[CentOS] Any update on 5.6 / 6?
Karanbir Singh
mail-lists at karan.org
Wed Feb 16 14:58:31 UTC 2011
Hi David,
On 02/16/2011 12:50 PM, 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.
So what happened in the early days of when EL6 came out - we asked
people to help, there were many threads on how people could get involved
( on the centos-devel list, which is - I am sure you will agree, the
appropriate place ). Nothing happened, not one person beyond the
usual-people actually did anything.
After a few weeks, when people started getting antsy about the fact that
they cant see progress (I dont know why they would care, given they dont
want to help) more noise started getting made about how we ( and i mean
the people doing the work ) were being difficult and not open. So the
process of asking for help started again in mid/late December. A few
people did get involved and we did see some level of open involvement.
Even at the cost of not doing anything ourselves, but spending all of
our open source time on helping people get into the right mindset and
educating them to get into helpful situations.
Things tapered off again with near zero momentum.
Now the bit that really cheeses me off is that we cant go through the
same loop again and again everytime someone new comes along and cant be
bothered to see what has happened in the past. I am not saying you did
this, its possible you didnt know about the existence of these threads
on centos-devel etc.
To cut a long story short - lots of people who use centos dont
understand what the project is about, what we do, why we do it and how
they can help. On the other hand, we also seem unable to hold people's
attention ( and i mean people at large, not just the centos community )
in order to get them thinking about the project ( and not the distro,
remember project != distro, needs of the hour are trivial, needs for the
project to sustain and exist are more important ).
We can try to solve these problems now, or we can get the distro's out -
then goto solving these issues. As many have suggested, and I partially
buy into - solving the problems while there is a need for the distro is
likely to get a better and wider reception. On the other hand, getting
the distro's out gets more urgent with every package release upstream
and app release side-stream / internet / inhouse etc.
The problems can be solved. Of all similar projects I know of and have
had the privilege to be a part of, none come close to the maturity and
pragmatic thought levels that the CentOS community has. On the other
hand, the drive-by posters and people with random fluff to
not-really-contribute are always going to an issue. I guess its
reasonable to expect them around as well, serves as a nice reminder as
to what the extreme sets are.
For now, as was really decided on the centos-devel list, lets just do
things the way centos has in the past. lets get the distro's out - and
then look at solving specific issues. The whole idea that people cant
help is just noise, hopefully the website ver2 project will make that
visible a bit more than has been so far. I do know that once the
distro's are out; the number of people wanting to 'help' is also going
to fall drastically. On the other hand, the ones who do stick around are
all people who really do want to help!
Regards,
- KB
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