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

[Daniel Robitaille]

I think this project has to be very careful not to be too many things for
too many people at the same. If it does, the growing pains it will
experience could be lethal as community-based project. I think this
project leadership must continue to focus on it's core goal and avoid
wasting any energy on side things.

>From my point of view (single computer installation for a single-digit
number of users) this project has been until now exactly what I was
expecting, and exactly what it was advertised in the first place: The
BEAU library and it's computer people will produce a distro based as
close as possible to RHEL3, created for their own needs, and will provide
it to world.   In return for this pretty good (and quite usable) product,
the library got quite a few more people testing it out than it would have
had it they would have stay "private".  

Is it a one-man show project?  Well yes.  Do I care?  Not really. That
seems to be the way the project was tooled in the first place from my
reading of the mailing lists and web site.

How about 3rd party software?  I'll do like I always done, and get them
from 3rd party web site (Mozilla, Opeenoffice, etc)

What will happens when RHEL3.1 or RHL4 arrives?  Don't know; I will
follow whatever version John decides to use at the time for the library
needs.

Am I afraid of a lack of stability if there is not real community around
it?  Not really.  As long as whatever errata produce by RedHat makes it
into the whitebox repos when John builds them for his needs, I'll be
happy.    

And things change so often in the Linux world; who knows what the linux
landscape will be in 4 or 5 years anyway, and if there will be a need or
not for WBEL at that point in time.

I think the call for a large community, web site, etc, is nice; and could
be useful on the long run as an user learning the rope of RHEL/WBEL; but
from my point of view all that is extra bonus time.  If I get the WBEL
rpms, get regular erratas/updates, I'll get exactly what I need and what
I was expecting (for a pretty good price!), and in return I'll be willing
to follow whatever direction John decides to do, and produce for him
feedback and do the occasional beta testing when he's producing new
packages/new releases. 

Daniel


On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 00:41:50 -0600, "donavan nelson"
<donavan@whiteboxlinux.net> said:
> John,
> 
> Your lack of communication regarding whiteboxlinux.net and certain
> aspects of
> WBEL have become disturbing to myself and a number of members of the WBEL
> community.  Indirect communication via two proxies is not acceptable. 
> I've
> written you
> at least a dozen email (privately) and even a couple via the list in an
> effort
> to draw you out to address some of these issue.  All of my efforts have
> yielded exactly one thing from you:  nothing.  I realize you have been
> very
> busy addressing technical issues, doing builds, etc. and I "heard" you
> have
> been under the weather.  But this isn't a reasonable explanation.  It
> wouldn't take much to send a quick email addressing your work
> load/illness/whatever.  Sitting on your hands waiting the situation out
> doesn't look too good when you look from this side of the firewall.
> 
> When I first emailed you regarding WBEL (mailed at 11/18/2003 20:38:54
> CST
> responded to at 11/19/2003 03:08:15 CST), your response was very
> encouraging.
>   You seemed very enthusiastic about WBEL, providing long detailed
>   answers to
> _all_ my questions including my bug report.  At that time or very shortly
> there after, I suggested to you that this was going to go crazy.  And
> yet, I don't
> think we have even gotten close to critical mass with this project (wait
> until
> after the final release), but I have to wonder if your enthusiasm for
> WBEL
> is still as virulent as it was back in Mid November.
> 
> In addition, myself and others in the community have some additional
> issues. 
> These include:
> 
> 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.
> 
> 2) Your lack of response to my private emails, particularly regarding
> wbl.net.
> 
> 3) Your lack of communication regarding the future of WBEL.  Are you
> going to
> do WBEL update 1 when RH releases the first update for RHEL 3?  What are
> your
> plans when RH releases RHEL 3.x (or RHEL 4)?  We aren't certain if WBEL 3
> is
> the product and updates for the next few years is it.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 5) Have you provided any member of the community a copy of the key used
> to
> sign the WBEL system?  This entire key issue is also a bigger issue. 
> What are
> you going sign?
> 
> 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'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 don't know if you have visited the wbl.net recently or not, but you
> will
> notice that I haven't done much work on it.  The reason for this is two
> fold:
> one, lack of direction from you regarding the value in having wbl.net,
> two,
> the CMS (content management system) I started with is lacking some
> features
> (for where I'd like wbl.net to go) and I'm evaluating my options for
> other
> CMS's.  I've put a lot of work into wbl.net as a way of showing my
> support and
> enthusiasm for WBEL.  I keep getting email asking me why it isn't being
> updated or actively used by the development team.
> 
> If you want wbl.net to exist, grow and become the portal to WBEL, please
> acknowledge that and provide direction to the community as such.  If you
> don't
> want wbl.net to exist, give me the word (I'll find another use for the
> domain
> -- probably a test domain).
> 
> 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 don't want to reinvent the wheel and don't plan to.  I want WBEL.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Sorry for boring everyone with this long email (that will sent in replies
> several times I'm sure).  But I felt this needed to be addressed in the
> open
> and maybe some of you who I've communicated with over the past couple
> weeks
> can chime in with your thoughts.
> 
> .dn
> --
> Donavan Nelson
> donavan@whiteboxlinux.net
> http://whiteboxlinux.net
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-- 
  Daniel Robitaille