What's in a (CentOS) version number?

Oh you've had discussions about this with red hat employees? Any public archived discussion between you and a red hat employee concerning the epel idea you can point me to? Now of course I haven't mapped every lwn username to a flesh and blood persona yet, so some of the feedback you got here has been from a hatter and I've miscategorized it. If so then I apologize. But as of now, I'm not aware of any publicly archived discussion on the EPEL idea specifically between you and anyone employed by red hat.

It's difficult to judge the conclusions you are drawing without some modicum of public record from which to read for myself. I'm disinclined to believe you without at least one public record conversation to review. So please, if you are going to refer to conversations with red hat employees, please provide the public record citation to them so I can verify they happened and the things you said were said were said.

Protip, if you are going to make it a habit of talking trash about policy decisions happening across a corporate fenceline, you really need to make sure your conversations with key people you are in disagreement with are happen in the public record as much as possible. If you are going out of your way to have...disagreements..in private conversations.. and then taking those disagreements into public forums (like here), that's a bit uncool and doesn't really help substantiate your policy argument or grow wider support for your opinion (even if you have the better reasoning).

It's generally not a good idea to reference private conversations, unless of course, your goal is to just besmirch reputations and you really don't care about seeing policy decisions changed.

That's not your goal right? You are still trying to have a positive impact on policy direction right? Contrary to your last statement that you believe that as individuals you and I are both powerless to have a positive influence, right? That was just silly talk. Of course you are still endeavoring to have a positive influence, your just doing it wrong, terribly terribly wrong. That previous statement was just your defensive cynicism talking earlier as a batter you with my indomitable rhetoric. Sorry about that. And we all now inside every cynic there's just a disappointed idealist underneath. But once we surgically remove your idealism and replace it with synthetic lab grown pragmatism, you'll be feel much better about everything.

-jef