lwn article on the death of Fedora Legacy

[Eric Rostetter]

Quoting Jesse Keating <jkeating at redhat.com>:

> On Friday 20 October 2006 10:48, Eric Rostetter wrote:
>> IMHO, Fedora Legacy was started for RHL, not FC, and the name is shouldn't
>> dictate policy, the original purpose should dictate policy.
>
> Actually no.  Fedora Legacy came from when Fedora was created.

Yes, which was about the same time RHL was killed off in favor of RHEL.
And the only reason I joined was because almost all the talk at that time
was about keeping RHL releases alive "for as long as there is interest"
with just a small amount of "and Fedora Core releases for a few months
longer on a 1-2-3-out basis".

> Fedora
> Alternatives and Extras were other proposed projects.  I picked up Legacy
> because I wanted to provide Fedora to my customers, and provide them a
> slightly longer life span.  I was persuaded to do updates for RHL too, which
> I really think was a mistake.

Okay, that may be your position/opinion, as and the defacto leader that
carries some weight.  But that is not how the project came across many of
those who joined after RHL was added.

> Where we need help is testing packages, reporting and vetting issues (not
> just 'hey this CVE was filed, does it effect us?'  Actually LOOK at the
> package and package sources to see, perhaps provide a patch?  Where are you
> meeting resistance doing this kind of work?

First, my interest doesn't really fit there.  It is in testing what is
in updates-testing (which is nothing).  If there was something in
updates-testing to test, I would test it and report the results.

Secondly, I've offered to help many times with other infrastructure issues,
and been turned down over and over.

Third, when I've tried to help test packages before updates-testing, I
met with lots of trouble.  Someone: "No, you have to do this, this way, not
that way!" Me: "Okay, where's that documented?"  Someone: "No where."
Me: "Okay, I'll document that and resubmit"  Someone: "No, you still missed
Step X".  Me: Okay, where is that documented?  Someone: "No where."   
Me: "Okay,
I'll document that..."  And so on.  Eventually of course, my documentation
is no longer good because it is a web page and now it should all be wiki,
and I don't have access to the wiki.  By the time I finally get access to
the wiki, I've lost interest.

Third, I had a big project that took about a year of my life, during which
I could not spend a lot of time of FL work.  That is over now, and I could
go back to working on FL again, but I really don't see where I'm needed now.

The fact that I only have one FC machine to play with (FC 3 x86_64 now,
could upgrade to FC4 or what ever if needed) doesn't help.  I'm willing
to put it towards FL work if you tell me what you need me to do.

But you can't expect me to do everything any more than I expect you to do
everything.  And as long as you keep refusing my offers to help saying
you'll do it yourself, you won't get many unsolicited offers from me,
so you better start soliciting if you want anything.

>> So, hey, here's an idea: Let's do that!  What's the hold up?
>
> Getting software in place.  Time.  Energy.

Is there anything I can do to help, or not?

>> Again, could he use help with this?  If so, what kind of help?
>> Even gentle encouragement?  Or money?  Or coding support?  Or documentation
>> support?  Or???
>
> I don't know.  Email him.  Find out.  He's on the fedora infrastructure team
> which has this listed as one of the projects.
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure
>
> Don't wait on me to make it happen.

Is there a particular reason to contact only him instead of the whole
infrastructure team?

> --
> Jesse Keating
> Release Engineer: Fedora

-- 
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

Go Longhorns!