On Fri, 2004-12-10 at 01:18, John wrote:
> Nah, I'm not trying to upset you. Just yanking your chain a little
> bit, but I did have a point to make.
Okay, fair enough. I probably deserve it.
> I found your recent exchanges to be very interesting, and
> thought-provoking, but not for the reasons you might suspect.
> It struck me that over and over and over, your message was not so much
> "you are wrong", as it was "you should not post because you don't know
> what you're talking about".
> I think your point (the latter) was quite valid, because we all know
> that techy forums and lists are chock full of misinformation.
Even I am guilty. I've gotten my attitude because I see others making
the same mistakes I did. And I still slip up from time-to-time, but
I've learned to "back away" when I'm clearly incorrect on some details.
E.g., maybe not wholly the first time, but by the second post in the
AutoCAD thread, I knew I was ignorant of a number of things -- or at
least not as well informed/knowledgeable.
To be honest, thinking back, I basically _killed_ my credibility prior
to the thread when I raked Chad over the coals on Ms. Jolie. I didn't
mean it like it seemed, and didn't mean to make it about morality (I
_never_ judge people on morality). But my point got lost, even by
myself, as I stumbled all over the place try to find myself.
I'm sure my own "emotions" got involved. I have to recognize that I
don't really care for the American obsession with actresses, I despise
it. And to stretch the list rules for a moment, understand I'm more of
a "Kate Dillon" type of guy (almost always have been, even when I was a
3-sport athlete in HS at sub-150lbs.).
> Valid, yes. But is your way the best way to conduct things.
> So, I gave this some thought (the best my meagre brain could manage).
> Choice one: Only posts by people who are relatively expert.
> Choice two: Posts by everybody who feels they want to post.
> It may surprise you, but I come down 100 percent on the side of posts
> by anybody, and if that includes lots of misinformation, so be it.
I don't think experts need post. But eventually there is a disservice
in the emotional commentary that seems to follow "distro marketing." If
you have a preference for a distro and wish to market it, then that's
one thing. But if you start defining your distro in terms of "versus,"
it tends to spiral into comparisons and contrasts.
Red Hat tends to be a major target because of several factors. It's
nothing new, ever since Red Hat Linux 5.0 was introduced, some people
have been complaining. Then Fedora came around. The IT media then
started proliferating statements like Red Hat is "getting out of the
desktop" (when they just didn't want to provide a boxed consumer set
anymore, but they still provide retail box) combined with all the
"endless speculation" in the community. Even I didn't know what to
think, and I largely let it go.
But once the Fedora Legacy project started up, and Fedora Core 2 Test
became available, I started to notice the same Red Hat Linux cycle. I
got "re-involved" with the Fedora lists and realized the same Red Hat
developers I always knew where still there. Heck, they were almost
"taunting" the Red Hat management by continuing to call, now,
"Development" as, the old, "Rawhide" (even through to this day).
In a nutshell, I believe Fedora should be judged on its implementation.
The days of speculation are over. There has been the former Red Hat
Linux 10 release (which became Fedora Core 1), and two "new version"
releases in Fedora Core 2 and 3 that prove to many that the trusted Red
Hat Linux model is there. And Fedora solves a lot of the issues Red Hat
was having with multimedia packages and other details. Even Macromedia
and other commercial companies now provide APT/YUM repositories for
Fedora packages.
So I guess I've "backlashed" a little bit against those that feel they
must comment, but haven't tried it. I haven't seen any other distro
commented on so feverously by those who have never used it.
> A couple of reasons: first (as I was hinting, unsuccessfully, in my
> earlier post), in Choice A, who is the god who decides on what is
> "enough" expertise? 1 distro back, or 2 distros back, etc. A very
> slippery slope. Do you want to be moderator and check every posting
> to see if it's up to your standards? Maybe only people who have RHCE
> can post?
Certainly not! I _hate_ certifications. The Linux certifications are
still the "best of the best" in the industry (for their various
reasons), but certainly _not_ because of credentials. I don't list my
certifications in my sig for a reason.
Because we _all_ can contribute. I just expect people to heed
first-hand experience when it differs from there's that is not. But in
the end, sometimes it's just not worth it.
> Second reason: I suspect (just my opinion) that the dynamics of lists
> and forums would be harmed by demanding too much professionalism.
I don't think it's a matter of professionalism. You will _never_ see me
rebuke about posting format, demeanor, language, etc... It would be
hypocritical to do so. Some of the best engineering designs have
resulted from when a colleague and I differ greatly. But we do those
behind closed doors, away from management (i.e., I need to know when to
take something off-list and just let the other person have the "last
post").
> If people are intimidated from posting because they don't think they have
> adequate expertise, there might be less "traffic", and less traffic
> begets even less traffic....and so on. Forums die, lists languish.
Again, I seriously think you are being argumentative there. My comment
was _not_ an "absolute." While man might have ignored the long thread,
it served as an example of "how far _two_ people will go to prove each
other is correct or not correct" on something.
