Sean Estabrooks wrote:
On Thu, 27 May 2004 10:41:36 -0500What will push Fedora into obscurity are things like being difficult to use, being unreliable, and having a community that won't help out. These are much more real threats than an ex-RedHat employee having a mysterious "change of heart" after being hired by Microsoft.
Chris Adams <cmadams@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
My last post on this topic (and probably on this list - I thought it was
supposed to be about Fedora Core releases).
If public statements from a previous employee of the company that
is the driving force behind Fedora, which are designed to undermine our community isn't relevant to this list, what is?
Are we supposed to just keep talking about bug reports while MicrosoftHmm...but the only people listening on this list are Fedora users. Chris Sharp told his story outside Redmond, which is why you heard it. If he'd expressed his "opinions" on "windows-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" (or wherever, you get the point) then we wouldn't be having this discussion. By contrast, the only people who will ever hear your rebuttle right now are Fedora users.
and their new mouthpiece try to push us into obscurity or worse? It seems understanding what we're up against is perfectly relevant.
I just saw your response to Travis as well. I don't think anyone's disputing that alterting the list about issues like this and having a little discussion are good things. But a thread like this has huge potential to erupt into a "you're momma's so fat" kind of flamewar, which just clutters this list and distracts from users who have much more legitimate (and much less sensational) questions to ask. If these users can't find answers, many will go elsewhere to more sympathetic ears, be it another distribution or another OS entirely.
If you're really concerned that Fedora's appearance is being damaged by this guy, maybe the Fedora community should have an "official" PR response? Personally, I don't give much weight to Mr. Sharp. There's plenty of real world proof that open source solutions work well, and can even be beneficial for small software businesses, and Sharp's credibility is undermined by the fact that he works for Microsoft now. Only staunch Microsoft supporters (who wouldn't have chosen open source anyway) will really fall into this trap.
Jeremy
