[CentOS-devel] progress?

[Lamar Owen]

On Friday, February 18, 2011 12:46:06 pm Dag Wieers wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Lamar Owen wrote:
> > There is a tab on the centos wiki (wiki.centos.org) that says 
> > Contribute.  This links to http://wiki.centos.org/Contribute and 
> > describes the useful beginning contributions.

> Oh the irony. I started that wiki page !

I know.

> But if you look closely, you will notice that none of what is listed there 
> really benefits the CentOS release process. 

Perhaps not directly.

> A few more 
> people get QA access, but we wouldn't want too much testing, would we ?

It depends upon who 'we' is and what step in the process is being tested. (Yeah, who 'we' is; quoted plural pronoun is still singular in this usage.....)

> So the process doesn't scale, and everyone waiting for the next 
> release or security update feels powerless to help there where it could be 
> useful because the tools, the process and the changes are hidden.

This is the real crux of the matter.  It really depends upon how anxious one is to get the Latest Update and how important that update may or may not be.  'I want CentOS 5 for my SGI Altix 3000!  Now would be good!'  'Oh, but it will be six months before it's powered up.....' (I have an SGI Altix 3000, and I do want C5 for IA64, but I put quotes around that since I'm kidding)  And it also depends upon how one treats volunteers and free software projects; it is clear that some feel entitled to it, for free, and make that yesterday, and do it my way, chop chop!

That attitude is part of the reason I handed over the PostgreSQL RPMs back in 2004.  While several people were genuinely helpful (and I chose one of them to be my 'successor' maintainer), the majority were either bound and determined to show me how wrong I was in the way I was doing it, or they started nagging me the instant the tarball was on the server and complained if the RPMs were even ten minutes later (and the whole idea that it takes time to build a package, much less to make all the patches and changes necessary, was completely alien to them; they wanted it, and thus they deserved it, by George!).  And then complained if anything broke, even when they willingly ignored clear instructions....  Dag, you are no stranger to that, I know, as you've maintained your repository longer than I maintained my small set.  And you do a fantastic job doing what you do.

> But you are right, I should probably stop sending cynical messages.

Cynicism has its uses, for sure.  Subtle humor in cynicism is lost when other non-humorous cynics abound.

> I 
> simply do care about the project. I had a hard time keeping quiet for more 
> than a year, but here we are in the same situation we were in 2009 and 
> 2010 and we haven't learned a thing :-/

> We could be doing a better job, but we aren't...

'We' is a good word choice.

Thanks for all the hard work in maintaining EL sections in your repository, and the work with RPMforge as a whole; I certainly appreciate it.