus used to accept patches, review said patches and apply them if he so deemed. Eventually, if the person was reliable and proven they were given access. (Someone correct me here or feel free to
          • Given the sheer number of packages included I doubt RH would have the manpower to review every single one for stolen code. They're packaging F/OSS so it would not really be a big difference if some package authors were to commit to CVS directly in terms of responsability (and it would be for fedora, not RHEL, so the responsability should be lower). In practice setting this up is usually not that easy. And the lawyers have to be consulted anyway.

            The issue seems to be RH has been dragging their feet doing th

          • Re:Funny and scarry (Score:4, Insightful)

            by cowens ( 30752 ) on Monday May 10, 2004 @02:19PM (#9109502)
            Cylix wrote:

            something along the lines that says "you will not insert stolen code in these products." Probably something very similar to what employees are made to sign.


            That's funny, in the seven or so years I have been professionally programming I have never signed anything that said "you will not insert stolen code in these products." However, I have been required to sign things saying that the company owned my work and I had no right to it.

      • Re:Funny and scarry [but definately true] (Score:5, Interesting)

        by tyler_larson ( 558763 ) on Monday May 10, 2004 @01:49AM (#9104349) Homepage
        If you want to develop a new tool and have have the bazaar dev model work like ESR told us all it should, then Fedora is a great place. I remember when Fedora was first getting started, I offered to start development on a much needed tool, and I got no less that 7 different offers for help from other non-RH participants in just a week. The prospect of having your tool built under the oversight of RedHat, and almost guarantee that it will be included in the distro is enough already to get all the outside support you need. Fedora was a brilliant idea. It was executed horribly, however.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • Re:Funny and scarry - Normal Operating Procedure (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kale77in ( 703316 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @10:42PM (#9103667) Homepage

      The larger the company the more time they generally spend {wasting money, wasting time, shuffling deckchairs, etc} by changing direction all the time. To save face they never explain to outsiders (in this case, their constituency) how the high-level managers responsible have {impossible work constraints, petty political agendas, no idea}. If they were watched the way sports teams are, they might behave a little differently.

      But as it is, so many companies seem incapable of simply choosing one competent and respected project manager, with a generally known and respected vision, and simply backing them for a twelve-month period. It's not like there aren't enough such people in the FLOSS community. But that's just not how business works, most of the time.

  • Mark your diaries: May 17th (Score:5, Informative)

    by reality-bytes ( 119275 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:40PM (#9103094) Homepage
    Okay, only mark your diaries if you are Fedora inclined like me ;)

    Fedora Core 2, if on schedule (which, AFAIK it still is) is due to be available from mirrors on the 17th of this month.

    The actual distibution is sceduled to start going out to the mirrors on the 14th but I think the mirrors will be requested to keep it locked till the 17th.

    If they don't make it to the release deadline it may lead to some IRC antics rather like the ones mentioned in the article.

  • IRC is Funny (Score:4, Informative)

    by digitalvengeance ( 722523 ) * on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:40PM (#9103097)
    Great demonstration of the relationship. For real hilarious excerpts from IRC, try http://www.bash.org [bash.org]

    (Warning: Some quotes may contain questionable content.)

    • Warning: Some quotes may contain questionable content.

      heh... unlike Slashdot? Posting that warning was a little bit like warning people in a porn shop that Playboy might contain nudity.

    • Re:IRC is Funny (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...and on that random listing I chanced upon this gem [bash.org]:
      <JDigital> Speaking of which, did you know that Slashdot.org just changed its name to Gullible?
      <HoJu> Really?

  • Community (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hawkeyeMI ( 412577 ) <brock@b r o cktice.com> on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:40PM (#9103101) Homepage
    I am also a bit bewildered about community input. What happened to the old Fedora packages, the project with which they merged? I still use Freshrpms [freshrpms.net] on the Fedora machines I administer. Setting up apt-rpm repositories with them is the first thing I do after an install.

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

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:42PM (#9103110)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I am just confused by the state redhat is in over fedora.

      One day no one in redhat gives a damn about their free distro, wanting to put all the focus on advanced $erver. The next day they want to hit deep in the community again.
      • Same thing with desktop. First they start spouting crap that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, the next thing you hear is that they are coming out with a desktop distro. Get some real leadership again RedHat, I switched to Debian because of this crap.

