Demand More.

Posted Aug 5, 2009 3:13 UTC (Wed) by mmcgrath (guest, #44906)
In reply to: FUD? by spiro
Parent article: CentOS turbulence and enterprise Linux tradeoffs

This article had far too many subjective bits in it. Doing minimal research from mailing lists and public sayings without a single attempt as far as I can tell to interview any parties involved. Referring to CentOS as a "dream" os then describing all the things that went wrong or could have gone wrong with it, talking about lead developers leaving, calling it non transparent without any data to back that up, mentioning that centos takes longer to get updates out then RHEL (ORLY?). It was just irresponsible reporting is all.

If corbet wanted to write an opinion piece, fine. But he threw some data together that made it seem like the foundation of centos was Lance and was crumbling even though it clearly wasn't. Turns out LWN readers aren't dumb after all, some of us even keep in touch with the CentOS devs regularly and saw the open letter for what it was. A successful attempt at change. The core development team set out do so something and accomplished it very quickly. Turns out that's what the story was and it's been missed by every major news outlet that covered it because a success story isn't juicy enough here.

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Demand More.

Posted Aug 5, 2009 7:28 UTC (Wed) by bvdm (guest, #42755) [Link] (4 responses)

The posting of the open letter on centos.org was an extreme measure. The content of the letter illustrated a profound crisis and most commentators found it quite shocking.

Compared with how the mainstream IT market flies off their handles whenever something sensational happens at Apple or Microsoft, Corbet's reporting on this has been factual and sober.

Seriously guys, the CentOS guys made a very tough call. The worst fallout was not here on LWN though - not by any measure.

Also, CentOS users have to acknowledge the moral reality that they are enjoying what others are essentially sponsoring (RHEL subscribers). This is their GPL-given right, but the defensiveness in some of the comments here are a bit perplexing when one considers this fact.

Demand More.

Posted Aug 5, 2009 9:14 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (3 responses)

I was a bit surprised by the article, and found it somewhat lacking with respect to relevant facts and insights. Project governance is not an easy topic but I had expected somewhat more ambitious than "If you need serious support, you should pay for serious support". There must be a whole world out there where CentOS plays a significant role as the platform of choice for small IT companies and consultants, whose customers do not really care about the implementation or its name.

Surely, it is understood by CentOS users that there is no certainty the project will exist tomorrow, because of the dependence on the ability of specific people in the community to keep contributing to it. I feel the Free Software way out of forking or continuing a project may have been understressed, and this episode may have been a nice opportunity to look into the viability that option a bit more seriously. Instead, the article looked at the delays in applying fixes, which seems irrelevant.

So I wouldn't share the article's main conclusion, that there is a lesson to be learned here. CentOS is not chosen despite its weaknesses, but because of its strong points.

Demand More.

Posted Aug 5, 2009 14:00 UTC (Wed) by bvdm (guest, #42755) [Link] (2 responses)

I think that you are taking a very narrow view of Corbet's intent with the article.

You seem to imply that Corbet is arguing against CentOS's legitimate right or potential to continue to exist. My reading is that he is simply commenting on the validity of Red Hat's business model of offering payed support. And backing it up with real numbers. Timely updates is quite important for many security-sensitive businesses.

"If you need serious support, you should pay for serious support" is an entirely valid statement. You seem to have skipped over the word "serious". It's right there, twice! :) Cost-conscious companies out there that are yet paying for RHEL support obviously have different needs from that of most CentOS users.

Your presupposition seems to be that free software is more than pro-freedom; that it is necessarily anti-commercial. I am confident that even RMS will disagree with you on this.

Demand More.

Posted Aug 5, 2009 20:23 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (1 responses)

Ehhh... Perhaps I was not clear and you misunderstood what I wrote? It was me who put the "serious" there twice!

Demand More.

Posted Aug 6, 2009 5:25 UTC (Thu) by bvdm (guest, #42755) [Link]

No you were not clear. When you put that phrase in quotation marks it had every appearance of being a direct quote.

What's the problem?

Posted Aug 5, 2009 9:49 UTC (Wed) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link] (5 responses)

I don't see where the subjective parts are - this was simply pulling together some publicly available comments with a helpful and considered analysis of the tradeoffs of the 'RHEL rebuild' approach used by CentOS. I don't agree that LWN should have to interview people on articles like this - maybe a good idea as a followup, but the CentOS team were blogging publicly anyway so I don't see the need.

It was pretty clear from the article and the links that CentOS itself was not crumbling, but did go through a shaky patch that might have required a new website and that users change their repository pointers. If LWN can't report and analyse events like this, what can it cover?

There was some data about CentOS being slower than RHEL in delivering updates - since it depends entirely on RHEL updates this can hardly be a surprise, but it's useful to have this data compiled.

People seem upset by an implicit criticism of CentOS in the article, but it was simply looking at the drawbacks of a community run project, and highlighting some of the weaknesses in project organisation that it seems are being rapidly fixed.

What's the problem?

Posted Aug 5, 2009 21:55 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (4 responses)

"I don't agree that LWN should have to interview people on articles like this - maybe a good idea as a followup"

I think this points to a general problem with the technical laypress that goes well beyond the reporting here. The technical laypress lacks well established journalist standards, nor does its readership expect them to apply any. Technical articles tend to blend fact based reporting and editorial content with no effort to distinguish either.

