lwn article on the death of Fedora Legacy

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 10/20/06, Matthew Miller <mattdm at mattdm.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 09:36:15AM -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> > The problem is that we are just beat. Jesse has a kid, a release
> > cycle, a new knee, and a lot of other stuff on his real job. The other
> > people who have been doing stuff have also had 'stuff happen', and
> > temporary schedule changes that have become permanent.
>
> Yes.
>
> In order to survive the project needs some real support from Red Hat. (Or
> some other large company who wants to do Red Hat a favor, but that seems
> even less likely.)
>

> Using the "Chasm" marketing model [*], without Legacy, Fedora is only a
> viable solution for Early Adopters and of dubious value to the second
> "Pragmatist" group. However, Fedora has been enough of a success that many
> Pragmatists are indeed using Fedora.
>

I would argue that the pragmatists had been using it out of a trust
model. They had used Red Hat Linux when it has crossed the chasm, and
were using Fedora out of the same trust model. However, Fedora seems
to have only been for Early Adopters. Legacy was an added on idea by
people who realized that if you are going to put "service" software in
an OS, people arent going to want to upgrade every 6 months. The
problem with that is that maintaining an OS is always more effort/cost
than creating it. That is why Pragmatists, Conservatives, and Laggards
are better suited with an "Enterprise" linux.  The problem with trying
to stay on the Early Adopter side is that they will most likely drop
you for the next shiney thing (Gentoo 3 years ago, Ubuntu today, xPath
in 3 years)


>
> Fedora people repeatedly state that the distribution is great for users
> beyond the tech-enthusiast Earlier Adopters. But without Legacy, it's really
> not true.
>

To be honest, there are only 2 reasons I use Fedora these days:

1) I drank the Bob Young koolaid long ago, and I am too much an "RPM"
man to change to something else.. and

 2) I use Fedora to alpha/beta test for the next/current Red Hat Enterprise.

Even if Red Hat does not use Fedora as a alpha/beta test for Red Hat
Enterprise.. I and many other people who are RHEL/Centos/etc customers
do. I use Fedora because I  need to know what the next RHEL will have
in it. I use it to see what tools in extras I can pull over to my
production systems because I need a plone, git, or other tool for some
project.

I do like having the nice new distro every 6 to 9 months, but I don't
get paid to have it... and I am not longer the young kid who has time
to twiddle with all the nobs to find out why something isnt working.

>
> * <http://www.ericsink.com/Act_Your_Age.html>
>
>

Heh. I hadn't seen that for a long time. Erik Sink was sort of my boss
before I went to work for Red Hat. The books "Crossing the Chasm" and
"Inside the Tornado" should be required reading for anyone dealing
with emerging markets.



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"