[CentOS] Any update on 5.6 / 6?

[David Sommerseth]

On 16/02/11 14:18, John R. Dennison wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 01:50:55PM +0100, David Sommerseth wrote:
>>
>> Exactly!  Supporters who could most probably do even more, than just to sit
>> here idle waiting for the next release - if we only knew what the issues
>> are they are facing.
> 
> 	I find it amusing that all these offers of help and assistance,
> 	even the round-about ones such as this, occur when people get
> 	antsy about the release.  Did you step up when the call for
> 	people to get involved at the very beginning of the CentOS 6
> 	release cycle occurred?  From everything I've heard on the
> 	various IRC channels the response to that initial call for help
> 	was, shall we say, lackluster at best.

That's a fair critique!

> 	It's incredibly easy to consume; much more difficult to produce.

And it is even more difficult to join and participate if you don't know
exactly what you are going to do.  Having a much more open process with
more information, might encourage people to step up.  A call for help at
the very beginning, and then practically not hearing anything afterwards,
may just as well be a signal that "we got the resources we need".

[...snip...]
> 
> 	If people want transparency in the process (which I include
> 	myself in to some extent; I feel things could, and honestly
> 	should, be more open, for some value of more) then I must point
> 	out that the project's upstream provides no transparency at all,
> 	including a complete lack of release time-line.  If they don't
> 	do so, why all the clamoring for CentOS to do so?  Just a
> 	thought.

That Red Hat keeps their work schedule private is not directly comparable
to a CentOS community effort, how I see it.

Red Hat is also a big financial organisation, which CentOS is not.  In that
context, Red Hat is much more responsible for stock holders, informing the
stock market on economical issues.  And market speculations needs to be
controlled much more differently.  It will be market speculations, like it
or not, no matter what, all which most often are related to product
releases.  In addition, Red Hat also are responsible for customer and
partner agreements, certification training, etc, etc.

It's a big machinery, which is tightly connected to the Open Source work
Red Hat does.  And revealing some of the Open Source process might reveal
other things indirectly, which makes the market speculate more wildly.

CentOS does not need to be responsible for a board of stock holders (or
what the proper term is), partners, (paying) customers, training
organisations, etc, etc.  In such regard, CentOS is quite more lucky - it
can focus primarily on the Open Source part.

Red Hat does also much more than just pulling the pieces together to form
the RHEL distribution.  These pieces are improved continuously to make them
work well in the big distribution perspective, as well making sure it is
tested on a vast variety of certified hardware [1].

CentOS basically takes the core result of all those processes and the
labour Red Hat has put into RHEL, strips out/replaces the trademarks with
CentOS replacements, recompiles everything and have a release ready.

Hence, the CentOS process should, in theory at least, be a lot easier than
the RHEL process - the majority of the hard work is already done when
Red Hat delivers an installable RHEL distribution.  Given that CentOS can
focus primarily on the Open Source part, it should also be able to be more
transparent on its process.



kind regards,

David Sommerseth



[1] <http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compatibility/hardware/>