But on to the point about the need for personal interviews. They are important if your goal is to provide a clear summary of events or is meant to be constructive analysis. Any time you plan to "make news" with an interpretation of a set of public record events its a reasonably good idea to talk to as many of the individuals involved. Communications have context and the assumption that you can cobble together snippets of public record communications and paint an approximate picture of reality may not actually be adequate. It's like charting a course through icebergs just by relying on spotting the tips of the icebergs without knowing where the ice is beneath the waterline.

At the very least LWN could give the key individuals in this article like Dag Wieers a free subscription (if they don't already have one) and an opportunity to rebut any editorial content the Corbet put in to fill the gaps they feel was inappropriate.

-jef

What's the problem?

Posted Aug 5, 2009 22:42 UTC (Wed) by jake (editor, #205) [Link] (2 responses)

> Communications have context and the assumption that you can cobble
> together snippets of public record communications and paint an
> approximate picture of reality may not actually be adequate.

While I think there is some truth to this, quotes are certainly not a panacea. Humans can't really help themselves from "spinning" things the way they think they should be, as opposed to the way they are (or *were*), especially when they know they are being quoted. Quotes *can* add to a story, but don't always. The public record of what went on is often much more enlightening.

> At the very least LWN could give the key individuals in this article
> like Dag Wieers a free subscription (if they don't already have one)
> and an opportunity to rebut any editorial content the Corbet put in
> to fill the gaps they feel was inappropriate.

While that might not be a bad idea, there is a far simpler solution. We provide a means for subscribers to send a link to anyone they might wish to. That way, a non-subscriber who is involved in a particular article can read and comment if they so desire.

jake

What's the problem?

Posted Aug 6, 2009 0:03 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

Everyone spins...journalists...historians...person-on-the-street...everyone has bias.

There was a point in time, before the 24-hour news cycle, when journalists were trained to try to demarcate the boundary of subjective bias from verifiable fact. A lot of journalistic content nowadays does a very poor job of keeping those concepts separate. This article is most likely mediocre in that regard. But that being said, it's a bit hypocritical to imply that its not worth the effort to contact individuals for comment because of the bias such comments might inject.

A journalist's bias in cherry picking from the public record is no better than anyone else's, if anything its less meaningful and more damaging than other sources of bias. Well trained journalists hedge against their own bias by making sure individuals in a story get a chance to comment. It's something old-fashioned newspaper readers expected..it's something new-media readership seems to no longer value. So the readership is as much to blame for the general quality of the technical laypress reporting as the reporters are. It's unfair to reasonably expect journalistic content to rise above established expectations on what qualifies as newsworthy or informative.

-jef

What's the problem?

Posted Aug 6, 2009 0:42 UTC (Thu) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

> A journalist's bias in cherry picking from the public record is no
> better than anyone else's, if anything its less meaningful and more
> damaging than other sources of bias. Well trained journalists hedge
> against their own bias by making sure individuals in a story get a
> chance to comment.

Hmm, I don't think I can agree with that. A journalist's job is to try to portray an accurate picture of the events and issues at hand. The reader's job is to decide whether they believe that, on the whole, a particular journalist generally does that. If not, the journalist loses credibility and readers, perhaps eventually their job as well. Then, perhaps, they go into talk radio :)

More seriously, it is up to the journalist to determine what the right tools are for the job at hand. And, again, for readers to judge them on those choices.

In a 100-post thread, who should be contacted for comments? The fact is, they had a chance to comment, and did.

Everyone certainly has biases, but the journalistic tradition that quotes must always be sought from those engaged in the debate certainly has its limitations as well. Just the choice of who to ask for comments injects a bias into things. Bias can't be escaped.

I guess I just don't see the quote issue as black and white as you seem to.

jake

What's the problem?

Posted Aug 11, 2009 12:25 UTC (Tue) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Umm, you recognize that Dag is commenting in this thread, do you? (account name "dag-") And he doesn't see Jon's report as FUD.

FWIW: I very seldomly use CentOS, but as an independent and infrequent user, I couldn't read any FUD into that report either. For me it read as: "Seems there were some turbulences that were taken care of, as in so many projects."

Demand More.

Posted Aug 6, 2009 9:58 UTC (Thu) by seyman (subscriber, #1172) [Link] (1 responses)

> mentioning that centos takes longer to get updates out then RHEL (ORLY?)

From what I understand, Centos takes the updates that RHEL releases and rebuilds them on Centos before releasing them. With this method, I don't see any possible way they could release updates faster than RHEL.

Am I missing something?

Demand More.

Posted Aug 7, 2009 14:48 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Nobody expects it to be faster. There is a substantial difference in how much the delay is between rebuilds like Scientific Linux and CentOS however and that is what the conversation is all about.

Demand More.

Posted Aug 10, 2009 18:54 UTC (Mon) by mcopple (guest, #2920) [Link]

One cannot report on events objectively, at least not on events that are themselves highly subjective. If all he is to do is dispassionately parrot the comments of others, with no interpretation or comment, then he has no reason to write an article at all -- we could simply read the source material for ourselves.

Yes, he primarily used e-mail traffic and public statements as his source material. However, they were still primary sources, and probably more indicative of how the participants were feeling at the time than a post-event interview would be.

This story clearly has many more angles than the one Corbet chose to focus on, but for the sake of readability, he can only focus on one at a time. I think the CentOS experience would make great source material for a more in-depth article on how volunteer distributions respond to change. One could look at several different distributions that have faced similar challenges over the years -- Gentoo, Mandrake/Mandriva, etc.