New proposed top level FAQ for the defunct FedoraLegacy project

[David A. Ranch]

After the IRC conversations I had today with "F13", here is a proposed
FAQ for the top level http://fedoralegacy.org/ site.

--David


Fedora Core Legacy Shutdown FAQ:
02/08/07

--------------------------------

Q. Why is the FedoraLegacy project shutting down?

A. A combination of reasons:
- A lack of community members that actually contributed to patches,
testing, deployment, etc.
- A lack of funding
- A decreasing amount of interest

--

Q. I just heard that FedoraLegacy is closing down. Why didn't you give
any head notice?

A. This was heavily discussed on the "fedora-legacy-list" list. It's
always been recommended that Legacy users
be subscribed to this list to stay informed.

--

Q. Will FedoraLegacy take on support for FC6?

A. No, the entire Legacy project is over. Upgrade to a newer version of
FedoraCore if you want security and feature
patches or upgrade to a different distro such as Redhat Enterprise
Linux, Centos, or a different distro all
together.

--

Q. My FedoraLegacy servers are now complaining about "No mirrors"
available. Why?

A. The master repository was deemed stale for <=FC4 patches as of
December 12, 2006. On February 7th, 2007, the
master repository was completely shut down due to financial reasons.
Other Legacy repository mirrors
should be still up but their content is now stale.

--

Q. Will I be able to continue downloading the Legacy RPMs for my older
distributions?

A. Legacy repository mirrors should be up for some period to come but
they will probably start individually removing
that content as it's now stale. Download it now while you still
can. You can find a list of mirrors here:

http://fedoralegacy.org/download/fedoralegacy-mirrors.php

--

Q. So what do I do now? I need a Redhat-style distribution that lasts
longer than Redhat's official 12-18 month
lifespan.

A. Use the official Redhat Enterprise Linux or Centos.

--

Q. How long will the FedoraLegacy website stay up?

A. ???

--


================

Issues :

1. the toplevel fedoralegacy.org site says things are being
"Re-evaluated". This should be updated
to say something like "The Fedora Legacy project has ended. The
master legacy download repository has shut down
and no new RPMs will be to any mirrors."

2. For the FAQ entry above, how long will the website stay up? When
the site does go down, can we post this FAQ
to a newgroup or something like that so it will be sucked into
the search engines of the world so people can
find it?

3. Maybe it would be best to strip out all content off the site and
only have the shutdown documentation posted.

--

[Nils Breunese (Lemonbit)]

Post by David A. Ranch
After the IRC conversations I had today with "F13", here is a
proposed FAQ for the top level http://fedoralegacy.org/ site.
<snip>

Please change all instances of Centos to CentOS.

Post by David A. Ranch
<snip>
3. Maybe it would be best to strip out all content off the site
and only have the shutdown documentation posted.

I would like the mirrorlist to stay if that's possible. Maybe change
it to say that there is no guarantee they are still up and serving FL
repo's. I've already saved a local copy, so it's not really for me,
but someone else might just find it very useful.

Nils Breunese.

[David A. Ranch]

Post by Nils Breunese (Lemonbit)
I would like the mirrorlist to stay if that's possible. Maybe change
it to say that there is no guarantee they are still up and serving FL
repo's. I've already saved a local copy, so it's not really for me,
but someone else might just find it very useful.

Agreed and I also saved a copy too. The problem is.. since little to no
effort would be going into polcing the mirrors, this mirror list will
probably start to reflect bad information.

Personally.. I'm still hoping that Redhat will re-fund this effort as I
think it's very valuable but then again, I doubt they really care that much.

--David

[Rahul Sundaram]

Post by David A. Ranch

Post by Nils Breunese (Lemonbit)
I would like the mirrorlist to stay if that's possible. Maybe change
it to say that there is no guarantee they are still up and serving

FL >repo's. I've already saved a local copy, so it's not really for
me, >but someone else might just find it very useful.

Agreed and I also saved a copy too. The problem is.. since little to no
effort would be going into polcing the mirrors, this mirror list will
probably start to reflect bad information.
Personally.. I'm still hoping that Redhat will re-fund this effort as I
think it's very valuable but then again, I doubt they really care that much.

"Refund" assumes that Red Hat was involved in the first place. Other
than providing infrastructure services, Fedora Legacy is completely
volunteer based. There is already a huge amount of funding on Fedora
from Red Hat. Asking for more would require a good business case for it.
I doubt you can find one easily.

Rahul

[Rahul Sundaram]

Post by David A. Ranch
Q. Why is the FedoraLegacy project shutting down?
- A lack of community members that actually contributed to patches,
testing, deployment, etc.
- A lack of funding

Is funding really a issue? Unless you mean putting full time Red Hat
employees on it, I dont see it as major problem.

Post by David A. Ranch
Q. Will FedoraLegacy take on support for FC6?
A. No, the entire Legacy project is over. Upgrade to a newer version of
FedoraCore if you want security and feature
patches or upgrade to a different distro such as Redhat Enterprise
Linux, Centos, or a different distro all
together.

Maybe a note that Fedora itself is increasing it's lifecyle from around
9 to 13 months to enable users to upgrade easily and skip a release in
between might be worth mentioning here.

Post by David A. Ranch
Q. So what do I do now? I need a Redhat-style distribution that lasts
longer than Redhat's official 12-18 month
lifespan.

12-18 lifespan for what? Neither Fedora nor Red Hat Enterprise Linux is
in that lifespan. The release for RHEL is around that timeframe but then
each of the releases are supported for 7 years now. As for Fedora,
Red Hat doesnt actually determine the release cycle or lifespan for
that. The release features as well as resources available is the
criteria for that. Fedora release cycle is around every 6 months and the
lifespan for each release is around 13 months now.