  • business model (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gandalphthegreen ( 751209 ) <copeland.tjNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:43PM (#9103118)
    Actually, what else could a software company want? Think about it, they're basically developing a product that has features that will eventually be sold to generate revenue. But the best part (for redhat anyway) is that they have a huge and completely free testing and bug-fixing population. What a deal.

    • As an IT person who deals with linux... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ayanami Rei ( 621112 ) * <rayanami@@@gmail...com> on Sunday May 09, 2004 @10:53PM (#9103734) Journal
      I have zero problem with that notion. We use Fedora on desktops/laptops as appropriate, and use RHEL on servers that warrant it.

      And let's not forget, the projects that Red Hat picks to include in Fedora are getting a lot of user-facetime that helps them improve, independant of how it helps Red Hat. (Minus changes Red Hat makes to that software to make it work in their environment if required)
    • RedHat: huge and completely free testing and bug-fixing population
      I dunno about completely free, but there's plenty of ways to make that level of testing much more expensive, exorbitantly more expensive.

      Enterprise Customers: get software that is stable and advanced that would otherwise be exorbitantly more expensive. There is a major difference between 5-nines and 4-nines. The difference is not in what it does but in what it does not do. Also 5-nines tends to go together with heavier loads, which further


    • But the best part (for redhat anyway) is that they have a huge and completely free testing and bug-fixing population. What a deal.

      Name a major software house who doesn't have this.

  • Score +5 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:45PM (#9103131) Homepage Journal
    Score +5
    Insitful 70%
    Funny 30%
    In all seriousness, although the article had a humerous slant, it was true in all the important ways. Redhat really fumbled with the whole fedora thing, and I think this is opening up the way for other distrobutions
    I have since migrated to other distrobutions and realize how much I was missting (gentoo level 1 install on the servers, SuSE on the desktop).

    • Re:Score +5 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by schwaang ( 667808 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @09:00PM (#9103202)
      The funny message is so true.

      But Red Hat's disfocus/distraction in enabling true community involvement (beyond testing and packaging) hasn't kept them from cranking out an excellent distro in Fedora.

      Slashdotters have to admit: Red Hat hasn't abandoned their non-paying users after all.

      • Re:Score +5 (Score:3, Interesting)

        by GigsVT ( 208848 )
        Red Hat hasn't abandoned their non-paying users after all.

        They did abandon their paying customers though. The small businesses and consultants that used to run many Red Hat servers and were willing to pay maybe $60 or $100 a year per server for updates.

        I guess in the end it worked out cheaper, since now updates are free through fedora legacy, from White Box updates, or from Debian in the servers I moved to Debian.

        Yes, Red Hat took care of the freeloaders, and they took care of the people that can affo
  • I like to believe these things happen by magic.
    Satirical pieces on the infighting merely detracts from the mystery!

    It eaats your branes!

  • Obligatory....whatever (Score:5, Funny)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:49PM (#9103150) Homepage Journal
    Topic in #os: hey guyz, stop pickin on irix.
    <SCO> w00t! i bought unix! im gonna b so rich!
    <novell> /msg atnt haha. idiot.
    <novell> whoops. was that out loud?
    <atnt> rotfl
    <ibm> lol
    <SCO> why r u laffin at me?
    <novell> dude, unix is so 10 years ago. linux is in now.
    <SCO> wtf?
    <SCO> hey guyz, i bought caldera, I have linux now.
    <red_hat> haha, your linux sucks.
    <novell> lol
    <atnt> lol
    <ibm> lol
    <SCO> no wayz, i will sell more linux than u!
    <ibm> your linux sucks, you should look at SuSE
    <SuSE> Ja. Wir bilden gutes Linux f? IBM.
    <SCO> can we do linux with you?
    <SuSE> Ich bin nicht sicher...
    <ibm> *cough*
    <SuSE> Gut lassen Sie uns vereinigen.
    * SuSE is now SuSE[UL]
    * SCO is now caldera[UL]
    <turbolinux> can we play?
    <conectiva> we're bored... we'll go too.
    <ibm> sure!
    * turbolinux is now turbolinux[UL]
    * conectiva is now conectiva[UL]
    <ibm> redhat: you should join!
    <SuSE[UL]> Ja! Wir sind vereinigtes Linux. Widerstand ist vergeblich.
    <red_hat> haha. no.
    <red_hat> lamers.
    <ibm> what about you debian?
    <debian> we'll discuss it and let you know in 5 years.
    <caldera[UL]> no one wants my linux!
    <turbolinux[UL]> i got owned.
    <caldera[UL]> u all tricked me. linux is lame.
    * caldera[UL] is now known as SCO
    <SCO> i'm going back to unix.
    <SGI> yeah! want to do unix with me?
    <SCO> haha. no. lamer.
    <novell> lol
    <ibm> snap!
    <SGI> :~(
    <SCO> hey, u shut up. im gonna sue u ibm.
    <ibm> wtf?
    <SCO> yea, you stole all the good stuff from unix.
    <red_hat> lol
    <SuSE[UL]> heraus laut lachen
    <ibm> lol
    <SCO> shutup. i'm gonna email all your friends and tell them you suck.
    <ibm> go ahead. baby.
    <SCO> andandand... i revoke your unix! how do you like that?
    <ibm> oh no, you didn't. AIX is forever.
    <novell> actually, we still own unix, you can't do that.
    <SCO> wtf? we bought it from u.
    <novell> whoops. our bad.
    <SCO> i own u. haha
    <SCO> ibm: give me all your AIX now!
    <ibm> whatever. lamer.
    * ibm sets mode +b SCO!*@*
    * SCO has been kicked from #os (own this.)

