On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 16:12, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
Although I don't think anyone at Red Hat is going to tell you 'shut up,' I don't think that rpm/up2date has ever included the promise of being able to account for custom changes users have made. Read the section in the release notes of the past several releases on the Ximian desktop for evidence of this. Take a look at other vendors, for instance. Ever decide that Solaris 'ls' command was too braindead for your taste and replace it with the GNU coreutils (yes, I know, an unlikely scenario, but bear with me)? Then try to apply a patch from Sun that happens to include the ls binary. Your stuck there, too.
Actually, I used to do that regularly when I was responisble for some Solaris boxes. I just installed the GNU tools in another location -- say /usr/gnu/bin -- and modified my $PATH to look for them before the native OS versions. Very simple, and doesn't conflick with the Sun patches at all. However, that's not as easy with something as complex as Ximian Desktop, and obviously you have to be responsible for keep your versions up to date. (sunfreeware.com makes that easier)
My examples aren't exactly perfect, but my point is that given that the resources that Red Hat has, (even with the new future addition of outside package maintainers), it's very like not going to be enough to meet the needs you describe. Some packages have an inordinate number of ways they can be built and Red Hat taking on the responsibility of providing upgrade paths for all possibly contingencies is probably corporate suicide. A source based distribution is, in some cases, exactly what some people need.
Agreed.
I find these conversations on mailing lists a bit frustrating, because some people will join in and be very vocal about their specific needs, which may or may not match what 99% of people use. [not focusing this at Rober specifically, but in general]. How can we, as possible contributors to the new Red Hat Linux Project, really get a feel for what the majority of people want? If only the most vocal come to the mailing lists, or bugzilla, and make their specific needs know, won't the silent majority be ignored?
--Jeremy
At 13:20 2003/07/24, Jeremy Portzer wrote:
On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 16:12, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
I find these conversations on mailing lists a bit frustrating, because some people will join in and be very vocal about their specific needs, which may or may not match what 99% of people use. [not focusing this at Rober specifically, but in general]. How can we, as possible contributors to the new Red Hat Linux Project, really get a feel for what the majority of people want? If only the most vocal come to the mailing lists, or bugzilla, and make their specific needs know, won't the silent majority be ignored?
The trouble, I suppose, is that unless you take a stab at defining what the silent majority likes/wants, people posting to mailing lists like this one won't know ahead of time whether their wishlists are "already spoken for" or "clearly in the minority". Trying to do that would just ensure that you get no useful feedback from anyone, since the ones who see their views already represented in your list won't feel the need to say anything, and the ones who *don't* see their views represented will get the impression that their views aren't welcome.
From my perspective as an old-time sysadmin, I find it hard to imagine that I'm truly in the
(Apologies for the previous partial post :)
At 13:20 2003/07/24, Jeremy Portzer wrote:
On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 16:12, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
I find these conversations on mailing lists a bit frustrating, because some people will join in and be very vocal about their specific needs, which may or may not match what 99% of people use. [not focusing this at Rober specifically, but in general]. How can we, as possible contributors to the new Red Hat Linux Project, really get a feel for what the majority of people want? If only the most vocal come to the mailing lists, or bugzilla, and make their specific needs know, won't the silent majority be ignored?
The trouble, I suppose, is that unless you take a stab at defining what the silent majority likes/wants, people posting to mailing lists like this one won't know ahead of time whether their wishlists are "already spoken for" or "clearly in the minority". Trying to do that would just ensure that you get no useful feedback from anyone, since the ones who see their views already represented in your list won't feel the need to say anything, and the ones who *don't* see their views represented will get the impression that their views aren't welcome.
It's also typically the case that for any group of people sharing an opinion or view, there'll be someone from that group who speaks up to represent them. When one person posts to a mailing list like this, there's no easy way to tell how many people she's representing. That one poster could be (unconsciously) representing a concern that hundreds or thousands of other people share, in the proverbial "tip of the iceberg" scenario. Just because the more vocal people on the list don't share that poster's concerns doesn't mean those concerns aren't represented in that "silent majority" out there.
