John,

On Mon, 7 Mar 2005, John A. Goebel wrote:

> ++ 07/03/05 12:51 -0500 - <Daniel Widyono>:
> 
> Hello Dan,
> 
> > > But you know, I have serious questions that RHEL _is_ open source.
> > 
> > While I feel for your consternation, I do not agree that "RHEL _is_ open
> > source".  They repackage, maintain, and distribute open source applications
> > and an open source kernel.  Their process is not an open source process,
> > however, it's a corporate process.  That's neither good nor bad, here nor
> > there.
>  
> Well, I don't think that the corperate model is a great development
> environment. It's too centralized and your at the control/whim of someone
> else's decisions that might not always be based on good technical criteria. As
> I said in a the previous mail, the time to a fix is long, the feedback loop
> from RH is confused (I can list a number of instances to you directly if you
> wish), and I believe that RH isn't working on some other levels.
> 
> My orig mail was to address pitfalls for using RHEL/SL. That was question sent
> from Manchester. I don't find corperate processes in my env neither bad nor
> good; I've found them wanting.
>  
> > > And why support RH? I'd rather spend my time working on Debian or Gentoo or
> > > some other distros that _are_ two-way, open source.
> > 
> > Go for it!  Vive la difference!
> > 
> > So, I suppose the summary point of your rant, which I don't believe you
> > included, is that Fermi et al. should be redistributing something other than
> > Red Hat?  If that is not your point, please let me know what end result you
> > wish to come out of this discussion on the _Fermi SL_ mailing list.
>  
> In summary, I find that RHEL/SL has serious issues with supporting a stable,
> production system because the issues that I listed in the previous mail. 
> 
> I believe I tried to point out instances of problems that, although quickly
> written, are concrete.
> 
> My purpose was to address the question of pitfalls experienced running
> RHEL/SL on system here at our lab. I was trying to give feedback to help
> developers at Manchester, Fermi and for myself.
> 
> Desired outcomes:
> 
> 1. Consideration of a patch repository that we could contribute fixes for
> consideration by Fermi. They will differ from RHEL often, but they will address
> specific problems.

We do fix issues with RHEL.  These are either the SL- "fixup rpms" or rpms 
we have added.

> 
> 2. Fermi contracts an outside vendor support for SL so the arguement for
> coperate support of SL  would be satified.

We do Scientific Linux so that we do not have to buy outside vendor 
support and because we have to make many of these changes anyway for our 
environment.  If we have to make the changes anyway might as well share 
them.

If you want outside vendor support then go buy RHEL.

> 
> 3. Create a list of desired outcomes from other developers on the mailing list
> so I can get back to work. 
> 
> Sorry that my original message wasn't clear enough for you Dan. I hope this
> helps you understand my intent. 
> 
> John
>  
> > Regards,
> > Dan W.

-Connie Sieh

> 
> ##############################################
> # John Goebel <jgoebel(at)slac.stanford.edu> #
> # Stanford Linear Accelerator Center         #
> # 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025  #
> ############################################ #
>