  • apt-get updates (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @08:55PM (#9103179) Homepage Journal
    I do wish they would put the FC2 stuff on an apt-for-rpm server, as they did with the FC1 stuff.

    I really like the combination of Synaptic, apt-for-RPM, and Fedora, but as yet I've not seen any of the FC2 stuff avaiable via apt (yum yes, apt no).

    The combination of the meta-data fetching of apt, the transaction rollback of RPM, and the avaiability of UIs like Synaptic is really great for system admin.

  • all distributions suck (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by trance9 ( 10504 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @09:02PM (#9103210) Homepage Journal
    some distros suck more; the paradoxical think is that none of them suck less.

    i am probably going to use fedora because it has a stable release schedule. that doesn't mean it sucks any less; but other distros suck more. what it really means that means if someone asks me what i am running i can say "fedora core 2" and that means something. that means if i have issues with some software the guy who got my email reporting whatever bug knows what i've got and can see if my problem can be replicated.

    try that on debian. debian has no coherent release schedule, and at this point it's not even clear they are EVER going to have another release: the current "release" has been delayed *years* already, and debian users are quite pleased with that. debian users just incrementally apt-get upgrade "unstable" and claim that is OK.

    but try figuring out how to file a bug based on that--what exactly is debian unstable? it's a huge moving target, it really doesn't mean anything, and by the time the guy gets around to looking at my bug it's likely radically different. debian needs to get its shit together and get back to 3-4 month releases. apt-get upgrade is really not the answer. i also like rhat's "best of breed" philosophy versus debians "here have everything" philosophy: i don't want to choose most of the time; and when i DO want to choose i probably know what i'm doing well enough to manually install. so most of the time, i want the distro to choose for me.

    so where does that leave me? i've got a rh9 that is end of life and i reall don't want to switch to the debian chaos. i'm hoping to go fedora, but you guys say it sucks. enterprise is no good for my home box, it's not worth paying an "enterprise" license for home.

    so, here is a plea: make fedora core not suck more than other distros. i don't need support from redhat for my home system; i do need stable planned releases. and guess what? whatever i use at home is likely going to determine what we pay for at work, so it's not like there isn't a business interest here in making me happy. if i do get forced onto debian at home, it's only a matter of time before i advocate for it at work as well.


    • sometimes also my typing sucks more, and paradoxically it never sucks less. sorry about that bizarre first paragraph there, i do hope you know what i meant.
    • so where does that leave me? i've got a rh9 that is end of life and i reall don't want to switch to the debian chaos

      - Fermi LTS
      - Suse downloadable versions
      - Whitebox
      - Fedora community support for RH9

      Are all interesting options.

    • Re:all distributions suck (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sirReal.83. ( 671912 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @09:17PM (#9103280) Homepage
      debian has no coherent release schedule
      I know, it sucks. That's why I'm helping.
      Are you helping?

      try figuring out how to file a bug based on that--what exactly is debian unstable?
      What? When you report bugs, the version of the package you're using is reported along with it. That is, if you're using the reportbug tool, which there's really no reason not to be doing. But really, the first thing you should be doing before reporting bugs is to upgrade. It's irresponsible to file bugs on old packages, especially if the new version already has fixed that bug.
      • am i helping with debian? no. i am not using debian. i am not going to use debian if i can help it, so why would i help? i help by using distributions that get this right, thereby giving them larger market share.

        as for filing bugs: maybe you are some kind of purist who thinks i should only be running software that i installed with apt-get, but last i checked things like WebLogic and Oracle did not come as free software .deb's, and yes i do sometimes need to file bugs against these behemoths.

        if i were at o
        • Well, if you're using Oracle et al, I suppose you're not using it on your desktop, in which case you'd probably want to have rock-solid "stable" instead of "unstable"?