From my perspective as an old-time sysadmin, I find it hard to imagine that I'm truly the only one with this particular view, or that this view is shared by only a negligibly small portion of the Linux-using market. Rather, I suspect that most of those who share my concerns have simply written off Red Hat entirely already, on the theory that they'll "look at it again if/when Red Hat fixes <insert-problematic-feature-here>". They remain pessimistic about their ability to effect changes, and are quite used to having to do things on their own (i.e. "the old way"), so coming to lists like this to speak up with feature requests is not first- or second-nature to them, and thus they fulfill their own prophecies. They (like myself) will likely continue to deploy RHL on workstations, but will continue to avoid it in the server room. This might not be a problem to Red Hat, if indeed the company's focus remains on the desktop market, but from what I've seen of their marketing materials they also seem eager to compete at the enterprise level as well, so this *should* be a concern to them in that case. Have they polled enterprise sysadmins lately?
Unfortunately comments like the one quoted above are virtually guaranteed to stifle input from anyone who fears their concerns might be too divergent from what they perceive the "silent majority" to want. Such comments create an atmosphere that suggests that the spectrum of acceptable opinion is rather narrow, and that outside views are undesirable and unwelcome.
Robert LeBlanc
On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 18:07, Robert LeBlanc wrote:
[snip]
Unfortunately comments like the one quoted above are virtually guaranteed to stifle input from anyone who fears their concerns might be too divergent from what they perceive the "silent majority" to want. Such comments create an atmosphere that suggests that the spectrum of acceptable opinion is rather narrow, and that outside views are undesirable and unwelcome.
Careful with your quoting, there! Your 'snipping' made it look like I posted what you are responding to, but it was actually Jeremy Portzer. Just so it's clear, I tend to agree that these conversations are fine on these lists. They don't annoy me (though, I do understand Jeremy's annoyance -- just a different perspective), as long as they don't drag on too long with no apparent progress. But that goes for any topic. I don't know for certain, but I think it's Sun that has contributed a bunch of resources to do some usability studies for GNOME, so it's not like the "silent majority" is completely silent. You just have to actively go other there and get some feedback from them, which might have already been done by Sun and others. And for all I dislike about Microsoft, I think it's fair to say that the company has done quite extensive research in this area, too. As much as geeks like me dislike the limited choice in the Windows world, we don't need to throw out the good with the bad and can extract some good ideas about the user interface design for our own use.
On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 19:32, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 18:07, Robert LeBlanc wrote:
[snip]
Unfortunately comments like the one quoted above are virtually guaranteed to stifle input from anyone who fears their concerns might be too divergent from what they perceive the "silent majority" to want. Such comments create an atmosphere that suggests that the spectrum of acceptable opinion is rather narrow, and that outside views are undesirable and unwelcome.
Careful with your quoting, there! Your 'snipping' made it look like I posted what you are responding to, but it was actually Jeremy Portzer. Just so it's clear, I tend to agree that these conversations are fine on these lists. They don't annoy me (though, I do understand Jeremy's annoyance -- just a different perspective), as long as they don't drag on too long with no apparent progress. But that goes for any topic.
Right, and I should clarify that I am NOT trying to stifle any kind of conversation, just trying to determine what types of conversation are most useful. It's just that I'm wondering what processes exist, or should exist, to make a more objective test of what users really do want. Similarly, How does and should Red Hat communicate its goals effectively? Sure, we have the top-level goals listed on http://rhl.redhat.com/ -- but how do those drill-down to things like what kinds of packages will be included, and what things Red Hat is interested in getting outside developer help with?
An example of this is the inclusion of tools like apt and yum in Red Hat Linux. Prior to the creation of the Red Hat Linux Project, many assumed it would be a cold day in hell before these would be included, as they threatened RHN, a revenue source for Red Hat. Several folks vocally asked for the inclusion of these tools, and there wasn't much response from Red Hat, seeming to support the cold-day-in-hell view. These requests thus became tiresome and seemed like a waste of time on the mailing lists. But with the RHLP, the viewpoint has changed: yum is in rawhide and Jeff J. has said that apt may be coming if some issues can be worked out. So how can Red Hat communicate their viewpoint on things like this, so we can sort out what is just a vocal minority complaining for no use, and things that will be considered and are worth spending time discussing?
--Jeremy