On 08/11/2016 10:00 AM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote:
On 08/11/2016 01:08 PM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
>> > Given that Greg DeKoenigsberg quite familiar with both communities
what's is his
>> > take on the Fedora community being forced to take the Red Hat Ansible pill
in
>> > Fedora? What benefit does he see coming from this effort ( if any ).
> Just to be clear: this isn't an order coming down from Red Hat. Quite the
> opposite, actually. Numerous members of the audience at the Flock talk on the
> state of the Fedora Server chimed in about it and suggested it. It seemed to
> make sense, so we approached Red Hat's Ansible folks about it and they're
> willing to work with Fedora to get things working.
>
> I just want to point this out because it really is important to understand the
> direction this came from.
>
That makes no sense unless those server WG members are protecting their own
interest or partnership with Red Hat and it's products ( It too much of a
coincidence with Ansible, which just so happen to be Red Hat product got
discussed over puppet or chief or all three of them ) as opposed to be looking
at the community at whole from a neutral broader perspective.
>> > ( Assuming anyone within Red Hat has discussed this with him since it would
be
>> > stupid not to get his insight on this ).
>> >
> Greg in particular wasn't on the internal thread that was started, but Robyn
> Bergeron, Bill Nottingham and Toshio Kuratomi all are. That's a pretty
> Fedora-aware set of people.
You need an individual that is capable of seeing things from a broader
perspective, has or had ties with and understands both communities, their needs
and what benefits it might bring both of them ( if any )
All three of the people I cited there worked for Ansible prior to its
acquisition by Red Hat (and still work in that department). And if you don't
think Robyn (former FPL), Bill (former FESCo) and Toshio (former FESCo and FPC)
understand both communities, I don't know what else to tell you.
and it just so happens
to be that individual exist, and as luck has it within a reach and
that
individual name is Greg Dekoenigsberg so he's the one that needs to be sat down
with and discussed to get his ( valuable ) opinion on the matter regarding
*Ansible* and it's community then you need to find his counterpart that resides
in the puppet and chief communities ( of those exist ).
Tying this to single CM be it Ansible, Puppet or Chief will immediately exclude
participation from administrators that are using the other two popularly used CM
that's a fact and as obvious as it can be so in the end of the day the
discussion is about implementing and supporting all three of them or none, not
just single one be it Ansible, Puppet or Chief it does not matter.
Using Ansible to solve a set of constrained, specific problems does not preclude
using other tools. However, we have finite resources and so it makes the most
sense to focus on doing one thing well *first*. We have available resources and
expertise among the Ansible crowd, which makes it a great place to start.
I think that's where our disconnect has always been, Jóhann. You are an idealist
(which I respect), but we don't live in an idealistic world. In a perfect world,
yes we would support every possible technology out there, it would all work
without conflicting and everyone would have a pet unicorn. It's good to have
idealistic goals (and I share them), but it's also important to have realistic
milestones. This is an attempt to get closer to that ideal by taking smaller steps.
If someone wants to make the effort to duplicate all the work we do with Ansible
in Puppet and Chef, I'll cheer them on and give them whatever support I can
(which will probably be limited to some manual testing and the occasional
"attaboy!"), but I also don't see value in trying to tell everyone that
they
have to do triple work right at the start.
My colleague Brendan Conoboy is fond of saying: "The person who writes the patch
wins the argument". It's better to iterate and discover what works in small
steps (and thus, small failures) than to attempt to conquer the entire world at
once and get nowhere. As I noted previously: we basically attempted to do this
with rolekit and it failed. We introduced an entirely new approach and hoped
that people would appreciate it for its simplicitly, but people just ignored it
and continued using tools they are familiar with. So now we're going to try to
go to where they live and improve that situation instead.