It's not that you can't learn information from 2nd or 3rd hand, but
sometimes people tend to disregard the information those with 1st hand
knowledge. I really don't like to comment on Fedora specifics _outside_
of actual _technology_ because Fedora is a major distribution that seems
to bring out a whole suite of socio-political attitudes.
E.g., I have _never_ heard anyone _other_ than Red Hat called "The
Microsoft of Linux." That drives a lot of people I talk to, especially
outside the LUGs, who have heard nothing but negative commentary about
Fedora. And in every case, it's from people who have admitted people
were not even willing to try it because it was from "The Microsoft of
Linux"
At this point, over 15 months into the Red Hat funded Fedora Project,
it's best to let those things go. And trying to explain to someone who
Fedora is developed, installed or otherwise administrated, based on Red
Hat Linux prior to the Fedora community distributed and new installer/
upgrade options is well off-the-mark. All I end up doing is getting
into a debate with a person who I can't prove anything to, because their
answer is basically "impossible" or "not the same."
> When I google for information on some problem I'm having, I would
> rather have 20 hits, with 10 of them being misinformation, than to
> have only 1 hit with only a fraction of what I need to know. I'll
> take on the task of weeding out the misinformation. I vote for
> healthy forums and lists, with misinformation and all!
The problem is that the mis-information is feeding a lot of
unintentional FUD. The disservice is not just at Red Hat, but the Linux
community as a whole. It's more than just what kind of company Red Hat
is (their employee base is a very eye-opening experience), but what the
Linux community says about itself.
That we are factions of marketing of brand names, not about choice of
technologies. Maybe it's because I've been working the architect angle
far too long, but nothing gets me more than a vendor who tries to sell
me the _exact_, _same_ licensed technology or faulty implementation.
20, 50, 100+ products on the market, all the same technology, but
somehow there's is "different."
In Linux, we remove this. APT is not Debian, it was just Debian first.
The concept of a community distribution and set of guidelines and
repositories for software, with a front-end like APT for automatic
dependency resolution is not Debian, it was just Debian first. The best
concepts win out, and thanx to Freedomware licenses -- especially
non-leech Freedomware licenses like the GPL and LGPL -- they stay
Freedomware for all to use. Natural selection, technologies
proliferated on their technical merits, not marketing, etc...
Fedora is just the first community effort by a major commercial Linux
company. Don't be surprised when Novell looks to the same route with
SuSE Linux over the next year -- maybe not the same, but clearly a more
distributed system with a more integrated way for the community add
third party packages. At the same time, a lot of things people have
complained about with Fedora -- lack of LSB adoption, stupid
inter-package and RPM install/remove script dependencies, things that
started getting "left out" of Red Hat Linux 7.3/8/9 (because the
"product" competed with RHEL 2/3), etc... -- no longer an issue.
It's an excellent and pure study of the natural selection process. As
I've said repeatedly to Microsoft employees, it's not the Microsoft
frameworks, APIs and technologies that bother me -- it's the fact that
management regularly and stupidly makes poor technology choices because
marketing overrides technological considerations. In Linux, this isn't
the case.
Unless we -- the users, the advocates, the choosers -- we make it all
about marketing again.
> So, my own personal preference would be if everybody took "you should
> not post" out of their vocabulary, and, absolutely, when required,
> replace it with "that is totally bogus and wrong-headed". (But no
> personal attack please)
> Of course, it's just my preference, and my opinion. It has nothing to
> do with distros or specifics, and it might even be wrong.
I even stated my preference of Fedora is largely due to familiarity and,
because of the history that led to that familiarity, a history of
trust. If Fedora did not improve over Red Hat Linux and, instead, took
away the trusted model, I would not use it.
But I don't define my preference of Fedora in terms against Debian or
Gentoo, even though I regularly use the two. Today, my use of Debian is
largely via Xandros. And my use of Debian is not for a desktop or
server, but application-specific installs. And if I feel the need to
compare, I make it about _technology_ (e.g., "ports" v. "packages", APT,
YUM, etc... DPKG, RPM, etc...) and _not_ about distributions.
Because many technologies overlap distributions.
People will still make distro-to-distro comparisons. And if they are
positive, and do not make assumptions, then they can be fruitful. If
Chad was talking about Red Hat Linux 7.3 versus Debian 2.2 Potato, he's
100% correct. I couldn't fault him on much. But he was saying Fedora,
and that's where I simply said that he just needed to stop.
You can look at the context or you can ignore it. I'm not making
absolutes. And given some of the humbleness I must now show, you can
probably totally state how Fedora doesn't do anything I've said and I'll
probably just let it go. At some point you just have to let some people
assume what they want. Because people like me aren't going to get them
to see otherwise.
-- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org ------------------------------------------------------------------ Beware of advocates who justify their preference not in terms of what they like about their "choice," but what they did not like about another option. Such advocacy is more hurtful than helpful.----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 17:26:53 EDT