{"id":475,"date":"2007-02-21T08:06:33","date_gmt":"2007-02-21T13:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/02\/21\/eric-raymond-says-goodbye-fedora"},"modified":"2007-02-21T08:06:33","modified_gmt":"2007-02-21T13:06:33","slug":"eric-raymond-says-goodbye-fedora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/02\/21\/eric-raymond-says-goodbye-fedora","title":{"rendered":"Eric Raymond says: &#8220;Goodbye, Fedora&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just when I wondered where <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/02\/17\/the-way-of-the-open-source-jedi-master\">Eric Raymond<\/a> had been, it seems he surfaces on fedora-devel-list. Read the interesting thread, titled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.redhat.com\/archives\/fedora-devel-list\/2007-February\/msg01006.html\">Goodbye, Fedora<\/a> (notice the CC-lists as well).<\/p>\n<p>I have a few comments about his comments&#8230; <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Chronic governance problems? Yes, its called growing pains. And for a company to open to the wide outside world, its not the easiest thing. Trust me, I know this firsthand, these days. I think the likes of Max Spevack, Greg DeKoenigsberg, the Fedora Advisory Board, FESCO, etc. have really made Fedora happen and fixed most of his so-called &#8220;governance problems&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>I do think the repositories are sane. I do agree that the submission process for Extras or any package tends to be overcomplex. And I don&#8217;t like some of the Packaging guidelines (for one, if I wanted to read my Bible on Fedora, it should be a yum away, really).<\/li>\n<li>RPM development might&#8217;ve drifted when jbj left Red Hat, but Paul Nasrat has taken over. I don&#8217;t see that as necessarily bad. And YUM has gone through leaps and bounds, its actually really nice software.<\/li>\n<li>The struggle for the desktop market share is a fine balance. I don&#8217;t think Fedora makes it unwieldingly difficult to install proprietary codecs &#8211; in fact, on a stock FC-6 install, you just fire up your web browser, and at the bottom there&#8217;s a link to the Unofficial Fedora FAQ. Guess what that does? It tells you to enable Livna, and enjoy playing MP3s, DivXs, and so on. Not including binary drivers for the latest greatest Nvidia card? Good, because <code><a href=\"http:\/\/nouveau.freedesktop.org\/\">nouveau<\/a><\/code> wouldn&#8217;t have been born without it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ubuntu does have its advantages (single CD install, usually everything works out of the box on the desktop [until they upgrade your X server and it stops :P]) but even there, multimedia support isn&#8217;t the best. Sure, its a repository away, but it still requires work. Ubuntu on x86_64? They&#8217;ll actually tell you to use the 32-bit desktop release, because I fear dpkg\/apt still have multi-arch problems. And I dare argue, that their governance is no better than Fedora&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Fedora has advantages. Its development team is extensive. Thats one thing you have to give Red Hat &#8211; they invest in prime quality engineers, they <b><i>innovate<\/i><\/b> (NetworkManager, written by a one-time OpenOffice.org hacker, SELinux integration, rocking GNOME desktop, etc.). Ubuntu is smart &#8211; they watch Fedora, to make &#8220;a better Fedora than Fedora&#8221;. And they compromise (though recently, Shuttleworth has stated otherwise).<\/p>\n<p>I met Eric at the very first FUDCon. He spoke on some man page utilities for about fifteen minutes, then went on to tell us why Fedora sucked. There might actually be video footage of this, or not, since it was my first time recording video to disk, as the rest of the FUDCon crew ran away from the room. Lots have changed since then, and yet, Eric&#8217;s thrown in the towel?<\/p>\n<p>This time, he&#8217;s installed Edgy Eft, so its confirmed that he&#8217;s leaving Fedora-land. From the comments, I don&#8217;t think many are going to miss him. I do think, Alan Cox <a href=\"https:\/\/www.redhat.com\/archives\/fedora-devel-list\/2007-February\/msg01021.html\">says it best<\/a> (notice the .signature as well!). Goodbye, Eric.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20Eric%20Raymond%20says%3A%20%22Goodbye%2C%20Fedora%22&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bytebot.net%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2007%2F02%2F21%2Feric-raymond-says-goodbye-fedora&share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email a link to a friend\" data-email-share-error-title=\"Do you have email set up?