[WBEL-users] Rsync Updates Organizing

[Lamar Owen]

On Friday 19 November 2004 12:21, Michiel van Es wrote:
> William Warren wrote:
> > They CAn be..but he maintainers of the distro have chosen not to..as is
> > their right..:)

> a) try to reply under the quote
> b) it is NOT their right 'cause the whole product is Open Source and is
> a community based.

They can refuse help if they want to.  They can also quit distributing WBEL at 
all.  Sure, existing copies can be continued, but 'they' do not have to do 
anything you want them to do.  I'll agree with William Hooper on this; if I 
were John I would be thinking about shutting the whole public availability of 
WBEL from beau.org down.  He owns what he does, and he can refuse help if he 
wants to.  You cannot force him to do otherwise.

You probably would be happier with more of a community RHEL3 rebuild; why 
don't you try one out and help them?

> When I'm screaming I have this distro for you and it is perfect, I can
> expect people will ask counterquestions if something is broke.

John Morris's original announcement made it clear that the Library was 
underwriting WBEL for their internal uses, and was allowing him to make it 
publicly available.  Nowhere did he claim it was perfect, and he has never 
asked for anyone's help.  And we as the user group around it cannot force him 
to accept our help.  Those are simple facts.  If it's so broken in your mind, 
then use something else or fork it yourself; IOW, put up or shut up.

And, incidentally, I am down to one server running WBEL.  Going to 'sidegrade' 
it to something else (probably Scientific Linux, since I'm using that one for 
several workstations, or possibly CentOS).  As I posted earlier, moving to 
CentOS from WBEL is not hard, does not require any more downtime than a 
typical kernel upgrade (that is, a single reboot), and you are basically 
running the same software afterwards.  WBEL met my needs for a while, but I, 
like you, would prefer something a little more community-based for my needs.  
In my case, I'm simply going elsewhere, since John has made it clear how he 
is running beau.org's distribution (which is his right to do).

The much harder upgrade/sidegrade/downgrade I'm doing soon is an FC2 box to 
RHEL4-beta.  That one promises to have issues.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu