Re: An Open Letter to Red Hat: Guidelines for Fedora Core Releases ...

["Bryan J.Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

Steven Pritchard wrote:
> No.  Fedora releases (starting with RHL 9 actually) are stable
> snapshots of current software.  That's it.

That did not seem to be the case with Fedora Core 1 at all.
And Fedora Core 2 and 3 seemed to follow the development of typical ".0" 
and ".1" releases.

> I thought this was made clear when Red Hat dropped the ".x" from RHL9.

Not really, because other than NPTL, it was pretty RHL8 ABI compatible.

> If you will recall, there were bits of what went into RHL8.0
> introduced in rawhide pre-RHL7.3, but they were pulled because Red Hat 
> wanted another "stable" release.

And I was happy to see that.

> Because of that, a lot of us had to
> wait for current software in the interest of stability and ABI
> compatibility.

Nothing wrong with that IMHO.

> All that accomplished was putting off testing of new
> features, which made RHL8.0 buggier than it should have been.

Naah, it was just typical of a Red Hat ".0" release, which is similar to 
FreeBSD ".0" releases as well.
We saw a repeat of this with Fedora Core 2 as well, which was a ".0" 
release.

> THIS IS NOT A NEW THING!

I know, but the lineage was still there despite the version labels.

>  If it bothers you so much, use RHEL

I do!
But you're missing my point, there is no reason to stick with EL is 
there is no corresponding FC.
Especially since I like to occassionally tap Fedora Extras for EL as 
well.

If Novell-SuSE can do this, and Red Hat has done so for far longer in 
the past, why can't they do it now?

> (or one of the rebuilds)

Naah, I'd rather pay for RHEL when I want RHEL.
But that means I want an equivalent FC too, even if Legacy and not 
officially maintained.
RHEL without some guidelines of FC really hurts RHEL.

> or fork off your own CL distribution based on Fedora.

Not worth it.
Too much effort, and I can't regression test like Red Hat either.

> Or, the RIGHT thing to do would be to start contributing to Fedora
> Legacy (http://www.fedoralegacy.org/).  I'm sure they could use some help.

I'd love to, but you're missing the core problem.
Red Hat seemingly has no interest in keeping FC aligned with RHEL, 
unlike RHL prior.
That's just makes Fedora Legacy frustrating as hell.

I'm waiting to see what Novell does with SuSE and Novell version 10 
products.
It's looking more like what I've trusted with Red Hat in the past.

I don't blame Red Hat for dropping the 3+ years of support of every 
little revision.
But it would be nice if they still kept to a set of ABI compatible 
revisins in a major version.
And regardless of the version marketing, they seem to be losing those 
roots altogether.

Which means I'm going to be looking for a new dual-Community and 
Enterprise offering that does.
--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Currently Mobile

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