CentOS Project Administrator Goes AWOL 492
An anonymous reader writes "Lance Davis, the main project administrator for CentOS, a popular free 'rebuild' of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux, appears to have gone AWOL. In an open letter from his fellow CentOS developers, they describe the precarious situation the project has been put in. There have been attempts to contact him for some time now, as he's the sole administrator for the centos.org domain, the IRC channels, and apparently, CentOS funds. One can only hope that Lance gets in contact with them and gets things sorted out."
Peace (Score:4, Insightful)
If you read the message in TFA, it kind of seems like a cry for your ex-gf to get back together.
Joking aside, I dont think it's really a surprise for anyone that people have other things to do sometimes, or even getting interested in different stuff. I actually feel sorry for the guy that this got slashdotted and all. If he's on holiday, it's gonna ruin his day. If he's away doing other stuff, he probably dont want to hear his co-admins crying to get him back.
Really, give the guy a peace. I bet he has used serious amount of time on CentOS project and deserves some time off and respect.
Re:Peace (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Peace (Score:5, Interesting)
Somewhat concerning, considering the number of CentOS servers I have in the wild.
I'd suggest disabling yum updates on your CentOS boxes until this gets sorted out. Might want to do updates by rebuilding src rpms directly from Redhat.
Just the fact they even have to address an issue like this makes me nervous.
Re:Peace (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Peace (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Peace (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. There's a reason why Red Hat is corporation oriented -- If you need something critical to your systems, go with those who are more reliable to provide the support and isn't so much volunteer projects.
Re:Peace (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. CentOS isn't going to stop working any time soon, the source code and repositories are still around and this will get sorted one way or the other even if it means new domains and changing the name of the project or something or learning from mistakes and setting up some non-profit organisation.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, but.... I knew when Solaris 8, Irix, MacOS9, and Windows 2000 were going out of support and could plan accordingly. If my plan was: "Keep using it and hope for the best", then it's my fault when/if it all falls apart. Where ever this guy is, he just up and left for there without even a week's warning, let alone the months or even years companies give for products going out of support. Now he may turn up next week and everything is fine, or he may turn up long enough to turn over the reins (and ever
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
actually, Solaris 8 end of service life is March 31, 2012. OpenVMS is still alive, new releases coming out periodically, and patches being issued, and support of course available. SGI was bought by Rackable and becoming Silicon Graphics International and support for IRIX is until December 31, 2013.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bad examples. Solaris 8 doesn't reach the end of it's service life until March 2012, legacy versions of Irix will reach end of support no sooner than December 2013 and even the oldest versions of OpenVMS for the Alpha will be supported through 2012. And of course all three platforms have new versions coming out, so there's an upgrade path on current hardware platforms.
Really, enterprise vendors (including Red Hat) have an excellent history of supporting their paying customers for extended periods.
Your exam
Re:Peace (Score:5, Funny)
Someone who isn't actively connected to the project won't f*ck up alot of other people's servers just for the hell of it. Right now there's not a problem (legally), but if he intentionally screws up packages there will be. Yeah if you're paranoid, don't update your servers and/or rebuild from official RH srpms. Or buy RH support.
I just asked a friend who works for RH and he can't confirm or deny they've kidnapped him. Hmm .....
Re:Peace (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no need to disable updates, I don't think. All of the updates that I've seen on the centos-announce mailing list come from two people, and I believe those are the people with the GPG keys on the packages, too.
If Lance is still around, it is safe to say that he has had all of his access removed. If he has both access to the repositories and the GPG keys, I'd worry (assuming his intent is malicious, which I somewhat doubt would be the case) -- but until the current developers who rebuild/push the updates advise that we kill updates, I definitely will not be doing so. A great example was the BIND vulnerability a day or two ago.
Seriously, if you are a centos administrator, you should do a couple things:
1) Sign up for the centos-announce list, here: http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-announce [centos.org]
2) Watch it like a hawk.
It is safe to say that the existing developers will use it if they have a huge need to communicate an apocalypse situation where it would be wise to stop updating.
