People don't realize that trying to maintain updates on a release that is made every 6 months is unrealistic. As I accurately tracked, when Fedora Core 1 was released, Red Hat was supporting 6 simultaneous releases! The same thing happened mid-RHL 6.x release - all the way back to 4.2. Companies "standardized" on Red Hat Linux 7.1 and "didn't want to move" to RHL 7.2 - causing more release support issues. That's not feasible. Furthermore, hardware and software vendors are unwilling to recertify every 6 month release. And they were the ones that pushed (as I understand it) for a Red Hat Linux 6.2"E" with SLAs. SuSE Linux Enterprise 7 followed that, then Red Hat with RHAS/RHEL 2.1 based on Red Hat Linux 7.2 - and the rest is history. Companies that want longer-term support have to share in the costs of that - especially for backporting changes to maintain ABI/API and avoid regressions or interface changes. Trying to maintain a community release cycle of 6 months more than a year is not realistic. However, clarifying some things about Fedora's development - including making those "taboo" references to Red Hat Linux's history, would go a long way to finally *Smashing* the non-sense commentary and demonizations. Using a release numbering with a bit more "warnings" would help as well, but I'm sure I'm asking too much. That's my point, nothing more. It would be redundant and a waste of Fedora resources. Other projects that have attempted such have found themselves over-whelmed. You need the complementary release approach. Especially for leveraging one as a profit model to support the other. -- Bryan J Smith - mailto:b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx http://thebs413.blogspot.com Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile -----Original Message----- From: Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk@xxxxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:08:04 To:For discussions about marketing and expanding the Fedora user base <fedora-marketing-list@xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: Linux.org: The Feodra 7 Year Itch On Thu, 21 Jun 2007, Chris Negus wrote: > I agree. Fedora is a weird case where reality is better than perception. > > Has anyone on the Fedora project considered making one stable Fedora > release every three or four releases? You could promote the release as > having: > > * Stable desktop and servers > * Three years of security updates > * Branding program with hardware manufacturers > > I think you could bring back a lot of the independent consultants who > went to CentOS or elsewhere after the transition from Red Hat Linux. It > could also quiet people who say cutting-edge = never-better-than-beta. Red Hat only has so many resources to spare for long-term maintenance. Why? Because, as it turns out, it's pretty hard to do well -- and for that exact reason, it's worth a lot of money to Red Hat to do it well. So we do it for RHEL, and we do it for big bucks. There's nothing wrong with someone deciding to offer that kind of support. That was actually the point of Legacy -- and with all the tools available, a reformed Legacy group might be able to do that pretty well. But here's the question: who would join that effort when they could just get the same benefits from CentOS? And the answer is, basically, no one. The emergence of CentOS, one could argue, was the final nail in the coffin of the Legacy project. --g -- Greg DeKoenigsberg Community Development Manager Red Hat, Inc. :: 1-919-754-4255 "To whomsoever much hath been given... ...from him much shall be asked" -- Fedora-marketing-list mailing list Fedora-marketing-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list -- Fedora-marketing-list mailing list Fedora-marketing-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