          If you really are using big closed/third-party apps on "unstable", I'd still wonder why bug reporting would be so problematic - these kinds of things are most often compiled statically, no? So what exactly would make the bug depend on your environment?

          If it's still a problem, I'd say your way of reporting bugs is still likely some ways off.

          • stable often just doesn't cut it because it is too old; the only reason to suggest it really is that it is a known platform. solution: use redhat/fedora, where you get something that is as stable as "unstable", but also has a known version.

            i've faced bugs in the field that took weeks to diagnose, so saying i didn't analyze it is just kind of side-stepping the issue, crossing you fingers, and hoping it doesn't happen to you. when it does happen to you, you'll appreciate it if the developers at the other com
        • Oracle is only supported on RedHat AS 2.1 or RedHat ES 3.0 and UnitedLinux 1.0.

          If you have it installed on anything else, the first message from Oracle Support will be, in case you have a problem: "Please install on a supported platform and reproduce the problem and file a new TAR. Case hard closed, status HCL"

          • Yeah, I am not running oracle at home, but the scenario is real: I have a lot of other software, though, that is not installed via a .deb, and when it doesn't work I would like to know how to file the bug. In particular, various JDK's, bitkeeper, mplayer, WebLogic, nvidia drivers, etc., are all things I've manually installed into my systems and sometimes wanted to report bugs against.

            In practice what I did when I was running debian was see if I could replicate the bug myself on a different distribution, li
            • I can guarantee you they won't have the exact version of "debian unstable" you found your bug on.
              Remember when I said you should update before filing bugs? This is why. Make a report with a current Debian distro, and developers will only have to update to get everything you have.

              • Updating before filing a bug does NOT help, unless they investigate the bug the very same day I submit it. What if they don't get around to looking at my bug for three months? How can they possibly figure out exactly what version I had at the time I submitted the bug?

                Sorry, it just doesn't work. Nice as the apt-get system is, it is not a substitute for a proper release cycle. Period.
      • When you report bugs, the version of the package you're using is reported along with it.

        What about the versions of packages it depends on? What about the version of the compiler used? What about the version of the compiler used for each package dependency package (because each package may have gone into unstable at a different date, and built with different compilers)? etc..

        Spending time looking into problems that end up being to due transient breakage in dependent or core packages is a frustrating, espe
    • Ok, for one - filing a bug using reportbug is going to tag it with the exact package version, you can't get more detailed.

      Another thing - comparing Debians release schedule to RedHat is like comparing apples to oranges - that is, ripe apples to rotten oranges. Debian has a *VERY* firm concept of a release - that is, a Debian relase is *STABLE*. It is rock solid. No holes, no bugs, nothing. They will test and test the release, and delay it if necessary, until done.

      RedHat et. al need to meet release deadlin

      • Re:-1 Troll - Do you even know how Debian works??? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @10:20PM (#9103547)
        "RedHat et. al need to meet release deadlines because they have to shove out "the latest and greatest" to make $$$. Debian has no such problems - that's why Debian Stable puts all other distros to shame when it comes to reliability and stability. It may not have all the whiz-bangs, but it is *_rock solid_*."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

          I think the previous author meant release critical bugs. Debian *will not* make a stable release until they are happy that there are no release critical bugs, and things work together. Of course there will be serious bugs and security compromises found--but that's why Debian does the security updates as well as point releases every few months or so.

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

        • Fedora essentially *is* "RedHat Unstable".

          No, Rawhide is "RedHat Unstable". Fedora is a stable release.

          I agree with the rest of your post, other than:

          The whole "Stable"/"Unstable"/"Testing" thing runs completely counter to the rest of the industry.

          Which is incorrect. That model is fundamental to the rest of the industry. The major difference is visibility. With open-source it is done in the open, with more closed models of development, visibility of "unstable" is typically restricted to in-house and
      • Debian Stable was released July 2002. They are not "delayed by years". There is no fixed date when the next release will be out - it will be out when it is out.