Re:Peace (Score:5, Funny)
OMG You Didn't (Score:5, Funny)
OMG, you guys hired Soandso. He was with our company. He knocked up 3 admin assistants, and the guy that fixes the copier. He peed in the coffee pot in the break room. As a joke, he put our proprietary code up for sale on Craig's List. The worst of it was when he used 3 months of petty cash and donated it to McCain/Palin 2008.
Re:Peace (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, however afaict centos is a volunteer project. When the shit hits the fan in more important aspects of someones life then such volunteer projects become the last thing on someones mind. Hell for all we know he could be dead or hospitalised.
The real problem is the lack of an organisational structure that can survive it's founder dissapearing. Sadly this is all too common in FOSS projects. It's made worse by the fact that such projects are usually done remotely and so often noone on the project will know any of the person who dissapeared's real life family and friends.
Re:Peace (Score:5, Insightful)
They really need to stop advertising themselves as being "enterprise-class" then.
Re:Peace (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it would be better if people stopped deluding themselves into thinking that "Enterprise Class" means anything beyond buzzwords.
Re:Peace (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in a online TF2 clan, and we have the Real Names, addresses, phone numbers, and work phone numbers, of the 10 highest ranking members. The top two members have shared all important info so a absence of one is annoying, but completely survivable. Perhaps its because we have so many active duty military in our group, but I would expect everyone to take such basic precautions.
Please don't tell me my TF2 group is more organized than CentOS, (Please!)
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He's a project leader with great power over the resources of the project. With great power comes great responsibility. Responsibility which this guy does not seem to be handling well, or in fact, at all.
If the guy is on vacation for a few weeks or will be pursueing other interrests temporarily or permanently, he should have notified others or helped transition some of his power.
Re:Peace (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe he killed his wife and needs some time to remove the passenger front seat. Takes some time to clean up you know? Geez, cut him some slack!
Re:Peace (Score:5, Funny)
But still, would it really be that hard to post something like "Wife dead, BRB" on the mailing list?
Re:Peace (Score:5, Funny)
if he's lying in a comma, maybe we can just turn him into an exclamation point instead and everything will be just be great!
Re:Peace (Score:5, Funny)
Then again he may be on his period, or have problems with his colon.
Re:Is This Bus Syndrome? (Score:5, Insightful)
If RedHat doesn't want to share their code, then they should build their own OS, instead of just working on the pre-existing huge resource that is Linux/GPLed code. See how that works? They agreed to CentOS-style reuse of their work in exchange for THEIR for-profit reuse of decades worth of OTHER people's work; that's the price of the GPL, and they pay it willingly, because what they get is so valuable.
And speaking of cynicism: anyone stop to think that maybe some overaggressive RedHat executive with a suitcase full of cash is behind Lance's disappearance? Follow the money: CentOS looks unreliable ==> RedHat cashes in....
Re:Is This Bus Syndrome? (Score:5, Interesting)
I totally agree with the "bus syndrome" thinking. At one company I was at for many years, the boss had that concern. I was the senior SysAdmin, who created and managed the entire IT infrastructure. To alleviate it, everything was documented. A copy of the passwords were kept under lock and key. Server functions were well documented. My assistant(s) (depending on the year I had 1 to 4) could continue smooth operations without me.
Keeping the "bus syndrome" mentality, should I be unavailable for a day or days, there were no problems. I could fly between cities to do work, and not panic that the whole world was going to fall apart while I was on a plane. I still got plenty of phone calls, simply because it was my baby. Junior admins didn't want to make widespread changes without my seal of approval, even if it was a quick phone call where they gave me a brief outline of their changes, and I gave them verbal approval ("Go for it. Let me know how it goes.").
The day came that they decided I wasn't necessary. I was locked out of the machines per my own plan, and then notified that I was no longer part of the company. Whoever did the changing wasn't quite as consistent as I was and missed a few spots. Being a "good guy", I verified that I was locked out of everywhere, and sent a list (it was short) of what I still had access to, so they could get those too. The missed spots were non-essential, so even if I had a desire to do bad things, I couldn't have broken much.
