[WBEL-users] Upgrade Path

[Vic]

> I suspect that you are reacting to some perceived pressure that wasn't
> intended by CentOS users.

I wholeheartedly hope you're right. I think it's completely unethical to
spend one's time on the mailing list for a particular distribution, but
contribute little but pressure to switch to an alternative.

Nonetheless, the pressure does exist; it might be from a minority of
users, but it reflects on the whole community.

> The fact is that it is relatively easy to switch a system over from WBEL
> to CentOS and continue on and I think that was the point that people
> have been trying to get across.

That's never been debated, AFAIK. I believe we all know how easy it is to
switch between the two distros. The fact that some of us do not is not a
technical problem.

> The problem with WBEL is that from its inception, it was driven by the
> efforts of just one person and that's just too much work load for any
> one person and your efforts, though similarly well-intentioned are
> likely to suffer the same fate.

This is a distinct possibility; nevertheless, I intend to try. My job is
made the harder because there is so much to be done; I expect that to
become easier over time as the backlog is cleared. There will be times
when I have trouble getting things out as quickly as other people might -
but I don't see that as an enormous problem. The updates will happen in a
timely fashion, even if they don't set any World Speed Records :-)

> In the end, it makes sense to join a
> project where the workload is shared by a group so that the efforts can
> be spread amongst many and there is overlap of responsibility.

I fully take your point. However, I do not wish to be associated with a
distro that spends significant effort bashing others. My dislike of CentOS
is based almost exclusively on a distaste for the behaviour of some (and
not all) of its leading lights.

> If and
> when you finally get to the point where you have update packages built,
> there still remains the problem of distribution of these updates which
> is no small hurdle itself.

I think I've got that covered. I have server space & bandwidth for the
foreseeable future, and just this morning, I was offered a mirror. If
there is still as much interest in WBEL as my BitTorrent machine implies,
I might need more mirrors - I expect those to arrive at opportune moments,
but if they don't, there are all sorts of ways of getting cheap server
space. I don't mind putting some of my money into this venture - it's
saved me enough over the years.

> The reason I believe that WBEL is dead is that I see John Morris post on
> Red Hat's Nahant mail list but won't respond on his own list here.

This worries me somewhat - but that's John's decision. I'm rather hoping
he'll come back to the status he had once (in which case I'll happily fold
the Updates project), but if he doesn't, we'll carry on without him.

Vic.