        If another isn't released by this July, that'll be two year s (why the space is there, i don't know).

        Much of what you've said points at a major problem with the debian community: it's crass attitude.

        Gentoo welcomes these folks, the debian community tells them RTFM.

    • Re:all distributions suck (Score:5, Informative)

      by love2hateMS ( 588764 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @09:50PM (#9103412)
      I've been using Fedora since day 1, and quite honestly I love it. I haven't played with the pre-release Core 2 stuff yet, but Core 1 runs like a dream.

      As far as the interaction with Red Hat, think about it this way: What other distro allows you to post a message to a mailing list and get an answer from Alan Cox himself? Red Hat genuinely interacts with the users, listens to them and tries to help them.

      I can't even count how many times I have seen the Red Hat guys help users who clearly aren't running any of their Enterprise products.

    • Re:all distributions suck (Score:3, Informative)

      by pben ( 22734 )
      It sounds like you should really look hard at SUSE. SUSE has a fixed release schedule, every six months, at least for the last three years that I had used it. There is good support for closed source stuff like Oracle. It seems that if Red Hat is named to cover the USA market so is SUSE to cover the European market.

      The biggest adjustment for a Red Hat user is a more logical file placement, i.e. /opt is actually used for something (KDE Gnome Mozilla) /usr/bin only has the command line stuff. I personally
      • How the hell is using /opt logical? How is it logical to put X in /usr and KDE and Mozilla in /opt? /opt should not be used for anything, it just needs to disappear. The standard UNIX place for putting programs is /usr, and there is no reason why KDE, Gnome, and Mozilla can't live there. /opt is a Solaris abomination and deserves to die its rightful death.
      • The main thing that I'm not comfortable with about SuSE is that they're about the least open of the major distros. I remember reading an interview with their CEO about how "people shouldn't expect everything to be free". SuSE does not provide free ISOs of their product for download, unlike Red Hat and most other Linux vendors (they do have a "live" version that only runs off the CD for download -- effectively a demo version). RH is one of the most open distros (aside, obviously, from Debian) -- RH has mo

    • "some distros suck more; the paradoxical thin[g] is that none of them suck less."

      for me, the answer was to move to BSD. the BSDs - openbsd [openbsd.org], freebsd [freebsd.org], and netbsd [netbsd.org] - are excellent, free (in both senses), totally community-driven, unencumbered with the sort of corporate bullcrap that's going on in much of the linux world, and they run all the same software that you've become accustomed to under linux.

      serious unix users owe it to themselves to check these systems out; they really are superb - if you doubt it

  • Here it is....in color :-D (Score:5, Informative)

    by tvh2k ( 738947 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @09:07PM (#9103243)
    Color HTML-ized version [literalbarrage.org]

  • Two purposes of RH Fedora (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ben Escoto ( 446292 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @09:10PM (#9103259)
    It may be useful to distinguish two ways in which Fedora was supposed to be different from the previous series.
    1. Fedora was supposed to strike a different compromise between being stable and being up-to-date. It should come out frequently, try new and exciting features, and have the latest versions of everything.
    2. The community was supposed to have more of a say in the overall direction. With RH Linux, the company decided which packages would be included in the main distribution and what the defaults would be. With Fedora US [fedora.us] (and thus presumably RH Fedora) the users submit and check packages and decide overall direction.

    RH Fedora is a success with respect to #1, but has failed at #2. I run RH Fedora and it seems to be a reasonable stable and up-to-date distro, and tries out features like SELinux. As other people have pointed out, FC2 is on target and should be released soon.

    But as far as #2 goes it is a failure. There has been no integration with Fedora.us and, as the dialogue shows, RH still decides on all the packages and defaults in a relatively closed way.

    Some people have asked why RH, being a for-profit company, could open up development. There seems to be an obvious answer: so the community could help it more. RedHat could still exercise a high degree of control as long as it contributed heavily to the new community project. That's why many people were excited at the new structure---it implied that RH was still committed to develop the distribution, but would make sure that the community was heavily involved as well. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth their effort to "open it up."

  • This isn't a good article... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarkJensen ( 708621 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @09:43PM (#9103378) Homepage

    With the time spent generating a fake (and, yes, amusing - don't get me wrong) IRC chat, this seems to be more of what a typical /. poster would write in response to an article.


    This, as of itself, isn't really article material...