The password plan had better motives than firing the top guy. On password change day, I issued the passwords on slips of paper to the people who needed them (and to the vault). Should someone's passwords become compromised, I could have all the passwords changed in approx 5 minutes. Should something seem funny, we'd change the passwords. Usually we just changed them because the existing passwords had been in use for too long. We did have someone lose their USB key with their SSH keys on it. We went through the well practiced drill. It turned out to be just an exercise. The key had fallen out of his pocket, and was under the seat of his car.
When they terminated me, the company lived on. The transition was smooth without me. I may as well have been hit by a bus. No one asked me "how do I....?", because it was all there for those with access who knew what to look for. Even if we had a walkout of all IT staff, things were documented well enough where an experienced IT person could walk in and keep things running.
We were a high dollar, small staff company. Why should somewhere like CentOS be any different?
Re:Is This Bus Syndrome? (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I see it, it's their company. They can either keep me around forever, and appreciate the work I do, or let me go. Either way, I did a good job while I was there.
As I heard it through the grapevine, they spent an absolute fortune redoing everything I did. They switched the servers away from Linux to FreeBSD. They didn't optimize things as well as I had, so that left them in a situation where things simply didn't work as well. They rewrote a lot of my software. Some was trivial, and some was very intricate. I strongly suspect they were trying to defeat my back doors that they were never able to find. The funny part was, I didn't leave any back doors. If I leave a back door for myself, that means there's a back door for someone else to exploit. I spent enough time watching the front door for trouble, why should I have to double my work? :)
The only contact I've maintained is watching their Alexa score drop. It's nothing related to anything I did, but I strongly suspect there have been some nasty technical issues, since some people have called and emailed me saying that the site was suddenly unavailable, or throwing weird errors. I know what the weird errors were. Misconfigured servers, because they were deviating from my well constructed and tested plans. Some of them were obvious. They put into production what I had already tested and decided were not satisfactory for that environment. C'est la vie. I moved on to better things, and they were stumbling over old hurdles. It seems that happens a lot. Places like to second guess the work of old staff just for the sake of trying to make him/her look bad. Sometimes it's just to justify why they got rid of him/her, even years after he could care less. :)
Re:Is This Bus Syndrome? (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally won't use software produced by projects like CentOS. My belief is that projects like CentOS are there because people want to skate on the backs of people and companies who have spent time and money making a good product, just because they don't want to pay for that hard work. I believe this is the flaw in the GNU license, and not open source in general. It is like stealing money from those who created the original work. Redhat spends a lot of money to develop their product, and others just copy it and give it away for free.
You do realize that technically Redhat is just skating by on the free give-aways of others, too, don't you?
I mean, as I understand the whole Linux thing. Feel free to correct me.
Re:Is This Bus Syndrome? (Score:4, Informative)
Redhat puts a ton of work/code into linux and associated projects, they're not merely aggregating.
And, as I understand it, they are happy with the CentOS project. They used to give away Redhat and charge for RHEL. Then they switched to an all-pay model, forked the Fedora project, and CentOS fills the gap that was previously held by Redhat. Sure, there's probably some marginal drain away from paying customers, but there's also a large potential customer base that can 'upgrade' to RHEL very easily.
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Really? CentOS is robbing Redhat of their hard work and giving it to selfish, cheap people? Really? You've clearly misunderstood the very basic concepts of OSS.
And who cries for the people that made the software that Redhat freely uses in their distros? Lest you forget, while they've contributed a great deal, Redhat has contributed less than they distribute. Same for SuSE, Ubuntu, et al.
Re:Is This Bus Syndrome? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is like stealing money from those who created the original work. Redhat spends a lot of money to develop their product, and others just copy it and give it away for free.
Not to diminish the contribution by Red Hat, which is pretty extensive, the above argument is invalid. Red Hat did not create the products included in their distributions. They take existing free software, package it, and sells it as part of a complete package, including support. The software is still free.
