[WBEL-users] Plans for RHEL 5

[Johnny Hughes]

On Thu, 2006-11-30 at 09:07 -0800, Scott Silva wrote:
> Purcocks, Graham spake the following on 11/30/2006 1:56 AM:
> > That's not what Jamey of Beau said, he said John had downloaded it.
> However, it does concern me that John doesn't say anything on this
> list, to stop all this supposition and guessing. Just a simple 'I'm
> very busy' would at least mean we know he's still there.
> > 
> > Graham 
> John has stated many times that he never intended Whitebox to be a public 
> distribution. He only created it to save his employer money. As quoted from 
> the front page;
> 
> 
> "Why was White Box Linux created?
> 
> White Box Linux's initial creation has been sponsored by the Beauregard Parish 
> Public Library in DeRidder, LA USA out of self interest. We have several 
> servers and over fifty workstations running Red Hat Linux and were left high 
> and dry by their recent shift in business plan. Our choices were a difficult 
> migration to another distribution or paying RedHat an annual fee greater than 
> the amortized value of our hardware. So we chose a third path, made possible 
> by the power of Open Source.... White Box Linux. "
> 
> So no one should expect more than was offered.

Also, I want to be sure that people on this list realize that CentOS
does not dislike WBEL or wish WBEL or their users any ill will.

I would also like to point out that I personally fire of an e-mail to
John every time we have a major rebuild problem with new packages and we
find issues (If we have a problem, I check the binary from WBEL too and
if John has the problem I tell him how we fixed it).  I like John and I
like WBEL ... I always have.

As Scott has said, John did not design WBEL to be a community
involvement thing.  He built an OS for a purpose ... if it also works
for you, great ... you can use it.

Jamey mentioned whiteboxlinux.com and whiteboxlinux.net ... those where,
at one time purchased to try and build a community around WBEL.  John
was to distribute the OS ... the other things were to be community
sponsored and provide forums, help, bug lookups, etc ... all handled by
outside people (who I might add were very dedicated to WBEL, I was one
of them).  John did not really want to get involved in that effort and
made it clear that those people would not really have any input into
WBEL or it's code.  John did not want to be involved in that site ... he
wanted to make WBEL, nothing more.

There is nothing wrong with that, however, we (the several people
involved with whiteboxlinux.net) decided that was not a good thing (that
John was not really going to be involved in the community thing), so we
moved in a different direction.  Most of those people are now part of
CentOS.

Vic, it looks like you are trying to do the very same thing ... build
something that is lacking for WBEL.  A community outlet and maybe some
faster updates.  That is commendable, but don't expect John to
officially support it (maybe he will, that would be good, but if the
past is an indicator, he will not).

The packages you build will have the same names but different md5sums
from the offical WBEL packages that come later ... they will be a 3rd
party repo.  People will have to do something (like look at the vendor
tag or the signing key) to see who owns the package that they have, etc.

Having been there and done that, I would just ask you to really think
this through before you do it, that's all.

If John was going to go ahead and grab your packages and test them, sign
them, then roll them into WBEL, then I would say it is a great service
for WBEL.  If he is not, I think you are not helping WBEL users.  That
is my opinion ... I might be wrong.

Heck, if John wanted to, I would provide him binary packages built any
way he wanted from the CentOS builders (with WBEL as the Vendor and no
packager, etc.) and he would only need to rebuild the packages that he
changes and could sign and redistribute the rest ... I have even made
that offer.  John is not interested in that ... and that is fine.

John doesn't want a lot of community developers or involvement for
WBEL .. there is nothing at all wrong with that.  It is his OS and his
choice ... that is not good or bad, just the way it is.  He has
something that he wants to control for his employer and it is a great
OS.

As Scott said, don't try to make it something it is not.

CentOS does want community involvement, we add developers from the
community all the time. (CentOS is now up to 15 developers, with many
more than that contributing to the wiki and the forums).  We have
several message lists with several hundred posts per month. We had
booths (and/or dev rooms) at Linux World Expo 2006 London, LUG Radio
Live 2005 and 2006, and FOSDEM 2006 and we will have a dev room and
booth at FOSDEM 2007.  (also several others ...):

http://wiki.centos.org/Events/

That is not to say that WBEL users should move to CentOS, if WBEL works
for them then they should use it.

I am saying that CentOS welcomes community involvement in our decisions,
that we have things like many major repositories outside just the base,
almost 200 total mirrors, etc.

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes
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