  • This is exactly why I love Debian: it's the community. Yes, many Red Hat employees are deeply involved in the GNU/Linux community; but it seems to work both ways with Debian: the members of the GNU/Linux community affect Debian's direction substantially.

    Red Hat ships its software as a "complete package", so to speak. You buy the CDs and put them in and install, and that's what you've got. Debian is much more of a "work in progress" that you can actually become a part of. You download the 50-meg install ima

  • It would be funny... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 09, 2004 @10:37PM (#9103636)


    ...It would be funny if it weren't so painfully fucking accurate.

    Welcome to 2004. Here's the rundown, incase you fell asleep:

    o VA now pimps SourceForge as a tool to help companies ship jobs overseas. [vasoftware.com] Go ahead, count the number of times you see the word "outsourcing" on their page. Thats right -- That lovely free hosting space your project has? Salesmen inside VA now point to projects like yours and go "See? It works! Now you can fire your employees, and replace them with this handy-dandy website!" They're making an example out of you. Wise up.

    o Red Hat isn't interested in talking to you, looking at you, or hearing from you. [redhat.com] Be sure to read the fine print at the bottom of the page..the part that reads "The Fedora Project is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."....Those friendly folks at Red Hat just want you to keep the mill wheel turning, cranking out those security fixes and updates for them to sell. It's real simple. You grow the grain, cut it, and haul it all to the mill, where they'll bag it, and sell it, and let you go hungry. Now, in 2004, rather than being part of the business model, you are a distraction to the business model -- Sorry! No more Red Hat for you! (Fun Fact: They were making money off their end-user desktop distribution -- just not enough to justify listening to your noisy and distracting comments.)

    Yaaay! Open source is GRRRREAT!

    ..will the last one out please turn off the lights?

    Cheers,
    Bowie J. Poag

    • Be sure to read the fine print at the bottom of the page..the part that reads "The Fedora Project is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."....Those friendly folks at Red Hat just want you to keep the mill wheel turning, cranking out those security fixes and updates for them to sell. It's real simple. You grow the grain, cut it, and haul it all to the mill, where they'll bag it, and sell it, and let you go hungry.

      1. Please point me to a free distro with guaranteed support.
      2. Please point me to a produ

  • Debian posters cleared the fog (Score:3, Interesting)

    by youknowmewell ( 754551 ) on Sunday May 09, 2004 @10:58PM (#9103758)
    At one point I was considering using Debian. I liked the idea of a totally community-based distro, and I also liked how Debian stuck to using only free software.

    But now, after using Fedora Core and liking it, I haven't wanted to switch. Still, Debian has been tempting. Until now.

    I realize now that the Debian community has a few too many loud-mouthed zealots for my taste. Way too much left-winged "down with the big man!" for me, thanks. Red Hat/Fedora Core seems to have a much more mature community than Debian does.

    And if I was to ever consider switching to a different distro which is completely community-based, then I'd probably go for Gentoo anyway.

    I think enough people know that RH/FC and Debian have different places in the Free Software community, and that they both can peacefully coexist together in the community. It's just seems there are a few who feel a need to push their distro so much as to start spreading FUD about other distros. Childish and distasteful.

  • Not to be a total Mandrake fan boi... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by msimm ( 580077 ) on Monday May 10, 2004 @12:16AM (#9104064) Homepage
    But that irc log was hilarious. Just thought I'd point out that Manrdrake Club includes things like community RPM voting [mandrakeclub.com], so if you really think application/feature X is the best thing since sliced bread you can add it, then the other users will vote on it and finally SOMEONE (maybe Mandrake Soft, maybe community member) will put it through the paces (testing > release..possibly). Mandrake seems to be a lot of what Fedora wants to be, only it is, already. And don't forget they release ALL their software under the GPL [mandrakesoft.com]. Thats pretty amazing for a commercial project.

  • Community-based distro (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dwonis ( 52652 ) * on Monday May 10, 2004 @01:38AM (#9104308)
    For the sake of argument: If you, as a user or a developer, wanted a community-run distribution, why would you flock to Fedora, rather than using Debian or Gentoo or any of the other community-based distros?
  • After several years, this replacement for the wireless part of PCMCIA has been so much nicer and reliable. I was thinking for certain that even if it is not part of the standard distro, the kernel could be compiled to support it, and it would be on Disk 4 as an option. Supplying it this way would at least obviate the need for kernel source install/configure/build.

    Why would the nice Fedora people leave it out?

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