Serious reservations about FC2 release on 5/18

Will Backman whb at ceimaine.org
Mon May 17 15:49:23 UTC 2004


On Mon, 2004-05-17 at 11:20, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Mon, 17 May 2004 05:46:16 -0400, Phil Savoie <psavoie1783 at rogers.com> wrote:
> > Sure Sean.  This is a product.  This is no different than a car company
> > promoting a new state of the art car.  Everything works except they
> > don't tell you that the brakes that used to work in reverse last year
> > don't this year.  But according to you, if you need to back up, you are
> > a loser.
> 
> You need to be very careful about analogies to cars. Fedora is not a
> product, its important to be clear about that, its a project.
> 
> And lets also be clear about this issue and issue like it in general. 
> A lot of bugs are difficult for developers to reproduce locally on
> their hardware. A lot of bugs can arise because of complicated
> interactions between hardware and software. Whatever is happening with
> fedora in this case might be a kernel 2.6 issue, it might be a
> partitioning tool issue, it might be  a grub issue, it might be a bios
> issue, it might be a combination of all those or none.  Whatever it
> is, I'm very much NOT convinced this is as wide spread as people would
> believe. I have heard fc2t3 install dual boot scenarios that have
> worked without a hitch. Hell even one bug reporter in the comments
> tried to reproduce the problem after a bios upgrade and could
> not...that suggests something.
> 
>  
> -jef
> 
There are some real issues with expectations.
Fedora is free, but controlled by RedHat.  Paid people from RedHat are
working on the project, but there is no official support.  The RedHat
enterprise line is designed for people who what to have official
support.
RedHat controls the project, but has no obligations to work on it at
all.  It does help the company if they do, as it gives them a way to
test software for their enterprise products, and they were very clear
about that.
Even if Fedora is broken quite often (which should be expected given the
youth behind a lot of the technology in it), it is all good for the
community at large.  RedHat has always promoted open-source, and any
improvements do add to the pool of stuff that we can all draw from. 
Maybe Fedora Core 2 will just be a good proving ground for the 2.6
kernel, and most other distributions will benefit from our experiences. 
That is what open source is about.

Our efforts add water to the lake, and all boats rise.





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