"Goodbye, Fedora"

[antidrugue]

The famous open source propagandist Eric S. Raymond left the Fedora project today.

After thirteen years as a loyal Red Hat and Fedora user, I reached my
limit today...

Read the full statement for more details.

[techieMoe]

Interesting read, and I agree with ESR on all points.

[antidrugue]

Interesting read, and I agree with ESR on all points.

Same here : I found myself nodding at each of his arguments.

[bigtomrodney]

Some of the things that ESR said there are things I've been thinking for years. In fact, I haven't touched RH/Fedora since RH9. I even downloaded the last release and ended up deleting it without burning it.

I don't want to bash Red Hat, nor do I want anyone else but the honest truth is that I have see no good reason to use it in the last few years but I have on the balance seen several reasons not to use it.

[anomie]

Pretty dramatic farewell.

I think his most important point is:

Persistent failure to maintain key repositories in a sane, consistent state from which upgrades might actually be possible.

This is significant, and hopefully it will be taken to heart.

I see the other points as subjective opinions / political differences, which is fine, but I can't say I fully agree.

I appreciate the Fedora project, but I personally prefer CentOS for reasons that differ from ESR's.

[devils casper]

i agree with anomie. Fedora is not that bad and a lot of things are improved. FC6 is much batter than FC5. there are a few conflicts in repositories though. users should be wise enough to choose correct repo. most of Bugs are fixed already.

[jens]

Can't he just leave the FOSS world without always annoying people?
What a sad person. He's getting worse every year.

Trolling on mailing lists... how sad.

[techieMoe]

Can't he just leave the FOSS world without always annoying people?

Who said he's leaving FOSS? He's leaving Fedora, probably to go to Ubuntu. I admit, there are a lot of annoying folks in the FOSS world, some of whom ESR criticizes in this post (the idealists who refuse to include multimedia support for instance). However, I don't consider ESR the worst offender by any means.

What a sad person. He's getting worse every year.

I have a HELL of a lot more respect for ESR than I do Richard Stallman. If you want sad, look no further than St. Ignucius.

Trolling on mailing lists... how sad.

How is he trolling? He lists several relatively qualitative things that need improvement in Fedora, all of which I agree with. Pointing out glaring flaws is not trolling. He doesn't make any personal attacks or call the Fedora developers names.

[Thrillhouse]

* Persistent failure to maintain key repositories in a sane,
consistent state from which upgrades might actually be possible.

I wonder if it's just a coincidence that one of the new key features in FC7 is going to be the

elimination of the distinction between Fedora Core and Fedora Extras entirely; there is only Fedora.

Hmm...

I have watched Ubuntu rise to these challenges as Fedora fell away
from them. Canonical's recent deal with Linspire, which will give
Linux users legal access to WMF and other key proprietary codecs, is
precisely the sort of thing Red-Hat/Fedora could and should have taken
the lead in. Not having done so bespeaks a failure of vision which I
now believe will condemn Fedora to a shrinking niche in the future.

While I agree with him here, I don't think Fedora's the only distro that is failing in this department.

[Vergil83]

So in other words, ESR doesn't like Fedora's Objectives and is mad about it. He complains

The culture of the project's core
group has become steadily more unhealthy, more inward-looking, more
insistent on narrow "free software" ideological purity

Fedora's Core Objectives are

• Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free and Open Source software and content.
• Fedora believes in the statement "once free, always free".

I agree with Jens. ESR is a relict of an age when if you yelled loud enough for some reason people will listen to you. From his gigantic view of himself (I had to become the head of Open Source in 199, his agressiveness toward those that disagree (Bruce Perens dead?), to downright silly statements (telling RMS of all people to show your code) he is nor should he be important in FOSS.

And thanks for helping to make Mozilla opens.

*edit to fix some grammer mistakes