I can't say I have been following this thread in its entirety, but the beauty (?) of free speech is that even the ill-informed get to have a say. :o)

Anyway, I think there is a general problem with the name Community ENterprise OS. Well, Community can't refer to us users because every O/S has a community, including Windows. So at first glance at the name, I would say that CentOS was produced by the community.... but that clearly isn't the case, as we know, so perhaps a simple name change would suffice: CsentOS... Closed-Shop Enterprise OS. Now, I bet that sounds like a criticism and I bet it smarts a bit. It's not meant to be either, just simply the truth. Actually, while we are on, where does the Enterprise bit come from in the name?... because I keep hearing that if you want to anything more than is currently being offered (speed of delivery,deadlines, trust that it isn't all going to fall apart, etc.), then go and buy upstream or use another distribution. That's a fair argument, but then remove the 'Enterprise' from the title... it's misleading as it suggests its suitable for the enterprise.

So, I suggest the product is renamed as...

Closed-Shop-Binary-Compatible-With-Upstream-OS... CSbcwuOS... not as snappy but much closer to the goals and project structure, as far as I, as an outsider, can tell.

I am sure a lot of people, including myself, are now asking how fragile this project is and what risk that fragility poses to our individual ventures. CentOS itself lives in a "meritocracy" and right now CentOS's merit is going down quite considerably. Not a criticism, just a reminder like so many others that the project may needs to adapt to progress.

 
From: Johnny Hughes <johnny@centos.org>
To: CentOS mailing list <centos@centos.org>
Sent: Sunday, 9 August, 2009 1:44:47
Subject: Re: [CentOS] CentOS Project Infrastructure

Marko A. Jennings wrote:
> On Sat, August 8, 2009 4:04 pm, Lanny Marcus wrote:
>> On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Robert<lists07@abbacomm.net> wrote:
>> <snip>
>>
>>> please stop poking the bears...  ;->
>>>
>>> it isn't productive and many of you that are critical of CentOS and the
>>> people running it should just move on and go away as asked
>> +1      How easy it is to criticize people who have put in a
>> tremendous amount of hours, without pay, working on the CentOS
>> project. There is always room for improvement, but the criticism from
>> those who have not put in the hours over the past years is not
>> deserved.
>
> Lanny,
>
> Your statement implies that people that have not contributed to a certain
> goal cannot possibly have a good suggestion.  Following that line of
> thought, we should all shut up and let our respective governments do
> whatever they please because most of us have not been public servants.
>
> And even if the suggestion (or criticism, as lots of suggestions have been
> labeled as of lately) is not valid, there are kinder and more polite ways
> of responding to them than those we have experienced in this thread.
>
> Marko
>
> Following that line of thought, we should all shut up and let our
> respective governments do whatever

CentOS is not a government or a Democracy ... it was not designed to be.
It is a product that we produce for people to use or not use.

They get to choose to participate in the mailing lists, the forums, etc.

They get to choose to donate money or servers or bandwidth to the project.

They do NOT get to tell us what to build, when to build it, how to use
donated resources, etc.  Just like I don't get to login to your servers
and do what I want when you use CentOS.