Some projects whose products are included in Red Hat distributions were created by Red Hat and staffed by Red Hat personnel. They chose the GPL anyway. They have even purchased several companies and relicensed the products of those companies under the GPL. Do you really think that Red Hat would have done this if they thought that this would severely impact their business?
We periodically see companies trying to make open source products switch to closed source for this very reason.
Those companies are in a very different situation. They own the copyrights to their entire code base, and are thus able to change the license to a proprietary one if they think that it will create an advantage. Companies like Red Hat cannot do this, since many of the components of their products are free software. They could have done it with those components that they have written themselves, or acquired the producers of, but they mostly haven't.
While legal, I think it is morally wrong.
Why? Not even Red Hat think so. They argue that people or organizations that have little or no money are not their target market, and thus, it doesn't impact them that those instead use free rebuilds of their product. In fact, it is a better option for them than to use a completely different distribution, such as a Debian one, since using CentOS means that you are already used to their distribution, and may become a customer in the future when you have acquired the financial capabilities, as well as the demand for commercial support contracts.
Re:Is This Bus Syndrome? (Score:4, Interesting)
If Redhat were just starting and were still on the edge of financial stability, and a 'CentOS' product started giving away Redhat's product for free, the for profit company could fail.
The original Red Hat product, which they shipped when they were just starting and on the edge of financial stability, *was* completely open source and was very widely given away for free. You could download it from their servers, or get it copied onto a CD for a token charge. It still seems to have worked for them for quite a long time.
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Re:Peace (Score:5, Funny)
Right. Just ask Gov Mark Sanford.
He was just out hiking the Appalachian Trail and his staff and the media and his constituents got all verklempt.
He's not awol (Score:2)
Wedding bells? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe he and Alan Cox have eloped?
Insert your own reiserfs joke here... (Score:5, Funny)
Brazil (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe he's hiking in Brazil. Did anyone ever think of that?
He took the money (Score:2)
Re:He took the money (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure how far he's gonna get with $27.50, a bag of skittles, and an old copy of 2600.
Let's just hope for the best (Score:5, Interesting)
This kind of thing really scares me, because this is exactly what it happens when someone dies, for example: the data/information stream coming from them on the web simply ceases to exist. Also, this is one of the main reasons why important projects should have their main assets handled by a group of people, and not have things centralized. If the worst has happened, CentOS will be forced to fork their project and start over.
But let's just hope I'm spewing bullshit and he's just pissed off.
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This kind of thing really scares me... If the worst has happened, CentOS will be forced to fork their project and start over.
Is that actually scary? I'm far from an expert on this, but isn't CentOS mostly just RHEL repackaged? And isn't the source for CentOS itself available? How hard would it be to fork or start over?
I ask because my first thought was to think, "This must be sarcastic," but then I realized I don't really know what I'm talking about, and there might be some kind of issue I'm not considering.
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Actually- it's concerning... but not a crisis.
Some of my boxes have data continuity from RH 7-9, then Whitebox Linux, to CentOS 3-4-5.
The pain is in the migration. The joy is in the freedom.
If CentOS bellies up I have enough boxes to justify maintaining myself from source rpms, or moving to another RHE based distro. It's always a pain. But I bet I got 8 years of functionality from Whitebox/CentOS. A pretty good deal.
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Replying to my own post...
Whitebox Linux went offline due to hurricane Katrina. Everyone folded into CentOS.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Score:5, Funny)
It'd be be like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but really nerdy.
Wait a little more (Score:4, Informative)
This sort of open letter should really be a last-resort kind of thing, but their letter says
When I (Russ) try to call the phone numbers for UK Linux, and for you individually, I get a telco intercept 'Lines are temporarily busy' for the last two weeks. Finally yesterday, a voicemail in your voice picked up, and I left a message urgently requesting a reply.
If they left a vm yesterday, they should give it at least until Monday before publicly humiliating the guy. Being a few days late in answering voiemail isn't odd at all. Also, is it out of the question to try and get someone to check his house personally? A team of 10 people have got to know someone in the UK.
