[WBEL-devel] Open Letter to John Morris, Beau WBEL members, et al.

[Johnny Hughes]

On Mon, 2003-12-15 at 00:41, donavan nelson wrote:
<snip>
> 1) Numerous offers from the community offering various things.  To the
> best of my knowledge, none of these have been accept, and in many
> cases not even acknowledged.
<snip>
> 4) Who's project is this?  Is this John Morris' WBEL or the communities that you
> created?  Right now if you fell ill, got hit by a bus, or just got mad and
> quit WBEL, I don't think the community would survive.  I'd like to see some
> kind of action that promotes the dissemination of WBEL core knowledge.  Sure,
> many of us could reinvent the wheel, but we don't want to.  Several people have
> expressed concern to me that one person is maintaining WBEL and that their
> companies, thought not scared of using an open source distribution, have
> serious concern
> about adopting a distribution with a community incapable of maintaining and
> continuing the distribution.

I think this is a key question ... for deployment in a production
environment, most companies are going to want some kind of assurance
that this is not a one man show.  John Morris is doing a great job,
working very hard on WBEL, and this project is much further along than
others like CentOS-3 (cAos).  However, a single T-1 line (IMHO) isn't
really going to be able to handle the interest that this will
generate...and focusing so much on the technical aspects and not
providing much feedback will hurt WBEL in the future.  I'm not saying
things are being done wrong, just asking a question...and maybe after
the final release there will be more time for feedback.


<snip>
> 6) I was working with a gentleman offering free bandwidth for WBEL if we
> joined the websites and put some banner ads promoting his web hosting
> company.  He stopped talking (emailing) me.  Since you where CC'd on every
> communication between him and myself, did you ask him to stop?  (No, I haven't
> asked him, I don't want to put him in the position of having to answer.)

I think something like this, where there is a big pipe for maintaining
the sites on is key.  I think donavan is on the right track on this one.


<snip>
> I'm prepared to put into motion a community driven WBEL website.  This would
> include most of the features available on the current wbl.net site, plus
> several additions:  mainly project collaboration (project management kinda
> crap), several projects, journals (or blogs so people have any easy way to
> provide quick and timely updates), amongst other.
> Some projects I expect to include (or would explore including):
> 1. x86 wbel core
> 2. x86 wbel core errata
> 3. x86 wbel plus pack, gadgets, power pack, office pack, pick a nice name
> 4. Items 1-3 for IA64 and AMD64, the community needs a place to
> share information for these (sub)projects.
> 
> For each project plans include, topical forums, bug tracker, request tracker,
> plus other things
> useful to a project, documentation tiki, news, howtos, faqs, etc.  All the
> stuff integral to a successful project.

I also think that something like this would be a great asset for all
involved.  Especially people who want to generate rpms that are known to
work with WBEL.  Not as replacements for the core WBEL or the WBEL
errata ... but someplace where addon packages can be developed and
mantained (like updated mozilla, OpenOffice, etc.).

Having to search the mailing list for bug info on mozilla-firebird (for
example) wouldn't be very fun ... and would lead to reposting of the
same info several times (where as a bug tracker will make the search
easier and hopefully minimize the effort to provide support).


<snip>
> If wbl.net is wanted and is going to be a success, it needs your blessing,
> endorsement, promotion, and participation.  whiteboxlinux.org provides no
> method of user interaction, no method for the community to share information
> and no way to provide feed back, etc.  Perhaps an
> alternative would be to move the community to .org and .org elsewhere (or to a
> link off the portal).  I don't have to be in control of the portal or it's
> content.  I just want WBEL to succeed, like everyone else.

I also think this is key.  I can respect that donavan doesn't want to
run wbl.net unless John Morris supports it.  I also think donavan is
gracious to offer to allow the site to be maintained by someone else.  I
think we need a site like wbl.net. (and personally I like the initiative
by donavan to start the site and ask John for his opinion). 

> I don't want to reinvent the wheel and don't plan to.  I want WBEL.

Me too!

<snip>
> BTW: I only registered whiteboxlinux.com to keep a vulture away from it.  If
> we find a need for it in the future, we might consider putting it to use.  One
> use might be to promote WBEL something along the lines of an adopters page
> (with links to them or something).  whiteboxlinux friendly ISP's come to mind
> right off the bat.

I think registering wbl.net and wbl.com were prudent moves.

I think a big pipe to wbl.net (modified with the enhancements above), a
listing on distrowatch.com and linuxiso.org, and an announcement on
osnews.com, linuxtoday.com and slashdot.org would be a step in the right
direction.

I'm not saying that anyone is doing a bad job, or that anyone should
change.  I'm only suggesting that WBEL is a great project that has the
potential to be a major player and fill a major unfilled market.  I
would like to see it do that.

Bruce Perens (of Debian fame) sees the Free Enterprise Linux market as
an unfilled market as well ... thus his promotion of the project
UserLinux.

Obviously I've been doing a lot of "thinking" :) 

(since just about every sentence starts with I think!)

-Johnny Hughes