[CentOS] Community voice (was [CentOS-announce] Release for CentOS Linux 7 (1503 ) on x86_64)

Fri Apr 3 14:31:19 UTC 2015

On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 2:19 AM, Tim Bell <Tim.Bell at cern.ch> wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> > Behalf Of Karanbir Singh
> > Sent: 03 April 2015 01:00
> > To: centos at centos.org
> > Subject: Re: [CentOS] [CentOS-announce] Release for CentOS Linux 7 (1503
> ) on
> > x86_64
> >
> > On 02/04/15 21:35, Phelps, Matthew wrote:
> >
> > > See my reply earlier. The description of the centos-devel list says
> > > "this is strictly about development."
> >
> >
> > Matt, come join the contributor base - be a commnuity communication
> liason (
> > or, I am sure we can find a title to quantify this ).
> >
>

I can't take on any further time sinks. But see my comments below. I
question the need for such a thing.

> stretching this a bit futher : lets see if we can find 10 people who
> might be
> > considered 'community beacons', who could / would act as commnuity comms
> > and liason to make sure we are driving in the right directions and
> communicating
> > things in the most impactful manner.
> >
> > I am willing to lobby the board to then allow this group to spectate and
> > feedback into Board Meetings ( we meet once a month ).
> >
>

It strikes me that RedHat spends money to do this with their customers. So
why not just do what RedHat does? Is that not the core philosophy of
CentOS? It's a non-commercial repackaging of RHEL. Why go in a different
direction in the first place?

I understand things have evolved beyond that simplistic viewpoint, but
perhaps CentOS should go back in that direction(?). It certainly would have
avoided this kerfuffle.

If external forces are moving CentOS towards becoming an entirely different
distro, then break the cord. Make the choice clear. (And tell us why, if
possible.)

> Limiting the influence of the community to spectate and feedback seems
> less than I would expect. If community involvement in governance is to be
> improved, it needs to be seen to make a difference. OpenStack has
> ambassadors (https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Community/AmbassadorProgram)
> and elections to the 1/3 of the board from the community. This is probably
> too heavy for CentOS but some form of community representation with a
> genuine voice in governance would seem reasonable for an open source
> project.
>
> However, with the board rules as defined in
> http://www.centos.org/about/governance/joining-the-project/, it is
> difficult for someone who is a user of CentOS as opposed to a developer to
> meet the merit criteria. The current CentOS board membership would benefit
> from more diversity and different outlooks to help identify changes which
> need further community input such as this one.
>

> > One data point I want to drop in here is that less than 0.1 % of the
> CentOS user
> > base has any contact with the project ( wherein I imply, lists + forums
> + irc +
> > bugs + wiki ), so we might need to spread the net wide to find a
> reasonable
> > representation.
> >
> > thoughts ?
> >
>
>
These numbers surprise me. Again, what about the RedHat customer base? The
20,000+ facebook users who "liked" the CentOS page may be another source of
different opinions. Perhaps the developers/board should engage them?

> The challenge here is to find the appropriate people to help since many
> will be paid for delivering value to their companies rather than being paid
> to work on CentOS. Given their limited time, I do not feel that requiring
> operators to follow a development list is the right solution to encourage
> more interaction.
>
> Tim

I agree with Tim. CentOS does need to do a much better job communicating
with their customers. And, yes, we are customers. Along with that, the
"public facing" members of the Community/developers need to be better
communicators. Statements like "This is how it's going to be. I suggest you
familiarize yourself with it" aren't endearing to the project.

>
>
>
> > --
> > Karanbir Singh
> > +44-207-0999389 | http://www.karan.org/ | twitter.com/kbsingh
> > GnuPG Key : http://www.karan.org/publickey.asc
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-- 
Matt Phelps
System Administrator, Computation Facility
Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
mphelps at cfa.harvard.edu, http://www.cfa.harvard.edu