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"give it at least until Monday before publicly humiliating the guy."
Except they had been calling for 2 weeks to nothing but a busy signal, which alone might be sufficient cause for such an open letter, especially considering the financial and management concerns.
Oh, and nobody goes on holiday without contact for over 24 hours, do they? I bring a laptop and a smartphone with me wherever I go. Even when I visited Northern Africa, I made sure to get online at least once a day to check, act on, and reply to m
Re:Wait a little more (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and nobody goes on holiday without contact for over 24 hours, do they? I bring a laptop and a smartphone with me wherever I go. Even when I visited Northern Africa, I made sure to get online at least once a day to check, act on, and reply to my email.
Its not a vacation if you can find me.
I leave my cell, laptop, etc home. For my last trip, I told my co-workers what park I would be in and that if something went south that they can call the park ranger and then hope that they can find me.
I want to get away from the the regular grind, not bring them with me :-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference there is that your work was already delegated, you notified them of your intentions, AND you did give a somewhat plausible way to be found.
If they called and a park ranger needed to search a million acres of wilderness for some computer geek just because a server went down, it may not happen. They may not be quite as anxious about trying to find you, as say you went missing for 2 weeks in the woods with only 2 days worth of supplies.
One of my guys
Re:Wait a little more (Score:5, Funny)
Rambo V: Systems Administrator.
This time... it's technical.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Man, sounds like you got managers or coworkers that don't respect you vacation. I think I've been called up twice on my vacation, once because a server password was missing in action and the second briefly discuss a change I'd worked with that had caused a serious regression. If you call me on my vacation it'd better fill this three criteria:
1) It's serious
2) I won't need any laptop, VPN or any remote access
3) There's good reason why you need exactly my input
4) It'll go to voicemail and I answer on my sched
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Re:Wait a little more (Score:4, Interesting)
I do the same but I let people know. Plus I have a cool device that let's me hit a button and it sends an email...
"I'm ok, I am at XX.XXXXX YY.YYYYYY"
I carry it to keep people I know calm, plus it has two other buttons..
1 sends "I am physically ok but need some assistance or to be picked up at xx.xxxx yy.yyyy"
the other sends a regular emergency beacon of "I am in need of help right now. Consider this a 911 emergency call, I am at xx.xxxx yy.yyyyy"
it sends to a list of email addresses and has coverage wherever it can see the sky.
its a SPOT personal GPS from http://www.findmespot.com/en/ [findmespot.com]
works great, I dont get bugged and I can call for help/ calm the easily freaked out people in my life.
Re:Wait a little more (Score:5, Informative)
If they left a vm yesterday, they should give it at least until Monday before publicly humiliating the guy. Being a few days late in answering voiemail isn't odd at all.
If you read the information at http://planet.centos.org/ [centos.org], it appears to be a little worse than that.
They say that Davis vanished from the project "some time in 2008". Given that we're more than halfway through 2009, that means he's been gone for the better part of a year, maybe more. Also, they've been asking for quite some time for him to provide a public accounting of the funds collected from contributions to CentOS, and Lance stopped answering their questions months ago. It sounds like they've recently gotten serious about trying to get some answers and discovered that he's completely inaccessible.
It may just be that he's gone on vacation, but given that he's been refusing to answer questions for months about what has happened to what is probably a fairly large amount of money, I think their concern isn't at all unreasonable.
Re:Wait a little more (Score:5, Informative)
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You could try
Well House
9 High Street
Chapel en le Frith
High Peak
DERBYSHIRE
SK23 0HD
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Eggs. Basket. (Score:2)
"as he's the sole administrator for the centos.org domain, the IRC channels, and apparently, CentOS funds"
That's a lot of responsibility for a single person. What would happen if, for example, he were to be hit by a bus one day?
