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.