On 06/09/2014 10:43 AM, Ned Slider wrote: > > It's nice that the board has a vision Jim, but what can grow can also > shrink too. Indeed. In some areas, we already are. That's what we want to turn around. This is the fundamental reason why we can't simply rest and keep doing what we've been doing. Even if we're flawless in the core mission, we'd still be ignoring emerging areas where we must grow to survive. > If we recall, it wasn't that long ago that the very continued existence > / viability of CentOS was in question. Releases were delayed, security > updates were slow to be released, bugs went unanswered. If community > members questioned or asked when releases / security updates might be > expected it was deemed as criticism and shot down in flames. Yep. we lost a fair number of both users and contributors. > To the Project's immense credit, you guys have worked extremely hard to > turn around that situation to the point where things now operate very > smoothly and we almost expect updates to flow right out of the pipe > within hours of an upstream release. To that end, the Project's future > looks more stable (although I still know admins who were so concerned > they switched to SL and have no intention of coming back). We burned bridges both on the way down, and on the way back up. This is 100% an accurate statement. > But I think there still exists a perception of mistrust / suspicion > within the community. I think there is concern that Red Hat might wish > to dilute the notion that CentOS == RHEL - branding. Altering / changing > something perceptually fundamental as the release numbering simply > reinforces this notion at a time when many users are looking for the > board to give assurances and build trust. In my view it's three separate perceptions that we have to fight. 1. Sins of the past. We historically haven't been great at working publicly or with community input, as you mentioned in the beginning. - In my eyes this amounts to broken trust, and it's difficult to fix. This why we stood up seven.centos, and why we've tried to be as public as possible about what we're doing around the 7 build. It's why we've started holding our meetings in #centos-devel on irc as much as possible. We simply won't make everyone happy, but we can certainly be more transparent and open about how we operate. 2. That RH will try to force a change on us now that a significant chunk of the board is being paid by RH. For the sake of argument, lets just assume the worst about RH. Bought and paid for, we do their bidding and neuter CentOS. All that does is ruin RH's reputation. Users move to SL or another rebuild (if they don't jump to something else entirely) which refuses to collaborate now. Reality: RH wants us to be more open. RH wants us to engage more with the community-at-large. They've given us a nice set of hardware upon which to create a community build system so that we can do these things without worrying that the donated machine we plopped down as the koji-hub won't up and vanish one night when the donor reclaims it. We've simply spotted something that will likely cause us issues as we grow, and we want the community to help us shape how we resolve it ahead of time so we're not stuck later. 3. That we're *just* a downstream. Again, historical perceptions that haven't been entirely accurate. We've been doing some of our own thing for years, with limited resources and limited success. The centosplus kernel, our own updated php versions or postfix-with-mysql packages, Xen4CentOS, etc. With dedicated time and more available resources, we're able to explore this further (and hopefully better). We know there are integrators using centos as a platform. We're trying to connect with them, to see if there's value in collaboration. This work may or may not go back to RH, but that doesn't matter if it helps our community. If our users want it and are willing to help make it happen then that's what counts. > Maybe the board isn't feeling this? Maybe the board needs to slow down a > little, listen to it's user base and earn it's trust? Maybe the board > will just do as it pleases anyway? We are feeling it, and we are listening, but our views may not always align. In some cases, our users are looking at their own needs, and not at the larger distro picture. In other cases, we're only hearing the ones who take the time to talk to us. So if there's a very vocal 10%... that may or may not line up with the other 90% who remain silent wondering wtf we're thinking. You're correct though. We do need to continue to earn and maintain the community's trust. It may be coming from a .mil mentality, but my thinking has always been to earn it by action. I've said before that we need to SHOW the community the things we've been talking about since the RH announcement so that it's more than just words. But you bring up a valid point in that we need to listen as well. To that end, help us discuss an appropriate solution for this. -- Jim Perrin The CentOS Project | http://www.centos.org twitter: @BitIntegrity | GPG Key: FA09AD77