Legacy's Success; Re: why I'm using Ubuntu instead of Fedora ATM

So many people now seem to want to point to Fedora Legacy
and use it as 
a Free-Software Whipping Boy to use its eventual demise as
some kind of 
example of failure to point to.  For example,

Luis Villa wrote:
> On 1/3/07, Thorsten Leemhuis <fedoraleemhuis.info> wrote:
>> Hi!
>> A Fedora LTS (two years? maybe the server parts
ever three?) now and
>> then (every second or third release?) from a new
Fedora Legacy (needs a
>> different name) would IMHO a nice solution.
> 
 > <snip>
 >
> (FWIW, I think it is unreasaonble to expect a
true-community distro to
> do real LTS-y stuff- most volunteers don't have the
patience to do the
> necessary backporting for the necessary length of time.
(See Fedora
> Legacy.) <snip>

As a long-time contributor to and advocate for the Fedora
Legacy 
Project, I have to say that, over most of its life, Legacy
did not fail 
its mission, if one were to consider Legacy's mission to
provide 
security updates to packages that people really cared about.
 Why? 
Because it was those packages that folks cared about either
(a) that 
squeaked the wheel on the project's email list or (b) that
motivated 
people to dig in and get themselves dirty doing onerous,
boring, but 
important work for the community of Legacy users.

For the longest time, I personally cared about Fedora Core
1, and also 
cared about the old Red Hat Linux releases 7.3 and 9.0.  The
project 
cared too.  Fedora Core 1 came out in Fall of 2003, and was
essentially 
supported until May or June of this year -- which is a
lifetime of 
two-and-a-half years -- covering security updates for those
packages 
that the folks who volunteered wanted or that users squawked
loudly for 
(like sendmail, glibc, mozilla, and others).  And what about
Red Hat 
Linux 7.3 and 9?  Even longer!  For these three releases,
and also 
perhaps FC2, this project was more successful than perhaps
the founders 
of Fedora Legacy had hoped or dreamed it would be.

A lot of the work towards the end of the useful life of
Fedora Legacy 
was done by one man:  Marc Deslauriers, to which all Fedora
Legacy users 
owe a LOT (and I mean a *LOT*) of thank-you's!  He was the
one builder 
brave enough to go in and do kernel security updates for the
(at one 
time) FIVE Linux releases that Legacy was supporting; and
for many other 
packages, Marc did much or most the work of the steps we had
in place to 
assure sanity, quality, and security in the creation of
updated 
(backported) packages for our end-users.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Marc!!!  Your example
is one we 
should all be committed enough to follow and emulate!

And what were Marc and the other contributors paid for this
often 
onerous work?  Not one penny.  Often we were paid more
complaints than 
compliments.  It became utterly too thankless of a task (and
too little 
interest from the community in even doing the QA work we had
outlined in 
our documentation) for me to continue, and probably the same
goes for 
Marc.  I believe the few who did most of the work finally
burned out.

There are still people who want to help out and don't know
where to 
begin to help to keep some kind of Legacy alive for the
releases they 
care about.  Is this failure?

My assessment is this:  If legacy failed it did so in these
areas:
    * Management of contributor resources
    * Devotion of people who knew how to motivate and cause
people
      in the contributing community to feel valued,
motivated and
      special, and to give a voice to those who cared.
Legacy rarely had meetings, had no board to speak of, and
therefore no 
clear mechanism of accountability.

I hope the good folks of Legacy remember Legacy *not* as a
failed 
experiment, but as one that lasted longer and did better
than folks had 
any right to expect.

	Warm regards,

	David Eisenstein

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Quoting David Eisenstein <deisenstgtw.net>:

> As a long-time contributor to and advocate for the
Fedora Legacy
> Project, I have to say that, over most of its life,
Legacy did not fail
> its mission, if one were to consider Legacy's mission
to provide
> security updates to packages that people really cared
about.  Why?

I agree completely.  It was really when we decided the drop
RHL and
FC1 that things fell apart, IMHO.

Of course, it didn't help that other options came along, but
this is
exactly what _should_ happen.  I joined Fedora Legacy when
Red Hat
dropped RHL and didn't provide any _upgrade_ path (the only
supported
RHEL install was a fresh install, not an upgrade from RHL). 
My only
other option was to switch to a non-RH distro, which would
be as bad
as a fresh RHEL install (but cheaper perhaps).  Well, a few
years
later, we have lots of RHEL options (Centos, Whitebox, etc)
and a
community of users who will help provide community support
to those
who upgrade to those from RHL.   We also have of course
Fedora Core
and its ability to upgrade between releases. So Fedora
Legacy is no
longer the only option.  As such, it isn't needed as much. 
As such,
it is natural that participation would fall off some.

> For the longest time, I personally cared about Fedora
Core 1, and also
> cared about the old Red Hat Linux releases 7.3 and 9.0.
 The project

Yes, I was in it for the RHL only.  When that was killed
off, I had no
real reason to stay (but I did anyway).


> And what about Red Hat
> Linux 7.3 and 9?  Even longer!  For these three
releases, and also
> perhaps FC2, this project was more successful than
perhaps the founders
> of Fedora Legacy had hoped or dreamed it would be.

Yes, and I think that was a problem too.  Jesse didn't want
to keep
supporting RHL, but most of the community was most
interested (IMHO)
in RHL, and hence we had a problem.  Jesse was most gracious
in allowing
us RHL folks to hijack his FC project, to tell the truth...

> A lot of the work towards the end of the useful life of
Fedora Legacy
> was done by one man:  Marc Deslauriers, to which all
Fedora Legacy
> users owe a LOT (and I mean a *LOT*) of thank-you's! 
He was the one

Yes, THANK YOU Marc!  I really appreciate all you (and the
other core
people) did!

> Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Marc!!!  Your
example is one we
> should all be committed enough to follow and emulate!

Indeed!

> for Marc.  I believe the few who did most of the work
finally burned
> out.

Probably.  But also lost some interest, when the versions
they cared
most about were discontinued, I suspect.  That was the case
for me
at least.

> My assessment is this:  If legacy failed it did so in
these areas:
>    * Management of contributor resources

Not sure what that means really.

>    * Devotion of people who knew how to motivate and
cause people
>      in the contributing community to feel valued,
motivated and
>      special, and to give a voice to those who cared.

Definately.

> Legacy rarely had meetings, had no board to speak of,
and therefore no
> clear mechanism of accountability.

Yes.  Getting any changes made that were not coming from
Jesse, Marc or
David, or Pekka seemed impossible.  My suggestions on how to
improve
the situation never got anywhere...

> I hope the good folks of Legacy remember Legacy *not*
as a failed
> experiment, but as one that lasted longer and did
better than folks had
> any right to expect.

Yes, that is about how I'll remember it.  And I think all
those who joined
for RHL support will remember it that way too.

> 	Warm regards,
>
> 	David Eisenstein

And I'd like to thank David for all he did for the project
too!

-- 
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

Go Longhorns!

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On Friday 05 January 2007 12:01, Eric Rostetter wrote:
> And I'd like to thank David for all he did for the
project too!

Indeed.  There is a long list of folks who have helped with
this project, and 
stuck through working with me, and I appreciate all of it. 
Without the help, 
it would have never gotten of the ground and helped those
who needed it when 
they needed it.

-- 
Jesse Keating RHCE      (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team      (www.fedoralegacy.org)
GPG Public Key         
(geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)
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