I think this was a major argument Microsoft once had against open source projects: that the maintainer or whoever could just get up and leave it one day, because they got bored and decided to move on. There again, I guess that's true of real life jobs too. And, whilst it's possi
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Re:Eggs. Basket. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone know about his personal financial situation? It is not unknown for people to borrow against their business or organization to fix personal financial problems with a "promise" to pay it back "when things get better". Since he has not provided any financial statements from the organization, I'm leaning towards this.
Re:Eggs. Basket. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he *was* hit by a bus.
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That's a lot of responsibility for a single person. What would happen if, for example, he were to be hit by a bus one day?
PPPFt... hahaha. I wish you would tell this to my boss.
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One of the consultants I worked with always thought "hit-by-a-bus" was too negative. So she always asked what the company would do if Joe Overworked won the lottery. (sheeyah... the BUS lottery)
Other way more likely scenarios;
Joe takes another job, takes a vacation to avoid burnout, gets sick - job stress lowering his immune system and all...
medical problems (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who recently had medical problems that sprung up over night, I can honestly say that there could be other reasons he's not responding. I guess an open letter is as good a way as any to try to get in touch with him, but the tone of the letter is beyond ignorant. It's more accusatory than anything (which may be justified), but it's certainly not a sign of professionalism. If anything, it shows that he may have been correct in managing the project without the petulant "help" of the other developers.
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Re:medical problems (Score:5, Informative)
An Alternative (Score:5, Informative)
There's a danger when one guy has complete control of the project. Not even Linus has that. If the guy bolts or drops dead, you're left in limbo.
If you need a similar compatible version of RH Enterprise Linux, I'd suggest Scientific Linux [wikipedia.org]. It's made by the staff at Fermi Labs (and CERN as well) as a uniform OS platform for all their experiments, and is basically RHEL compiled from source. Like RHEL, it can also be used as a general purpose OS (it just includes a lot of science packages, especially stuff for physics). It's supposed to be 100% compatible, or very very close, and the Fermi guys distribute the ISO's online.
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The problem with scientific linux is that it is not updated frequently at all. CentOS is attractive because they are usually pretty quick about folding in security fixes shortly after they are released by Redhat.
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There is, however, something stopping anyone else from accessing the (allegedly) thousands of Euros of donations which went directly into the hands of one now missing person every month.
When you try to 'fork' a bank account, sometimes the people at the bank get a little upset.
chill out... (Score:2)
He's just spending time with his soul mate in Argentina.
Come on (Score:4, Insightful)
I like CentOS a lot, but still
It's open source, if anything goes _really_ wrong, fork. The source is there, all references to the "Proeminent Linux vendor" properly stripped, etc
It's less work than start from scratch again from the "proeminent linux vendor"
More background info at ... (Score:5, Informative)
http://planet.centos.org/
You can read a bit more there what has happened.
Not the first time... (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the other key developers, Karanbir Singh, disappeared (albeit for a very legit reason...he got married and had the gall to go on a honeymoon ) at a very inconvenient time during which a version update was to be released earlier this year. The remaining developers either wouldn't or couldn't complete the process in his absence....the end result being a significant delay in the CentOS 5.2-->5.3 upgrade process.
I have been an active user of CentOS since version 3 (back in 2004) and it would really pain me to see such a great project fall on hard times or disband/fork. Enough of my production machines are running on CentOS that this latest strangeness has got me seriously evaluating Ubuntu's server product for low budget applications and convincing other deeper pocketed clients to consider reverting back to RHEL.
Here's hoping they manage to sort things out and come up with a more evenly distributed model for project responsibility.
Re:Not the first time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ubuntu Server?
No offense to the Ubuntu team intended (or to you) but that's not exactly a hardened OS with the kind of long term support one needs in a data center.
If low budget to you is a simple LAMP stack- then maybe. But no one has been beating up on Ubuntu server- and it really needs professional QA before anyone tries to use it for more than a novelty.
The logical alternative for new deployments would be Debian, if you wanted to dump RPM based systems.
Re:Not the first time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ubuntu has slowly made it's way to the data center over the last couple years and it's doing quite well. Typically admins will use the LTS versions which are supported for 5 years. You can also upgrade directly from one LTS version to the next LTS when it comes out, no need to hit any of the minor version in between.
