Fedora has issues

Posted Sep 15, 2010 12:37 UTC (Wed) by russell (guest, #10458)
In reply to: Fedora has issues by kragil
Parent article: Fedora defers systemd to F15

Has he been treated that badly? Many projects suffer a much worse fate, just follow kernel development. Yet they mostly don't have a dummy spit. If you get 10 people in a room you will get 11 different opinions, that normal. And that's what makes open source so good. So learn to work with it or you'll have a very unhappy life.

Fedora has issues

Posted Sep 15, 2010 14:39 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (4 responses)

Linus is a dictator and has never made any secret of that. If you ask "How do I get this into Linux" and someone tells you there's a documented process that works every time, they're pulling your leg.

Fedora notionally has such a process. Every iteration some features get baked in that somebody doesn't like or doesn't think are finished. If they got selected (systemd did) they land in the alpha tests (yep) and then if they're able to fix the inevitable bug reports (again yep) they are kept in through beta and into release (not this time).

I'd have been completely happy to see FESCO push systemd out if it wasn't working well enough. Or if Lennart had proved unresponsive. But what happens, if you read the transcript, is a disorganised mess. People elected to do a job aren't there, those who are there haven't read any background material, they end up making a decision based on the gut feeling of just one or two people, on matters that were never previously mentioned to Lennart. It's a car crash.

The most serious underlying problem is this: Fedora barely has enough resources, yet people really want two different distributions, one that has all the latest exciting development, and one that never gives them any trouble. That's _at least_ twice as much work, with no sign of the necessary skilled volunteers to make it happen.

Fedora has issues

Posted Sep 15, 2010 17:33 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

> what happens, if you read the transcript, is a disorganised mess. People elected to do a job aren't there, those who are there haven't read any background material, they end up making a decision based on the gut feeling of just one or two people, on matters that were never previously mentioned to Lennart.

Excellent summary!

Fedora has issues

Posted Sep 15, 2010 19:38 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

> yet people really want two different distributions, one that has all the latest exciting development, and one that never gives them any trouble.

Hearing this again and again (or "just use RedHat") starts to become a bit annoying. Development and testing speed is not limited to just two values "fastest" and "slowest".

Fedora has issues

Posted Sep 16, 2010 8:41 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Up-to-date, volunteer-maintained, stable. Pick two.

Fedora has issues

Posted Sep 16, 2010 13:31 UTC (Thu) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]

>> If you ask "How do I get this into Linux" and someone tells you there's a documented process that works every time, they're pulling your leg. <<

While I agree that Linux's development is too disorganized, you have a strange way to describe it: some features are bad ideas, so they shouldn't be in the kernel i.e. not taking every contribution is a *good thing*!

As for the rest, I agree..

Fedora has issues

Posted Sep 15, 2010 14:52 UTC (Wed) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

Linux = An apple
Fedora = An orange pimped up robot donkey with rocket boosters that is supposed to transform into a pink fluffy unicorn that spreads fairy dust, but that isn't working yet for anybody

Good luck comparing those two.

Fedora has issues

Posted Sep 16, 2010 1:33 UTC (Thu) by russell (guest, #10458) [Link]

Just comparing people interacting with people. It's the same everywhere and it's something everyone has to learn to do.

Fedora has issues

Posted Sep 15, 2010 19:36 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

Many projects suffer a much worse fate

What does it matter what other projects do? I want to strive to treating people well. E.g. by following http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct. Won't always be followed perfectly, but the point is to strive to threat people well.

Within free software/open source there are a lot of opinions, yes. But people actually making decisions (doing the work) should strive to be better. Even within the kernel, the aim is to have the best implementation/idea. So what matters is the right solution, not simple words. Though I still think it is too aggressive, at least decisions seem to be influenced by people who actually code, instead of people who appear to have a lot of time to talk (which is fine, but sometimes results in discussions going offtopic, steered in one way, etc). For the latter I'm not talking about Fedora, I don't follow it closely enough, though I do read their mailing lists for fun.

For an example of how the GNOME release-team handles things I'll quote the 'mission statement' as found on http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning:

The GNOME Release Team helps to coordinate the GNOME release process, mainly by creating a 6-monthly release schedule, and keeping everyone informed about the various stages of that schedule. We work for the developer community, helping everyone to work together and make progress. We try not to get in the way.

I think above is pretty clear and reflects reality