Slightly OT: bad rap for Fedora, and realistic effects

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:40:54 -0900, Jeff Spaleta wrote:

> On 2/22/07, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> > And this may or may not be the correct -list for this, but here goes.
> > I think its fair to say that a lot of the louder voices on the
> > internet do not like Fedora for fair and unfair reasons. My question
> > is what does this do to Fedora, and RedHat by association. I can't
> > imagine that anything good is coming of this. All the developers here
> > are bound by the 24hr daily limit, ie. there is a finite amount of
> > work that any developer can accomplish, esp. those not being paid to
> > work on Fedora. Making the assumption that all these negative word of
> > mouth is bleeding Fedora of contributors, then what's the plan?
> 
> First I'd stop making unfounded assumptions about how the contributor
> numbers are falling.

Still, the merge of Core+Extras will put the Fedora Project at a test.
There are several issues I still don't understand and which sometimes
make me shake my head in disbelief. For instance, but not limited to:

* heavy use of Red Hat internal mailing-lists for Fedora related matters,

* weird procedures by which Red Hat's Fedora Core package owners need
sponsorship for cvs_extras and either get blanket approval or are
really "sponsored" by community contributors without that the
sponsors' responsibilities and duties are documented,

* more closed circles, in which decisions are made -- including mysteries
like brew, koji, and code transfer for the new Updates System,

* unclear role of FESCo, not enough steering -- instead: the drive
that "you don't need to be in FESCo to get something done",

* the community used to have full control over Extras -- this control
is lost, instead: even sponsors would need to ask their sponsorees
for permission before they could fix or veto anything in CVS,

* changes to infrastructure and policies/guidelines, respectively,
without prior communication,

* annoying cross-posts due to an overly complex and unclear
choice of mailing-lists -- still: the feeling that some lists are
missing, because vital communication and coordination (e.g. about
things done in Core) is missing.