Les Mikesell wrote, On 01/31/2008 09:56 AM:
Ian Malone wrote:
I'd like to see something resembling truth-in-advertising on the project site about
[...]
"Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software."
I know enough about software development to know what that means, but I wouldn't expect an average potential new user to interpret that as "we'll ship a lot of broken stuff and pretend it's a feature".
Actually I think it's more of a "hey for those of us who tested rawhide, this stuff was working (or at least not reported as such), red hat would like those of you who are adventuresome to let them know if some small portion of this is ready for a truly stable release of RHEL, and if it breaks we'll try to fix it quick."
And there is nothing about the hostility to outside software.
I don't think it is so much hostility as ambivalence. As you can see[1] I am one of those who has ideas and attitudes that conflict with fedora stated policy. I understand their policy, I just don't like it, and _I_ can work around the issue for _now_. And if I wanted something that was rock solid, unchanging, approved for use in ultra secure environments, with an enterprise support plan, lacking in packages and out of date for the hardware I have to work with, I would use an RHEL. The reason we have different distro's out there is because we all have different trade offs we have to make. [must _try_ debian/ubuntu and see if they will integrate something that works NOW with smart cards for ssh and encrypted file systems, even if they have a _long_ term plan of using something else to do the same thing.]
Oh and notice the ambivalence in the first part of my reply? RH and I differ on the statement 'fedora is RHEL beta'. :)
[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=186469