Ubuntu is seeing HEAVY use in virtualized environments, like Amazon EC2, and since it's built off of Debian it inherits much of that distribution's stability and polish.
I've been a professional Linux admin for 15 years, have run everything from Red Hat, Cent OS, Gentoo to Debian in the data center and definitely think Ubuntu Server has its spot in the data center as well.
Three words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Follow The Money.
At first when I was reading the story, I was all like, "oh, guy with only keys to kingom hit by a bus?", then I saw how he controlled the funds and I was all like "he's so on a beach in the tropics threatening to burn the hotel down if he doesn't get his paper umbrella".
Seriously though, I hope it's simply a case of needing a break, not something more ominous. I like CentOS, and I'd hate to see the project fall apart due to losing one key person.
Interesting blog post... (Score:5, Informative)
Read the post here. [blogspot.com]
Is personality driven development part of free? (Score:4, Informative)
It seems that as of late, there has been a lot of public controversy around various FOSS projects and the people that run them. There's disputes between key players followed up, all too frequently, with giant personal missives about how this or that person isn't going to work on this project anymore because somebody else is too mean to them. There's guys disappearing, flame wars, all sorts of very public problems with projects. One wonders if FOSS is becoming too much of a soap opera and less of a collaborative development model. These aren't unimportant projects either. The GCC compiler, X Windows system and its underpinnings, the kernel, and certainly file systems, all have had some very famous and public spats between various egos.
The one thing that money does, when developers actually get paid for their work, is that it forces people to put aside their differences. When there's no cash on the table, there's no logical reason for someone to take a pounding personally due to a personality conflict. But, when there is cash, people can accept quite a bit of abuse and still produce something. While personal glory is nice to have, its not nearly so nice as a check. But, in FOSS, if you take away that personal glory, there's really no incentive at all. You almost have to wonder if, personality driven politics will continue to undermine FOSS, and how much personality FOSS can stand before the whole brand is so polluted by public conflict that one would almost prefer to just write somebody a check just to avoid the soap opera.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
it forces people to put aside their differences
tjstork, meet office politics!
when there is cash, people can accept quite a bit of abuse and still produce something.
Oh, you've already met! Taking abuse is not "putting aside your differences" it's "desperation for the next paycheck in this economy". The only thing unique in what transpired between Linus and Alan was the public nature of it. People get chewed out for things they feel were unfair all of the time, and sometimes they even quit over it.
Re:Is personality driven development part of free? (Score:4, Insightful)
Where to begin. . . on commercial projects, *I'm sure* that there are problems with developers all the time. They leave, they get fired, whatever. The corporate structure provides both continuation (hire another developer to replace them), and discreteness (you never actually *hear* in public, about the differences between developers, flame wars, immaturity, etc, but that doesn't mean they aren't there).
Also, companies go out of business and commercial software does get abandoned, just like open source.
So, commercial software has, usually, a corporate structure which provides continuity. What does open source have? A few things. . . the chief one being access to the source code. Maybe the project will have to change names, but I'm pretty sure it will continue. In a *well run* Open Source project, there wouldn't be a single point of failure - one guy holding all the keys. Instead, you'd have things split up among 2 to 3 people who can control things like the domain name, irc channels, etc. Additionally, for a *very well run* open source project (though most probably wouldn't go this far), you'd have a non-profit foundation with a board of directors who is the 'owner' of things like domain names, servers, etc.
That way, if the person(s) controlling key assets like servers or domain names goes 'rogue', the non-profit foundation can exert it's ownership, and sieze control back from that person who was designated as the 'administrator'. That may require going to court, but if the organization is on record as being the 'owner' of those assets, and can prove it, the court will use its power to restore control of those assets to the rightful owner.
Unfortunately, since most Open Source projects start out as one guy or gal, they often seem to never get around to the stage of maturity of making the project independent of that person - I think part of that is ego on the part of the project founder. They are too small minded, often, to think of the project in terms bigger than themselves, and give up control.
