On Sat, 2007-02-24 at 16:58 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote: > Benjamin Franz wrote: > > On Sat, 24 Feb 2007, Les Mikesell wrote: > > > >> New, untested things have to appear first somewhere. What do you > >> think would be more effective? > > > > I kind of like the vibrancy of the Ubuntu community: People have new > > ideas and they spinoff 'Edubuntu', 'Nubuntu', 'Ubuntu CE', 'Kubuntu', > > 'Xubuntu', and so on. > > This has more to do with squeezing everything on one disk and having to > choose what to eliminate. It doesn't address the new application version > issue. Where do you introduce major-version jumps the first time? > > > Good ideas spread and come back. Classic 'Bazaar' > > to Fedora's 'Cathedral'. You don't see a lot of 'spinoff' from Fedora > > because Redhat has clutched it too close to themselves. If you have a > > strong enough base community and loose enough control, experimentation > > happens automatically. > > You don't generally need spinoffs from fedora because you can install > whatever you want from the extras and 3rd party repositories. > > >> Does the number of fedora users that aren't going to report bugs > >> matters to anyone? > > > > Emphatically: Yes! > > > > Developers and testers are *part* of an eco-system which is ultimately > > based on and dependant on end users. End users will always heavily > > out-number developers and testers, and they _should_. > > I guess I didn't phrase that very well. What I meant was that you seem > to be saying that to get more users, the distro should try to become > more stable. The only way that can happen is to backport bug fixes made > > for the current application versions into the old distro versions, > trying not to change any behavior. This is a big waste of time for no > particular return since it is already being done for RHEL. > > > What you _as a developer_ want are bug reports and fixes. But you aren't > > going to get them unless you have enough end users to form the > > eco-system that testers and developers spring from. To expect otherwise > > is to think that you can raise a crop without the field below it. > > What good would it do anyone to have a bug report for FC4 coming in now > when current development has moved on long ago? The developers of the > thousands of programs included in an FC distribution don't develop for > any particular distribution or version, they just keep fixing and adding > stuff. Fedora's purpose is best served by staying as close to the > current development work as possible instead of backporting fixes to a > whole set of releases that are now ancient history. > > >> There is RHEL if you need and can afford support and CentOS if you > >> don't/can't. A CentOS user is just as much or more a potential future > >> RHEL customer as a fedora user - and RH doesn't get paid any more if > >> use fedora. They need people who use and test the added features, but > >> what do they gain by doing the extra work of backporting fixes into > >> yet another old version. > > > > A large eco-system from which test reporters, bug fixes, developers and > > new ideas spring. > > Why would these people wanting new ideas be interested in running old > stable releases? If the *only* goal is to continue the evolution of the OS and a fixed set of applications you are right. But if the goal is one of promoting the use of the OS, to continue to acquire and populate the user base by retaining existing users, then a degree of stability in what works is necessary, and desirable. The OS now supports multiple users, servers, parallel processing, distributed processing (at least offers some facilities for this), and a large application base which may or may not work. Among the application base are a number of GUI's (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and others), Open Office, a group of development tools and almost the full pantheon of languages. Antivirus software Clam, Spamassisn and others. Currently I am working on getting croquet working, and I have some difficulty with video and audio on the Internet which I must get working to make Croquet accomplish what I want. I also need comprehensive video to remain up to date on other developments in the world. I have no desire to maintain two OS's, with the attendant costs, complexity, and especially the viral susceptability of windows. I want Linux to be the OS of choice because I think it offers me many services that are not available in the Windows platform. Yes, there are other distributions available. But what I like so far is the community here. That is the conundrum, isn't it? The issue of intellectual property, costs and profits cannot be overlooked. However, the models across countries, across even areas within countries, such as states in the US, make a legal nightmare for sorting out the ways of meeting the computing and advanced communications needs of the public. I have no answers for all of this, but the answers will come. This software is not really "free". Here we pay for it by the testing and fixing of bugs, which then get replicated into RHEL (and other places). This takes our time, and our effort. However, what is our return for that investment? One return is the use and access to thousands of programs, internet access, and of course this wonderful community of other like minded individuals (although the like mindedness is often in flux ;) ). But still it would be nice to have some assurance that things will work tomorrow that worked today. I saw a proposal about segmenting the applications into stable and current state of the art. I think that has some merit. But the os then will have to be stable so that the bugs that appear will develop a known causality, and you can separate the OS issues with a known bug base vs the application via its own bugbase. The bugbases already exist for most applications. Maybe this bears some discussion and a proposal to be developed to put before the community? Regards, Les H
