On Tue, 2005-05-24 at 19:49 -0600, Collins Richey wrote: > Now that's circular logic. The software is ready and tested, but tough > luck for all you folks who have dozens of packages that aren't ready > to deal with the software that is ready! Correct. Standards compliant is always a bitch, especially when there is a whole slew of software written for the "old way." Had we stuck with LibC5.3, we'd be several years behind now. Same deal with GCC 2.95. Jorg is also one guy I see beat up all-the-time for making some of the most POSIX-complaint software. > Yep, and the "first" version should stay in the "first" oven (ie > Fedora) until existing packages catch up. Just my $.02. What difference does it make? .0 is an 'early adopter' release. It's not designed for production, never has been, says right in the README. By the time .1 rolls around, most things (not all) are addressed. In some cases, somethings _never_ get addressed, but you have to move on. That's what Linus does every major release. It's not his job to stop, or any distro's for that matter, if the interest and volunteering is not there. Just ask Linus on why he finally rolled out kernel 2.6, even though many, many drivers were not updated. A whole slew of SCSI, NIC and other drivers were deprecated because they failed to have maintainers who "got with the program" on 2.6 -- which was in development for a _long_ time. People need to _work_together_ and actually donate time. When _no_one_ donates the time to make things work, that typically means no one has an interest. If you're a user that does, then become a developer. You can't blame a single vendor for Linux, and even the "enterprise" releases are based on prior, community developments. Why? Economies of scale. If you really, really, really need something for just you, and no one else in the community is addressing it, then we're not talking economies of scale. They you hire Red Hat's, Novell's, IBM's or some other vendors professional services and pay by the hour. You don't get thousands of man-hours of development included for free with your distro if there's not much interest in the product. It's not worth the time of Red Hat, Novell, etc... What you're complaining about has to do with economies-of-scale and community interest, and not really anything commercial software can do anything about. > I'm sure you're right. Currently, as the market leader, RedHat gets to > pick and choose what it will support. It will be interesting to see > whether the newly invigorated Novell decides to support more of the > missing pieces. Competition is good. Red Hat and SuSE have been going back and forth for years -- SuSE first with Enterprise Server, Red Hat first with Enterprise Desktop, etc... They have very, very similar development and release models. I don't see Novell changing that. I'm still waiting on you identifying these "missing pieces" you speak of. If you mean things you want, but no one in the Linux community actually wrote or supported for kernel 2.6, then either pay someone to do it, or volunteer. Linux is built on the work of a community in the goal of development a commodity solution. It does not stop to work on software that only of limited interest unless that limited interest actually puts forth the effort to do so. Red Hat, SuSE, etc... aren't going to put the thousands of man-hours of development into something unless it's popular enough to do so. So I don't see Novell-SuSE doing much beyond what Red Hat is already doing. Man, you should really go to NC and meet all the developers working on stuff that'll make you say, "Wow, I didn't know Red Hat paid the salaries of developers on X, Y and Z!" > Of course they're RedHat issues. No one is forcing RedHat to release > anything. Their choices turn out to be somewhat limiting for those > companies/users who have development invested in the functions that > are discarded. So you feel obligated to complain about this on a technical list of a project that stands on the shoulders of Red Hat? In fact, we _all_ stand on the shoulders of each other! But because Red Hat is -- whatever, Greedy I guess? -- the bucks supposed to stop and Red Hat and solve all problems that anyone merely wants or wishes for? > The concept that RedHat needs to own everything is moderately ridiculous! No, not at all. When you sell a Service Level Agreement (SLA), that's _exactly_ what you are selling -- a _binding_contract_! Why can't you just "get this"? ;-> > As if the only way to progress is through owenership! I commend RedHat > for lots of things, but they don't get a free ride What "free ride" do you speak of? Really, what "free ride" does Red Hat get? To you even see the hypocracy in your statement? I have to laugh! ;-> Red Hat Enterprise Linux is about shipping a product with _contractually_guaranteed_ Service Level Agreements (SLA) that a product will work, or they will make it work in X hours. Microsoft does not even offer this _except_ to "Enterprise" customers (over 20,000 nodes I believe). These are concepts that do _not_ apply outside of Red Hat, Novell-SuSE, Microsoft (but only large customers) and handful of other OS distributions. Again, you just don't seem to "get this." ;-> You are complaining about lack of features in a distro that is designed to minimize risk and problems, because of the nature of its SLA-focus. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize the problem with that logic. > Only in the sense that what they distribute comes from the GPL base. > Or do you mean something else. Both that and something else. Red Hat Linux's release has always been heavily influenced by contributors. It was a little more "controlled" in the days it was treated as a "product," but that all ended well before the name change, after Red Hat Enterprise Linux appeared and was the "dedicated product" with the SLA focus. Unless you are, and I'm sorry but, "ignorantly" assuming that Red Hat is a "leech" on the GPL community? But I assume you're not, correct? > Not at all. I'm firmly committed to Linux, and I would love to see > RedHat improve and succeed, and CentOS along with it. > BTW, in my simple opinion, you would do best to drop that habit of > ascribing ignorance to anyone who happens to disagree with you. It's a > demeaning habit that will only cost you in the long run. But you are totally oblivious to the fact that you want your cake and want to eat it too. You want enterprise, but you want features. You don't seem to want to understand anything about how RHEL is developed, you just seem to want to complain about what you don't understand, namely Red Hat and everything the world's largest collection of GPL projects under one commercial entity entails. ;-> Red Hat has features in Fedora Core + the Fedora Project. Red Hat has enterprise, including, SLAs in RHEL. I think it's great that CentOS is trying to address many areas in- between, and there is a community behind that. Whether you contribute to individual projects, Fedora Core or CentOS directly, you're going to help CentOS regardless. We are all working together towards a common goal, and there might be slight differences in focus. E.g., Red Hat's focus on delivering a product with SLAs. I'll say it again, why do people feel the need to demonize Red Hat here? I left that in the Windows world, why drag it here in the Linux space? It's self-defeating! -- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you to be anything but richer than you. Any tax rate that penalizes them will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below them). Linear algebra, let alone differential calculus or even ele- mentary concepts of limits, is mutually exclusive with US journalism. So forget even attempting to explain how tax cuts work. ;->