William L. Maltby wrote: > On Fri, 2009-08-07 at 19:31 -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: >> <snip> > >> Yep, I think it is because people often want to travel straight from A >> to Z without having to go through B, C, D, etc. Another subset of >> people, "the talkers" want to dictate to the "doers" how things should >> be done, often without wanting to (or perhaps without having the skills >> to) actually do any solid contributions themselves. They can safely >> just be ignored. ;o) > > I was with you up to that last line. In any organization, *sometimes* > one of the most important skills (if it is lacking in other "community" > members) is that of organizing and motivating and coordinating, ... All > of this is just "talking" (well, planning, etc. - but the results of > that is often only exhibited in "talking"). > > And what is characterized as "whining" can be seen as folks who > mistakenly believe their input, as a community member (if that's what > the "core" folks choose them to be viewed as) is valued and are trying > to contribute. > > I only have one question that I want to add to this gawd-awful thread > now. > > Who is the project serving? The "core" themselves or a "community" of > users as well? If that is effectively and accurately answered, then the > dynamics of the relationship(s) between users of the project and the > "core" can be more clearly stated and understood. Well, then I think I can easily clear this up. Our "Project" purpose has been stated for 4 years, and it has not changed. http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=3 The CentOS team provides a product that people can choose to use or not to use. It is designed to be 100% binary compatible with the upstream build. Here are our goals: http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=5 Furthermore: The CentOS Project will build, sign and provide the packages. We will provide an infrastructure to distribute the packages. We will provide an infrastructure where the Community can be involved and help each other (via things like a Wiki, the Forums, the Mailing Lists, the bugzilla and IRC). These things are where we want community participation. We have even added Special Interest Groups where we accept some code from the community for some things. Each SIG has a team member who is responsible to validate the code. From time to time, we will PULL a community member INTO the Development team. We have done this on a number of occasions. I'll give you a brief history with example: 1. CentOS 3.1 released as part of cAos foundation early 2004. 2. I (Johnny Hughes) was added as a CentOS team member from the Community in late 2004, as were Karanbir Singh and Tru Huynh. Several other people (Lance Davis, Donavan Nelson, Russ Herrold, John Newbigin) were already team members. 3. The CentOS Project forms and moves away from the cAos Foundation in March of 2005. 4. There have been other team members added from the Community since then including Jim Perrin, Ralph Angenendt, and Tim Verhoeven. 5. NedSlider and Akemi Yagi are added as Forum Moderators. Akemi has also been given the added responsibility to make the Plus kernel changes. When we pull people in from the Community and give them increased responsibility, we do so after many months of interaction. Not everyone has access to the "Signing Keys", Not everyone has access to make changes to www.centos.org, Not everyone has access to submit packages to the builder. Not everyone is Forum Moderator. Not everyone has Root access to all CentOS infrastructure machines. We have some other repositories (Extras, CentOSPlus, maybe in the future contrib) HOWEVER, these are not trying to be 3rd party repos or build the latest and greatest things. They are designed to add ENTERPRISE level software that we are going to maintain for the lifetime of the project. If we add something, then someone has given assurances that they will take care of it for 7 years. There are already plenty of 3rd party repos available including these: http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories?action=show&redirect=Repositories We do not desire to REPLACE any of these repositories ... these are INDEED part of the community as well. If you have something to contribute to a 3rd party repository, then contact them and ask how they would like your help. When we add something to CentOS, then someone in the core team is going to maintain it for 7 years. Every package will be verified by a team member and be the responsibility of a team member. If that team member leaves, someone else in the team will maintain that package. Therefore, adding things to CentOS will not be something that is taken lightly ... see 3rd party repos above. > > My observations in the past has indicated that this is not truly decided > and inculcated in the project's "core" members. It has been decided from the beginning and articulated many times. > > This one definition might have saved 90% of this thread. > How we manage the Project is not a community based, it was never intended to be community based, and it never will be community based. Hopefully this clears up any ambiguity.
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