[CentOS] Effecting CentOS change

[Ned Slider]

On 13/07/11 21:46, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On 7/13/2011 3:17 PM, Paul Heinlein wrote:
>> CentOS has a clear mission. It's the first paragraph on the centos.org
>> home page:
>>
>>      CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from
>>      sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American
>>      Enterprise Linux vendor.  CentOS conforms fully with the upstream
>>      vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible.
>>      (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding
>>      and artwork.)  CentOS is free.
>>
>> Discussions about the packages and utilities that are or aren't
>> included in CentOS (the recent discussion of system-config-bind comes
>> to mind, but it's not the only example) should re-read the CentOS
>> mission.
>
> Agreed that this isn't something related to centos-dev or packaging.
> But in many/most cases the discussions of that ilk are about things that
> most centos users have to deal with.
>
>> Anyone wanting change in that regard should, imo, purchase a license
>> from the prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor and provide
>> feedback as a paying customer. Said vendor may or may not heed those
>> suggestions, but that is the only effective way to change the CentOS
>> utility/package list.
>>
>> Honestly, we could all -- every single last one of us -- agree that
>> $PACKAGE belongs in the core CentOS distribution, but until
>> $LARGE_VENDOR agrees, we're just shouting in a vacuum.
>
> I think most such discussions would end happily if someone mentions a
> suitable $PACKAGE name in EPEL or the non-base-overwriting section of
> rpmforge. Everything we use doesn't have to be included in the base
> distribution but if it isn't, people might need help in choosing/finding
> the appropriate $PACKAGE or learning that one doesn't exist.
>

What also would have helped is if people had tested RHEL 6 either when 
it was in public beta or when first released (with the free 30 day 
trial) and noted omission then rather than waiting 8 months down the 
line to voice an opinion. That would have given plenty of time to get 
requested packages incorporated into one's favourite 3rd party 
repository for the release of CentOS 6.