[CentOS] kernels and irc

Thu Jun 5 16:34:08 UTC 2008
Ralph Angenendt <ra+centos at br-online.de>

James Bunnell wrote:
> i was told early on, that it took an invite to get involved. 

Subscribing to centos-devel or starting a SIG or doing a project on
http://projects.centos.org/ does not require *any* invitation and that
is where involvement starts. Well, it even does start on a lower level -
by supporting other users on IRC, forums or mailing lists. Which also
does not require an invitation. Neither does writing up documentation on
the Wiki. 

Access to packages preliminary to release or access to build hosts -
that requires an invitation. But that is on top of the involvement
process. 

> > If CentOS noticed a huge decline in users they might be concerned about
> > this.  They haven't; you're probably the only one I've heard bringing
> > up this issue and honestly it sounds like you were the cause of the
> > problem.
> 
> that may be your perception. perhaps you would want to look at the logs
> so you would know.

Others probably had another perception - and I think that today might
have been just "the icing on the cake". 

>> This is not an issue for CentOS currently.
> 
> too bad.

Errm.

> and users do not react well to being told rudely 'it will be ready when
> its ready', that is just rude.

But it will only be ready when it is ready. If there would be a known
date or even week, that would have been announced. But from the
beginning on people have been told that it normally takes three to four
weeks for CentOS to follow up on a release from upstream. And I don't
see anything rude in stating exactly that - it is ready when it is
ready. And the time frame within that "is ready" will happen is still
the same as in Tim's blog post on planet.centos.org.

What is rude about that?

> i do not perceive it as a paying customer, and i was not the one that
> brought that up. now that it has been brought up, what is the mission of
> CentOS ?

To provide people with a free (as in beer, RHEL and CentOS are also free
as in free speech) Enterprise Linux Distribution. I think that counts as
goal No. 1.

> > This is open source etiquette.  It differs from business etiquette
> > where you are more than welcoem to berate and yell and holler about
> > things because you're paying someone a lot of money.
> 
> the etiquette is rudeness to promote open source? is this what you are
> saying?

No. But people rather do work on stuff so that it does get ready than to
market around it and promise stuff that won't happen.

Ralph
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