Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop [LWN.net]

Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

Posted Sep 13, 2012 21:27 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop by bojan
Parent article: Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

You know, people cannot complain that Fedora is the perpetual alpha/beta of RHEL and that RHEL is not developed in the open at the same time.

Yes, they can. Because both facts are true. Fedora is perpetual alpha/beta of RHEL and RHEL is not developed in the open.

High risk/high disruption things are done in the open. But then “enterprise features” are added behind the closed doors. So Fedora users are used as free alpha/beta testers but never receive the end result which is developed in secrecy. It's not too bad: if you really want the finished product without the support service then CentOS closes the loop. But to claim that Fedora users are not treated as alpha/beta testers for RHEL or that RHEL is developed in the open is to lie about the state of affairs.

And this is RedHat! One of the most FOSS-friendly companies around!

These things are mutually exclusive.

Absolutely not. Google does the same with ChromeOS BTW: 99% if code is developed in the open, but 1% which makes it possible to, you know, watch the videos on Netflix or talk with your peer in Google Talk... these pieces are developed privately.

But, my point was and still is something else. It is the commitment and expertise that counts. The engineering resources, the contract with OEMs and ISVs, the financial capacity and most importantly a stable strategic direction.

Right. And this is where all the secrecy comes from. You need to herd the cats: ASUS, Acer, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung may want to jointly develop OS—but they don't want to ever show the unique differentiators before release! And of course if they need changes in the system core they don't want to show them to the cheap chinese competitors, too. That's how all the complexity Android's VCS is born.

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Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

Posted Sep 13, 2012 22:45 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> But then “enterprise features” are added behind the closed doors.

And released as open source.

Of course Red Hat backport a whole lot of drivers and fixes to RHEL kernels - that is what customers pay for - to run and old, binary compatible, patched code on existing/new hardware for a long time. And this is how this "branch" differs from Fedora (why would they be porting all this to Fedora kernels, which are always based off fairly recent mainline, that contain all this, really escapes me). It is unfortunate that they are obfuscating the source of RHEL kernel by not releasing the patches, but it sure is not closed.

However, the tip of the development is Fedora. It is done entirely in the open and is a "trunk" (of sorts) for RHEL.

> So Fedora users are used as free alpha/beta testers but never receive the end result which is developed in secrecy.

You are talking as if these are some sort of proprietary features that only exist in RHEL. Can you please tell us which ones they are?

Of course Fedora users never receive the backports of the old stuff. What would be the rationale for that? Why backport what exists upstream already?

Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

Posted Sep 13, 2012 23:06 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Just one more point here:

> Yes, they can. Because both facts are true. Fedora is perpetual alpha/beta of RHEL and RHEL is not developed in the open.

> But then “enterprise features” are added behind the closed doors. So Fedora users are used as free alpha/beta testers but never receive the end result which is developed in secrecy.

How are Fedora users being used as alpha/beta testers of the code that does not exist in Fedora (i.e. enterprise features that are added only to RHEL behind closed doors)? Or more specifically, how am I right now testing RHEL7 code that is not in my F-17 installation? I would really like to know by what magic this can be true.

Answer: I'm testing it, because it _has_ been added to Fedora.

Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

Posted Sep 14, 2012 12:20 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Answer: I'm testing it, because it _has_ been added to Fedora.

You have a point. Just… please remind me when exactly libsdp was added to Fedora? It's included in RHEL5 released half-decade ago.

Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

Posted Sep 15, 2012 8:56 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Just… please remind me when exactly libsdp was added to Fedora?

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2005-Novemb...

> It's included in RHEL5 released half-decade ago.

And dropped from RHEL6 as well, because it was dropped from Fedora.

So, this is your big proof of secret development. A non-inclusion of an open source library for migration of existing apps - something you can compile and LD_PRELOAD yourself.