[WBEL-users] WBEL 4 Updates

[Greg Knaddison]

On 8/11/05, Cris Rhea <crhea at mayo.edu> wrote:
> 
> I guess I don't understand something, so let me ask a question (and
> play devil's advocate a bit)....
> 
> I understand why and how these folks created a distribution. I'm in the
> same boat because there isn't a pricing/support model from RedHat that
> makes sense in our situation either.
> 
> If WBL was created ONLY to serve the needs of BPPL, why create a web site,
> several mailing lists and mirror this distribution all over the planet?
> It would have been cheaper to hand out 50 copies of the DVD to cover the
> servers and workstations in the BPPL.

It was created primarily to serve their needs and provided to others
to reduce their effort, but with no intention nor desire of creating a
community distribution.  Providing it to others was just the nice
thing to do once John had respun all those SRPMS and it also gives the
BPPL a group of users to give input and let John know where he might
have screwed something up.  Earlier in this thread someone noted that
testing was one area where John specifically does ask for help.

> 
> I assumed that by mirroring this distribution and by creating the
> various email lists, that the folks involved in the project actually
> wanted input and participation from those outside DeRidder, LA.

Input yes, participation on John's terms, not everyone elses.

> 
> I will certainly consider your advice about switching to CentOS. It
> seemed to me that both distributions had a similar goal of providing an
> open-source "clone" of RHEL while providing support via a grass-roots
> user base.
> 

They are similar, but not the same.  BPPL has only one dev.  Period. 
CentOS has multiple devs, more architectures, etc. etc.  But they have
gotten in the habit of editing various pieces of software to suit
their needs (specifically Firefox/Mozilla bookmarks and the cert lib -
both of which frustrate me, cert lib for upstream compatibility
reasons, bookmarks because then I have to recreate all the quick
searches myself).  Sometimes edits are necessary because RedHat didn't
publish the actual SRPM they used to build the software so CentOS
_must_ edit it to get it to build.  But sometimes the edits are not
necessary and I worry about that seeping in further.

Greg