\" data-email-share-error-text=\"If you&#039;re having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. 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Read the interesting thread, titled Goodbye, Fedora (notice the CC-lists as well). I have a few comments about his comments&#8230; Chronic governance problems? Yes, its called growing pains. And for a company to open to the wide outside world, its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20Eric%20Raymond%20says%3A%20%22Goodbye%2C%20Fedora%22&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bytebot.net%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2007%2F02%2F21%2Feric-raymond-says-goodbye-fedora&share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email a link to a friend\" data-email-share-error-title=\"Do you have email set up?\" data-email-share-error-text=\"If you&#039;re having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. 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That's the Fedora News Updates #5. Covering Eric Raymond's new Multimedia HOWTO, the updated schedule (for FC2 test1), a report on the Fedora Bug Squad, as well as important changes to how the #fedora IRC channel works now (where you need registered nicknames).","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":92,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2004\/04\/05\/fedora-jobs-list-and-test-notes","url_meta":{"origin":475,"position":1},"title":"Fedora Jobs list and test notes","date":"5\/4\/2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been keeping some Fedora Core 2 test notes, and thought that I'd make it public since the traffic on fedora-test-list is becoming pretty insane (with similar messages!). I present to you, Fedora Core 2 testX notes, where X is still {1,2}. So new testers, read this, it has lots\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":235,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2004\/11\/08\/fedora-core-3-made-simple-preview","url_meta":{"origin":475,"position":2},"title":"Fedora Core 3 \/ Made Simple preview","date":"8\/11\/2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Fedora Core 3 is out. Go Heidelberg. Now, for a sample chapter from Fedora Core: Made Simple, go take a look at Installing Fedora. I'm told that the more screenshots the better for the user, so go buy your mom a copy of the Made Simple guide ;-) Warning, its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":189,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2004\/07\/31\/fedora-news-updates-14","url_meta":{"origin":475,"position":3},"title":"Fedora News Updates #14","date":"31\/7\/2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Fedora News Update #14 is out. More interestingly, Fedora has made the top-level of redhat.com - we have our own page at http:\/\/www.redhat.com\/fedora\/. And to top it all off, Red Hat Blogs exists, feeding Fedora People, as well as the executive blogs (which will get populated sometime this week?).","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":272,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2005\/02\/03\/fedora-extras-launches-fudcon-shapes-up","url_meta":{"origin":475,"position":4},"title":"Fedora Extras launches; FUDCon shapes up","date":"3\/2\/2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Fedora Extras As Sopwith announced, the official Fedora Extras tree is now open. Make sure bug reports are at RH Bugzilla. [Extras] name=Fedora Extras baseurl=http:\/\/download.fedora.redhat.com\/pub\/fedora\/linux\/extras\/$releasever\/$basearch\/ gpgcheck=1 That can be placed in \/etc\/yum.repos.d\/extras.repo. You'll need the GPG key, which is available at http:\/\/download.fedora.redhat.com\/pub\/fedora\/linux\/extras\/RPM-GPG-KEY-Fedora-Extras. Great going on getting a build system skvidal!\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":260,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2005\/01\/08\/fc3ppc-review-at-ppcnerds-specifixppc","url_meta":{"origin":475,"position":5},"title":"FC3\/ppc review at ppcnerds; specifix\/ppc","date":"8\/1\/2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Seems the FC-3\/ppc test tree got a little review at ppcnerds. Just a few minor\/quick comments. You can extract boot.iso from the CD1 - just loop mount it. Installation is best done via NFS, as the guide tells you to. Otherwise, its a case of paperclip eject and if you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}