On 12/17/20 2:07 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
> You present a well-organized commentary; however, I must amplify, and
> thus take exception, to some of your statements.
>
Thank you for the compliment. By all means amplify; I always reserve
the right to be wrong!
> First: Linux and Torvalds. Some might compare Torvalds to Bill Joy
> who left a Berkeley PhD program for work in the private sector; Joy
> had a sound background in what was "known" at that epoch. By
> comparison, I suggest one consider the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate ...
I watched it happen in real-time. A lot has changed in kernel
architectures since then. They both were passionate about their
respective points-of-view. Both were wrong, and both were right, in
various areas of the argument. It devolved into a bit of a flame war,
though.
> Why did monolithic kernel Linux, based primarily upon the
> non-production-environment OS Minix from Tanenbaum used as an
> implemented example for teaching OS at the undergraduate level,
> achieve sector dominance over micro-kernel BSD-derivatives? ...
The answer to the question of why Linux won the mindshare that it has is
one for the historians. But it boils down to a great deal of
uncertainty around BSDI, UCB's CSRG, Bill Jolitz, and 386BSD, all of
which descended from the Unix codebase. Linux is greenfield; GPL makes
contributions 'viral' in nature, and people enjoyed working on something
totally new. Technical merits had nothing to do with it. If technical
merits won wars, Microsoft Windows would have a Xenix kernel.
Amateurs, volunteers, from all over jumped on the Linux bandwagon, and
anybody and everybody could contribute. Some contributions were
obviously better than others, but the vast majority were by
noncompensated amateurs.
Although, re-think your statement; Darwin with the macOS skin on it has
a great deal more marketshare than Linux. In many ways the
BSD-system-layered-on-a-microkernelish core did win; just not the hearts
of developers.
> ...
> Your comment upon "amateur" status of various persons who have made
> major research/engineering contributions is not my meaning of amateur. ...
I'm using the strict definitions: "professional" = paid to do the job;
"amateur" does the job without pay or other compensation. This is the
commonly-accepted definition across several areas, including sports.
You used the word "professional" in that sense in the post to which I
replied.
> As for the other comments you make, we can pursue these mostly
> off-list if you prefer. I do note that some Rocky EL personnel you
> envision to be "paid" developers. Full time? "Gig"? From where do
> you envision the pay to come? With proper benefits (not required in
> those nation-states that have social services and benefits for all)?
Does it actually matter what kind of paid developers?
In my case, I have participated in a diverse development group before,
primarily as a volunteer. From July 1999 until October of 2004, I was
the RPM package maintainer for PostgreSQL. You can read my message on
stepping down from that role at
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.postgresql.org_message-2Did_200410251334.36550.lowen-2540pari.edu&d=DwIFaQ&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=2DWWGD6QnYoIeN460KaIUgzPOSnIfZx1sWazV_Vx2GY&s=BTrS2VPkotDfKz0C8PFjIKfphFz4fNsfRy_e1ujInMA&e=
and one of the PostgreSQL Core Team members subsequent post at
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.postgresql.org_message-2Did_200410251354.53583.josh-2540agliodbs.com&d=DwIFaQ&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=2DWWGD6QnYoIeN460KaIUgzPOSnIfZx1sWazV_Vx2GY&s=Yz6Q_n8iXOR0lapHkoJ4YIAFzkLr9K9uJiHotxDv8Z0&e=
which specifically mentions that I was a volunteer.
Now, I wasn't always a volunteer; in 2000 I was hired as a contractor to
do a gig for GreatBridge to spin RPMs for several Linux distributions.
But the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, which is still a vibrant
and dynamic community rolling out the best of the open source databases,
is very diverse: many are volunteers; some are full-time
fully-benefitted employees; some do the work as a side hustle or gig;
some have made their whole business supporting PostgreSQL and make good
money rolling support for the BSD-licensed database. While I was
volunteering for the project, who paid for my time? For a while my
full-time employer did, since we used PostgreSQL in production, and it
had great benefit for me to do that work, even at no charge to the
project. Later I just did it on my own time as a donation of time.
Extending the analogy to Rocky Linux (or any other arbitrary project),
some developers will likely be volunteers; some will possibly be paid by
their current employers to do the work since their employers are CentOS
shops; some will do side gigs related to Rocky Linux in support
services; some will be employed by sponsors (some of whom are listed in
the Rocky Linux Github). There will be a melange of the possibilities,
I'm sure. NO ONE really knows yet, nor is it really necessary to know.
The Rocky Linux project and its leads will deal with their thing, and SL
and CentOS users have some time to watch the dust settle before having
to do really anything; the situation calls for patience and data
gathering rather than speculation.
I don't have any intention of having a long-form discussion, public or
private, by the way. And, who knows, having the post public might help
someone else.
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