Which brings us back to the source. AT LEAST, we always have the source, which means no Open Source/Free Software project can ever truly die, unless nobody cares about it, then it doesn't matter if it does die. (If anybody was *using* an Open Source project, and it was vital to them, then they'd care enough about it to either maintain it themselves if they must, or get someone else to maintain it [which might mean spending some cash, but that's life]).
Not an atypical problem (Score:5, Insightful)
i don't think that this an atypical problem, neither inside or outside the
open source community. We have people giving ressources of to projects
(e.g. time, money). Usually they expect something in return (e.g. recognition,
influence). Normally those expectations are never stated explecitely. So what
happens: Someone sees his expectations not met, so he cuts the ressources he
gives. Usually this goes together with hurt feelings as well, so he tries to
get a refund by keeping assets (domains, money, passwords, etc.).
Same thing happened with other OSS projects (e.g. Blastwave) and non
profit organisations (e.g. Hannelore Kohl Stiftung here in germany).
You cannot fix this. When you try to fix it, you need a board and a charta
right at the beginning. Too many projects would already die here and would
never get to the stage where a quitting founder brings a crisis. In the worst
case now: they have to start at the current status again under a new name.
CU, Martin
P.S. This shell not be a factual description, what happened in this project.
This is only a description of things i observed elsewhere and would expect
to find here too.
What an arm (Score:3, Funny)
So go take over. (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean that of all the 'geeks' that are working on this 'project', no one can take over the IRC channel and domain name? Its pretty trivial to do both, even today, with all the 'safe gaurds' in place. I haven't tried to steal a bank account but that seems pretty trivial as well.
So tell me exactly why this is a problem for a bunch of geeks?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't tried to steal a bank account but that seems pretty trivial as well.
So tell me exactly why this is a problem for a bunch of geeks?
I don't know about you, but having to be careful not to bend down in the shower for several years would be a real problem for me.
Uh oh... (Score:3, Funny)
He told his wife he had to fly out, to meet the other CentOS developers... in Buenos Aires...
Imagine all the whiz kids in trouble now (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. Imagine all those whiz kids who told their bosses they'd save mad money changing RHEL to CentOS.
This reminds me of the Xircon IRC chat client software from a few years ago.
Sometimes people just pull the plug, I guess.
LinkedIn (Score:4, Informative)
Out to Lunch (Score:5, Funny)
Lance Davis, the first editor of Centos, who never actually resigned from his job. He simply left one morning for lunch and never returned to his office, making all later holders of the position "Acting Editors." His old office is still preserved by the Centos volunteers in the hope that he will return. His desk sports a sign that reads "Missing, presumed fed."
how is he gone? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Has anyone checked to see if he's hiking in the Applachians?
(fixed spelling)
Well, given that he's a computer geek, I think it's safe to say he's not spending time with his Argentinian mistress.
Re: (Score:2)
the thing you should find extraordinary and really shows how powerful free software is, is that a single person can reuse code to make a project as large as this. this would be unthinkable in the non-free world where you seem to need an army of programmers and lawyers to make the simplest program.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You can't even guarantee that a major project isn't just going to stop without notice
CentosOS will never die. Ultimately I will fork it and continue it. That's the guarantee you have for good projects.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
They see me trollin'...
BUT, I will respond anyway.
This is not a failure of open source, it is a failure of redundancy. We've learned this lesson countless times: There should never be "only one" person with protected access to a project. It's like kusanagi374 said above.
Re:Excellent example.... (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to with closed source projects, where when someone walks away with all the passwords everything's just fucking fine and peachy, right?
Re:tradgedy (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly 66% of the four CentOS users are affected.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's because RHEL 5 is also based off of FC6 (Linux kernel 2.6.18).
The whole point of CentOS 5 is to track RHEL 5 closely (and in a binary compatible way). Which is great for people who want to learn RHEL, but not fork out the support cost for the real thing until they're ready and/or need Red Hat support. In fact, Red Hat loves this, because they get mindshare (people get used to working on a Red Hat