A co-worker of mine recently asked why we use commercial Linux rather than free counterpart software.
This is a great reason: http://www.centos.org/
In a nutshell it seems as if the lead developer for CentOS, which is a free Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone, has disappeared. Now, before I begin, I’d like to point out that – and I come into this information late – it seems to me that step one would be to determine if the guy is actually alright and not stuck between a toilet and a door, or something similarly unpleasant. Maybe they have already done this, but I don’t know.
We’ve certainly lost a little sleep with the likes of LinuxNetworx who went under shortly after accepting payment on a 3-year support contract. Then SGI who stepped in to pick up the pieces but refused to honor the contract also went belly up and invalidated all prepaid support contracts leaving our old SGI machines in the lurch. Still, there’s nothing quite as disconcerting as a project as large as CentOS that relies so heavily on one single individual.
This is just a very brief rant, but if you run your business on or with Linux, use something that is supported commercially.
Quoted letter follows:
July 30, 2009 04:39 UTC
This is an Open Letter to Lance Davis from fellow CentOS Developers
It is regrettable that we are forced to send this letter but we are left with no other options. For some time now we have been attempting to resolve these problems:
You seem to have crawled into a hole … and this is not acceptable.
You have long promised a statement of CentOS project funds; to this date this has not appeared.
You hold sole control of the centos.org domain with no deputy; this is not proper.
You have, it seems, sole ‘Founders’ rights in the IRC channels with no deputy ; this is not proper.
When I (Russ) try to call the phone numbers for UK Linux, and for you individually, I get a telco intercept ‘Lines are temporarily busy’ for the last two weeks. Finally yesterday, a voicemail in your voice picked up, and I left a message urgently requesting a reply. Karanbir also reports calling and leaving messages without your reply.
Please do not kill CentOS through your fear of shared management of the project.
Clearly the project dies if all the developers walk away.
Please contact me, or any other signer of this letter at once, to arrange for the required information to keep the project alive at the ‘centos.org’ domain.
Sincerely,
Russ Herrold
Ralph Angenendt
Karanbir Singh
Jim Perrin
Donavan Nelson
Tim Verhoeven
Tru Huynh
Johnny Hughes
Entries (RSS)