On 12/16/20 9:55 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:

> ... The question I raised still needs to be addressed:  will Rocky EL 

> be done by paid professionals (as with SL or Springdale Princeton EL) 

> or will it be done by volunteers, some (many) of whom are "amateurs"?  

> I am very concerned about the use in a production professional 

> environment of an "amateur" port of RHEL.  ...

Conflating "amateur" with a lack of quality and "professional" with high 

quality and guaranteed support is provably fallacious.



One of the very first RHEL rebuilds, White Box Enterprise Linux, was, to 

use your notation, a "professional" production, sponsored by and for the 

Beauregard Parish Public Library in DeRidder, Louisiana (read "County" 

where they write "Parish," it's a Louisiana thing); see 

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__distrowatch.com_-3Fnewsid-3D01205&d=DwIFAw&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E&s=se-D6Q6pwAPkByDwIbTumyo9JAE46Eo5L8V6yTTzYvY&e= 



But being "professional" didn't guarantee success; the last release was 

in 2007.  The "amateur" CentOS ended up with far better support with 

mostly volunteers.  I have liked and respected the Scientific Linux 

developers and their attitude for quite some time, but it honestly 

wasn't a surprise to me when it was announced that there would be no 

SL8.  The SL community seems to expect long-term support for any 

arbitrary point release; that is really unsustainable with a small staff 

and budget.



"Amateurs" can afford to dedicate more time in some cases than 

"professionals;" in my own field at $dayjob the whole science of radio 

astronomy owes its very existence to a talented and persistent amateur 

by the name of Grote Reber.  Sure, Jansky made the initial discovery 

while on Bell Labs' payroll (as a "professional" he had to follow his 

employer's money and go to the next project); Reber did the legwork and 

got others interested, paving the way for "professional" radio astronomers.



In another major area of physics, thermodynamics, medical doctor Julius 

von Mayer was overshadowed by James Joule; it didn't help that von Mayer 

was a medical doctor, not a "professional" physicist. (a good overview 

of that history: 

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Mechanical-5Fequivalent-5Fof-5Fheat-23Priority&d=DwIFAw&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E&s=p0ZIGrcPxwlbndK4YUIC_ynHLup-BPnuyhqss6Ez9pY&e=  ).



In computer science (using the non-ACM generalized definition of that 

term), well, all I need to say is "Linus Torvalds."  The very kernel you 

run was an "amateur" creation, and for a number of years had no 

"professional" support.  Likewise, the Debian distribution was started 

by "amateurs" and still has many "amateur" contributors; Ubuntu, a 

supposedly "professionally"-supported distribution bases its work on the 

"amateur" Debian; a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and if 

any part of even a "professional" distribution is supported by 

"amateurs" ... "professional" Linux distribution support is a house of 

cards built on an "amateur" foundation.  It reminds me of the reasoning 

in Ken Thompson's Turing Award acceptance lecture "Reflections on 

Trusting Trust" ( 

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.cs.cmu.edu_-7Erdriley_487_papers_Thompson-5F1984-5FReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf&d=DwIFAw&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E&s=-rEo5cSVS2fhIGxF42uFd_CWmc6DGwZNL3uLrDtYeL4&e=  

).



One problem with relying on "professional" staff is that the entity 

paying that staff has direct oversight into how much time they spend on 

those problems; the funding entity's goals and any particular end user's 

goals may differ dramatically, and the goals of the funder will trump 

the goals of the user.  A second problem is that the same "professional" 

staff can be hired away by another company.  A third problem is that 

"professionals" expect to be paid; where does the salary come from?  The 

fourth problem is since there is very likely to be fewer "professional" 

staff supporting a revenue-negative project, each "professional" becomes 

extremely important or maybe even indispensible, and the project might 

have a hard time surviving a "bus incident" or even a major hurricane.  

I've witnessed all four of these issues first-hand  RIP Seth.



The problem with "amateurs" is that they can quite literally walk away 

without it negatively impacting their livelihood, and they're going to 

work on what interests them, whether it interests the end-user or not.  

I've witnessed "amateurs" walk away, try to delete everything they ever 

contributed, and get mad when folks wouldn't forget what had been said.  

At least with "amateurs" you can afford more of them, and have backups 

for when people do leave.



As far as Rocky Linux is concerned, there is a middle ground where you 

might have some paid developers and some volunteers; nothing wrong with 

diversity here.  I would expect that, just like the Linux kernel itself, 

that we'll see a mixture of paid developers and volunteers for Rocky Linux.