non-disclosure of infrastructure problem a management issue?

[Jonathan Underwood]

2008/8/21 Bjoern Tore Sund <bjorn.sund at it.uib.no>:
> It has now been a full week since the first announcement that Fedora had
> "infrastructure problems" and to stop updating systems.  Since then there
> has been two updates to the announcement, none of which have modified the
> "don't update" advice and noen of which has been specific as to the exact
> nature of the problems.  At one point we received a list of servers, but not
> services, which were back up and running.
>
> The University of Bergen has 500 linux clients running Fedora.  We average
> one reinstall/fresh install per day, often doing quite a lot more. Installs
> and reinstalls has had to stop completely, nightly updates have stopped, and
> until the nature of the problem is revealed we don't even know for certain
> whether it is safe for our IT staff to type admin passwords to our
> (RHEL-based, for the most part) servers from these work stations.
>
> Sometimes unfortunate events happen beyond anyone's control.  We understand
> this as well as anyone.  We trust the assurances that the infrastructure
> team is working hard on resolving the matter and are greatful to them for
> the job they do.  So far nothing that has happened with this issue has
> reflected poorly on them.
>
> Sadly, the same cannot be said about the Management of the Fedora project.
>  Their choice of complete non-disclosure is enough to eradicate any and all
> confidence that Fedora is a trustworthy platform for Linux installations.
>  What information they have released has been deliberately vague and,
> frankly, useless.  For a day or two to secure things this may be a workable
> strategy.  For a full week, not giving the community participants any chance
> whatsoever to protect themselves from threats indicated but not specified?
>  This is poor management and poor judgement and reflects very badly not only
> on the Fedora project but on Fedora's RedHat sponsor as well.  The issue is
> more than serious enough and has gone on for more than long enough that
> someone higher up the scale should have stepped in a long time ago and made
> sure that all relevant info was released to the community.
>
> We strongly encourage both the Fedora management and RedHat as a Fedora
> sponsor to immediately release any and all information relating to the
> current infrastructure problems.

I suspect that if you really want a response to this, you'll need to
send it to the fedora-advisory-board

http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board

Jonathan.