[CentOS] Design changes are done in Fedora

On Wed, January 7, 2015 09:48, Jonathan Billings wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 08:45:29PM -0600, John R. Dennison wrote:
>> It's not relevant in _any_ sense.  CentOS is nothing more than (at
>> it's core) a rebuild of RHEL.  This type of nonsense should be
>> directed to Red Hat in a Red Hat venue.  It's nothing but
>> off-topic noise here as CentOS will not deviate from its
>> upstream in its core offerings.
>
> Agreed.
>
> If you want to participate in how the upstream OS is being shaped, I
> suggest looking at the Fedora Project, which is driven by volunteers.
>
> If you notice the Subject: of this thread, it is "Design changes are
> done in Fedora".  Pretty clear message.
>


There is a common word disguised in the letter E that we find in both
the initialism RHEL and the acronym CentOS.  It is the the word
Enterprise.  It is my observation that the subscriber base to this
list tends to those who have wider responsibilities than deciding what
the corporate GUI desktop layout should look like next year.

Most here also seem to be somewhat concerned with concepts of cost and
benefit.  It is evident in many posts that the increasing costs of
supporting large numbers of people negatively impacted by changes
introduced to CentOS from outside of their span of control is
beginning to impinge more and more upon decision making.  In some
cases that consideration is evidently influencing the decision to
deploy CentOS or not.

Now, what does the subscriber base to Fedora developers list look
like?  Well, to begin with there are no fewer than 209 official
'Fedora' lists.  Which should one join to 'influence' anything?  Let
us grant that a number, say half, are self-evidently not of great
concern to operational deployment and employment of RHEL, CentOS or SL
in the Enterprise environment. The oddly named 'UK-Ambassadors' or the
narrowly focused language translation mailing lists for instance.

That still leaves in excess of a hundred lists.  Where should one
apply pressure?  What forum exists to discuss the economic costs to
Enterprises of introducing a marginal, possibly questionable,
improvement to an existing UI or common utility?  The devel list? The
users list?

A perusal of the contents of both the Fedora devel list and users list
does not give one much hope that such a point of view would be
tolerated, much less welcomed.  For example, one the the notable
contributors to those forums is himself banned from this list. 
Further, discussions tend to be far, far down in the weeds, if not
subterranean altogether, when viewed from the perspective of the
question: what is this change, improvement, alteration or deprecation
going to cost the installed base to implement?

No, no-one presently on this list is likely to have very much of an
impact on the folks that are the Fedora project.  Their objectives are
far removed from the concerns of those tasked to keep automated
systems working and invisible to the Enterprises that employ them. The
overarching concern of the Enterprise is to employ capital and labour
to produce value; and not simply to prove technologies or advance
personal or political agendas.  Not that the later two situations are
uncommon in the Enterprise either.

One might, however, consider that the CentOS list is a concentration
of people that evidently have some status within a number of
Enterprises. And these influential people have chosen not to pay RH
for their offering.  It might be of some interest to RH in determining
why this is so.  It might also be the case that this forum, being
concerned with issues such as deployment on a large scale and the
costs of upgrading RH flagship product, provides valuable insight on
how RH's paying customers might be viewing their product as well.

After all, because we use CentOS rather than RHEL and forgo the
provision of RH's expert advice, then we ourselves and our
organisations are a self-identified technologically advanced user
community.  And we are concerned more with the entire package than
with any particular component or detail.  If we have concerns and
reservations then perhaps RH should have concerns.  If we express them
here then there is a chance, a small chance but a chance nonetheless,
that someone at RH with a view a little broader than that evidenced in
most of the traffic on the Fedora devel list, might take notice.

IMHO, FWIW.

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