[CentOS] Open Letter to Lance Davis

[Les Mikesell]

William L. Maltby wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-07-31 at 15:01 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> <snip>
> 
>>> The idea of a minimal installation is interesting. Could this be done 
> <snip>

> 
> In spite of the fact that all thse ideas for what the new CentOS org
> could or would do, they really don't belong cluttering a thread of
> serious import about the organization/personnel issues.

That's somewhat a difference of opinion.  As much as I appreciate the 
past stability of CentOS, I see moving to Scientific Linux as a 
perfectly reasonable thing to do, with more than a little connection to 
this topic.  And merging the projects seems even more reasonable, from 
an outside point of view.

> Many who've added to this clutter have, in the past, complained about
> others hi-jacking a thread. Although I understand how these things
> mutate, if we really want a good discussion to appear in the archives,
> these suggestions should be in their own thread. Maybe eventually as an
> open item in a (future) bugzilla.
> 
> I would rather be reading and possibly contributing some thoughts about
> the issue the thread was intended to address. It's an important topic
> for the missing person, the currently active project member and the
> community as a whole. Let's see if we can, from here forward, do the
> impossible - stay on topic.

It's a bigger issue than dealing with a missing person.  While I have no 
complaints about the product and highly respect the developers for their 
competence and dedication, the project doesn't have the kind of 
transparency and community involvement that gives you faith that it can 
survive more than a few personnel problems. I'm already hearing 
rumblings about risks from others in the company who don't know much 
about the situation but know we are using Centos and saw a news posting 
somewhere - and I suspect that is happening in every large company.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com