[WBEL-users] Upgrade Path

[R P Herrold]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006, Pete Biggs wrote:

> On Wed, 2006-11-29 at 12:40 +0000, Vic wrote:

>> Amongst other things, a respository for people who don't 
>> want to be told to switch distributions every time someone 
>> tries to help out.

> It may seem silly, but one of the reasons I have resisted 
> switching things to CentOS is because I've got thoroughly 
> peeved with everytime anyone mentions updates to Whitebox or 
> some problem or other there is a torrent of "switch to 
> CentOS", "CentOS is much better", "CentOS is your saviour", 
> "CentOS is the dogs bollocks"...  Has CentOS got some viral 
> marketing guru doing their advertising or something.

Well, actually, as one of the founders of CentOS, vice cAos, 
no; instead, from before the day Red Hat announced the EOL of 
RHL, I have sought to build a community approach, and have 
recruited in support of that, seeking to interest the best 
available talent in RPM-space I could find, in a meritocracy 
where 'running code' is the goal.  As such the community 
gathered momentum and built itself; the re-build gets packages 
built and QA'd and issued to a enormous mirror network and 
just works; and the community's project flourished.

WBEL users tired of a stale and vulnerable system try CentOS 
... and become satisfied users; as they were subscribed to 
this list, they see the pain that crosses this one man shop 
distribution, and try to help others in pain (a hallmark of 
the FOSS movement generally).

The 'marketing guru' is success -- but the success was not 
accidental.

-- Russ Herrold