On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Genes MailLists <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > There seems to have been a recent pattern (last year or so) of pushing > premature pet projects rapidly without broader fedora engagement. > > I know this little issue will get sorted out and its still > rawhide/pre-f17. But its part of the pattern. > > I suspect the pushers feel they are breaking ground and doing good > things. I fervently believe many if not all of them are indeed good > ideas - just often very premature and the process is poorly managed. All > are well intended. > > For many of us its a bad trend to see - and creates an impression that > a few pushy folks are wresting control - rather than things being > accepted based on merit and good work. > > Its a very disappointing thing to see fedora spiraling in this way. I > don't know what changed for this to happen but it is not a net positive. > > Just a personal perspective from a long time fedora user (since about > Redhat 3 or so). I don't know what it means for RHEL but I sincerely > hope it can learn from these missteps when its facing the decision what > to include from fedora .. but I fear its not practical for RHEL to take > anything but all of fedora - so if there's a way to improve this, its at > the fedora level. > > That said, extra kudos to the kernel team who have made things better, > more stable and still managed to keep pace with current kernel > development providing solid, frequent and timely builds all the while > contributing to kernel dev itself. Thank you. Well said! There are some fantastic and excellent developments in Fedora - and some really superb developers and maintainers. The selinux development and support springs immediately to mind and, as Gene said, kernel support is superb. Wireless driver support is top notch, and printing support and development is excellent. Generally the KDE sig do a great job keeping packages flowing reasonably close to upstream developments - with only a relatively small delay for example in releasing 4.8 which will likely be soon. There are others too many to mention that are also superb and vital components of the system that are maintained well and in a timely fashion when it comes to bringing in necessary updates and particularly fixes for security vulnerabilities that are discovered from time to time. So far several major new project developments like pulseaudio, systemd and udev have survived at the point of each stable Fedora release though not without some serious bug squashing required in the pre-release phase for several releases. Some releases have been better than others and in some cases fewer people have opted to move stable platforms to a release and skipped till the next one. However it is really important not to become complacent. I spent 20 years as a private pilot and at times I took the "go" decision on a flight when the weather was difficult and marginal, and I survived. The problem is that it becomes easier the next time to make a similar decision - and if each time you survive on a marginal decision then you feel inside that you are safe when in fact you are carrying a risk of failure - the more times that you tempt fate making such decisions the more likely it will be that one day you won't make it. It is important to not become overconfident that you are all-knowing and immortal. In the case of the private pilot the consequence is that you may not only lose your life but also take the lives of others with you. There have clearly been times when Fedora has "sailed close to the wind" on "go/nogo" decisions on occasion. So far Fedora has made the right decisions at the point of GA release. But just like in the case of the pilots, the one time the decision is the wrong one will have significant consequences. I hope that the latter does not happen in the near future, and the decision making process should take account of the risk of failure as well as the rewards of success. I have been a devoted Fedora user since FC1 - but I am ever more acutely aware that some projects are pushing the boundaries pretty hard - and it is important to listen to the user community when the final button is being pushed. I expect many will say this is already the case - and I hope that they are right. -- mike c -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
