[CentOS] kernels and irc

Thu Jun 5 16:57:16 UTC 2008
James Bunnell <jbunnell at belencomputers.com>

On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 18:34 +0200, Ralph Angenendt wrote:


> 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. 

the problem here is that i thought i saw where a person had to have
permission for these things such as the wiki. when some asks a question
in irc which may be a general linux question, should they be told that
centos doesnt support it therefore go away? the impression here is that
if its not a centos rpm, then we want nothing to do with it. while that
may be true in fact, i think this is wrong inherently with the mission
of centos to tell someone this. i understand it gets old to sit and
watch these kind of questions all the time, maybe someone needs a break
then. 

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

understood.

> 
> > > 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 unfortunate and a failure of this type of communication.


> > 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?

its seen as a non-definitive answer to a question that would normally
ask for more detail. i.e., a copout.

> 
> > 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.

does this include support in IRC? or mailing lists and forums only?
(just curious) notice my criticism here is the IRC channels only and the
responses there. 

> 
> > > 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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