On 10/19/2018 9:10 PM, Brendan Conoboy wrote:
On Fri Oct 19 00:52:12 UTC 2018 Japheth Cleaver wrote:
This brings to mind a video I was pointed to not long ago of Brendan Conoboy's talk at a Dojo recently:
Hey, that's me! Hi. By the way, Jim Perrin did an updated version of this talk *today* at CERN in my absence (thanks Jim!). Hopefully the video will be posted soon. I expect we'll be doing updated versions of these at Devconf, future Dojos, etc- as things progress.
Thanks for responding!
Conoboy, on the other hand, takes great pains during the speech to describe a much more fluid and complex interaction between CentOS and its upstream, and puts forth CentOS as a mechanism (perhaps the best mechanism) for the winder EL community to contribute (something?) back into RHEL's future. He also gives clear signals that various Fedora steps have been in directions that Red Hat did not want EL necessarily going, and that the simplistic assumptions we've commonly been making aren't really correct.
You might be reading into this more than is there. It's not so much that things are fluid as it is that they are undefined. There is no clear, consistent way for a member of the Fedora or CentOS communities, who create something great, to have that thing make its way into an update of an existing RHEL major release. Defining that path, making it possible, would be win for all.
*snip*
Red Hat (and Red-Hat-as-a-sponsor-of-CentOS) might do well to clarify just what type of back-and-forth it wants out of the wider EL-using community. Does it want direct feedback in the form of tickets? Should people form SIGs? Obviously RHEL7 is not changing init systems, but where should one talk about the future?
Man, it breaks my heart when I read things like this. There might be some historic truth to the above, but it doesn't have to be the future. The objective I mentioned near the end of the talk has been posted, but not yet voted on:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pfrields/Lifecycle_Objective
The beauty of community is that it can grow and shift according to the needs of its members. To me it looks like the lifecycle objective may be a partial answer to how Fedora, RHEL, and CentOS communities can reach a state of fluidity, a virtuous cycle. The thing that makes it the most likely to succeed is if members of the Fedora, RHEL, and CentOS communities work on it together. I hope those reading this who are interested in that join in.
While I do believe that's important -- especially in helping to prioritize re-basing decisions, if not architectural ones, for updates -- I feel like things are still more open to interpretation for the lead-up *to* a major release. Modularity, software collections, and the like can be used alongside native EL point updates or a more flexible EPEL policy to incorporate new tech, but the impression is that by the time a RHEL beta makes it out, it's already a bit late for a community-suggested major changes. Bug reports? Yes. Design changes? Not as much. Having a stable platform OS design is a key principle for EL users, and Beta->0 seems late in the game.
(Nevertheless, the lifecycle stream discussion is absolutely one that does need to be had, and I'm glad that there's that out there!)
-jc