[CentOS-devel] CentOS-4.9 SRPMS

Lamar Owen

lowen at pari.edu
Sun Feb 20 00:25:27 UTC 2011


On Saturday, February 19, 2011 06:27:56 pm Richard McClellan wrote:
> 1. Johnny Hughes, you would do CentOS well to mind your words. 

Well, I understand Johnny's frustration, really I do, since he has done what very few people here have done, and that is actually do a rebuild of RHEL from source, multiple times.  He knows of what he speaks, especially as it relates to C4.  I also understand the frustrations of others on the list.

I also understand that this list is globally archived and searchable, and the Internet never forgets.  And even being a red-haired freckled Irishman with a temper to match my formerly much redder hair (it's more an auburn now, much darker than years ago), I really really try hard to remember that sending an e-mail to a public mailing list is irrevocable.

I also re-read my e-mails twice or thrice before hitting send, and sometimes it is good to take a coffee break between composing the last line and hitting send....

> 2. The CentOS process is opaque and secretive. It may indeed be very complex with justifiable restrictions over who can contribute at what level, but the process should be described somewhere. This would also help impartial observers/users of CentOS understand why things take as long as they do. The process and team appear to be dysfunctional to the point that using CentOS may be a risk.

Using any volunteer-only distribution is a risk, period.  For that matter, using any distribution is a risk.  Dysfunctional?  Nah, I don't think so, at least no more than any other.  Go lurk on the openbsd lists for a while and compare....

There is a real need for a competent technical writer who isn't actually doing the work of building the dist to document the work; I wonder if there are any serious volunteers for what will certainly be the most thankless role in the whole team?

> 3. A lot of people are frustrated with the level and type of communication from the CentOS inner circle. Increasing the level of communication--including release status--and politeness would be good for CentOS.

A weekly update would be nice; a completed CentOS even without the first update would be even nicer.

And these things seem to repeat over the years and through various projects, to the point there is even a CentOS webpage FAQ item about one of them..... see 'Donavan' for details.  Yeah, I was there for that 'other' EL dist.......Katrina essentially wiped that effort out, although the website is still up, with no recent updates.

Patience, folks, patience.  I have five kids (three teenagers, two of them girls); I know frustration (at least to a degree; there are folks who know frustration more than I, such as those folks impacted by the aforementioned Katrina).  Waiting for C6 isn't frustration. 

And these last few threads, while trying of my patience to a degree, are mild mild mild compared to some I've seen; hey, I ran a C-News site and carried alt.flame for a reason, years ago.  There was more vitriol in the daily news.groups or news.admin, much less alt.flame, than in all the years of this list.

So let the guys vent a little, and realize that everyone vents once in a while, and different people are very different when it comes to communicating progress.



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