On 15.05.2007 23:13, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
On 5/15/07, Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora(a)leemhuis.info> wrote:
[...]
Ok my experience supporting RHEL at two government laboratories and
talking with people at large organizations. There are multiple
audiences for add-on repos that follow the classic markets
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm): innovators, early
adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.
The innovators were the people who had to have RHEL-2.1 due to a
programatic reason (the core app would only work on 2.1) but needed
also the latest php modules on it. We could not support this directly,
but helped out with a repository where they could put in alternative
packages to replace items til they got what they wanted. Or they
wanted RHEL-5 with Thunderbird-2.x. Or they are putting a 2.4.30+
kernel on 2.1 etc. They normally use Fedora/etc but cant in some
situations and innovate to make it work.
Well, as you say, those use normally Fedora or Fedora-like distribution.
No need for EPEL to target those.
The early adopters wanted RHEL-5 with additional items and some
level
of replacement. They wanted the newest version of say moin, clustering
application etc as they are usually wanting the best new experience
for their 'customers'... but want more stability in the backend. Most
are served by a Fedora or the Red Hat Global Desktop.. but may need a
core set of items (glibc/kernel) stable for some programmatic reason
I'd say those people that only want some new apps and a stable backend
are best served with a local repo for the apps they need in up2date
version or other specific small repos. They can use the Fedora packages
as a base for it; EPEL probably can't serve those people with todays
tools (yum and co), as each and everyone defines stable backend differently.
The early majority wants stability with updates occuring at known
times. They want technology refreshes, but want a seal of approval of
some sort that the organization is steady, has standards, or has a
company that will stand behind it. They also want the same thing as
close to possible on as many of their systems (as they will have
RHEL-3,4, and 5 deployed as servers that they want to add stuff to).
Those are IMHO round about one of the targets for EPEL -- even if there
is no company behind EPEL, they get stuff missing in RHEL easily with EPEL.
The late majority want stability over anything. They are the ones
who
are starting to cycle out RHEL-1 and RHEL-2.1 systems to 4 systems
when they get new hardware. They want to have the same version of moin
supported for 7 years (just in case they need to keep a server that
long up).
They can use EPEL5 when RHEL6 or RHEL7 are out, as EPEL5 shouldn't move
much anymore and be quite stable.
The laggards are moving from RHL-6.2 to maybe RHL-3.9 or RHL-4.5 in
the next couple of years. If they want external stuff, they will have
Oracle/IBM/etc do it for them.
:-)
Which of the customer bases does EPEL want to look at?
Hope that clarifies it.
CU
thl