Rahul

[Jesse Keating]

Post by Rahul Sundaram
Is funding really a issue? Unless you mean putting full time Red Hat
employees on it, I dont see it as major problem.

Without motivation like a paycheck, it is difficult to get people interested
in doing the work. So funding, in that form, was an issue. Also current
resources are being shut down due to them costing money.

[Eric Rostetter]

Post by Jesse Keating

Post by Rahul Sundaram
Is funding really a issue? Unless you mean putting full time Red Hat
employees on it, I dont see it as major problem.

Without motivation like a paycheck, it is difficult to get people interested
in doing the work.

This is the same as saying Opensource can't work... Freeware will never
catch on... Altruism doesn't exist. People only do things for money...
These are not true, unless applied to specific individuals rather than
as a generality.

Post by Jesse Keating
So funding, in that form, was an issue.

I don't think so...

Post by Jesse Keating
Also current
resources are being shut down due to them costing money.

That is in part true. But why would someone fund them (waste money on them)
when there is no real justification for their existance?

In other words, they are being shutdown not just because they cost money,
but because there is no way to justify spending any money on them.

I'm betting if there was a reason to keep them alive, the funding would
be found without any problem... But the sad truth is, there is no
way to justify spending the money on them, as there is no real value
to them. They lost their value when the project shutdown.

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

[Jesse Keating]

Post by Jesse Keating
Without motivation like a paycheck, it is difficult to get people
interested in doing the work.

This is the same as saying Opensource can't work...  Freeware will never
catch on...  Altruism doesn't exist.  People only do things for money...
These are not true, unless applied to specific individuals rather than
as a generality.

No, it's not the same. Opensource works because a lot of people like working
on creating new code and improving existing code. Maintaining old code is
just not fun/glamorous work. The majority of work done in this area of
opensource is done by paid engineers, and what isn't done by paid engineers
is most often based on what paid engineers are doing.

[Eric Rostetter]

Post by Jesse Keating
No, it's not the same. Opensource works because a lot of people like working
on creating new code and improving existing code. Maintaining old code is
just not fun/glamorous work.

Yet people do it without a paycheck. Why? Either because they have a
self-interest in it besides a paycheck, or they want the fame, or they
want to help others, or some other equally foolish reason. The point
is, people will do it without a paycheck if it is important to them.

Post by Jesse Keating
The majority of work done in this area of
opensource is done by paid engineers

Yes, but that doesn't mean the minority should be ignored.

Post by Jesse Keating
and what isn't done by paid engineers
is most often based on what paid engineers are doing.

In certain types of projects, yes. (That was the way FL was run,
since it was coding into the project that it was to be done that
way).

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

[David A. Ranch]

Post by Eric Rostetter
I'm betting if there was a reason to keep them alive, the funding would
be found without any problem... But the sad truth is, there is no
way to justify spending the money on them, as there is no real value
to them. They lost their value when the project shutdown.

I personally find value in keeping distributions secure. I don't need
new features.. just maintenance. I know a /LOT/ of companies that still
use Redhat 6.2, 7.x, etc. in lab environments. Sure, they aren't on any
Internet facing links but it would only take one worm to take down a
lab, possibly leak their proprietary secrets, etc. and think about the
downtime that would ensue before they could get their test environment
working on a secure distro. That would will be costly if that ever
happens. Some of these companies are very large and could maintain
these distros themselves yet they don't find much value in security. I
do value security and I'm willing to donate X number of dollars for that
security but it sounds like I'm in the minority.

What I'm really curious on is how CentOS can/will erode RHEL revenue.
It's the *same* code but no Redhat support. I still help out on a few
educational servers and the Academic RHEL version offers -zero- support
so we're basically paying $50/yr for patches. I think that's a bit
expensive for patches but at least I have an option. Since I get no
support, what's the value in RHEL Academic vs. CentOS? None other than
using up2date.


Anyway.. Jesse: could you post any version of this FAQ to the Legacy
website? I sent this FAQ out to a few email lists last night and
several people were also caught off guard by this news. They did know
something was up as their Yum repositories were failing.

--David

[Jesse Keating]

What I'm really curious on is how CentOS can/will erode RHEL revenue.  
It's the *same* code but no Redhat support.  I still help out on a few
educational servers and the Academic RHEL version offers -zero- support
so we're basically paying $50/yr for patches.  I think that's a bit
expensive for patches but at least I have an option.  Since I get no
support, what's the value in RHEL Academic vs. CentOS?  None other than
using up2date.

If RHEL has to compete on the bits, RHEL has already lost. RHEL is about
support and such, and if you see no value in it, you probably don't need
RHEL. Very very few places fall into this trap of buying RHEL and not using
the support, but even those that do, buy it for the ABILITY to get support
even if they never use it. Personally I see CentOS as strengthening the RHEL
brand, as sites that start with CentOS then realize they need support should
be able to easily migrate to RHEL given that everything is the same. Much
harder to do that from say Fedora or Debian.

Anyway.. Jesse: could you post any version of this FAQ to the Legacy
website?  I sent this FAQ out to a few email lists last night and
several people were also caught off guard by this news.  They did know
something was up as their Yum repositories were failing.

Eric, can you integrate the FAQ into the front page of fedoralegacy.org ?
Once that is done, I'll change DNS for download.fedoralegacy.org to point to
fedoralegacy.org.

[Eric Rostetter]

Post by Jesse Keating

Post by David A. Ranch
Anyway.. Jesse: could you post any version of this FAQ to the Legacy
website? I sent this FAQ out to a few email lists last night and
several people were also caught off guard by this news. They did know
something was up as their Yum repositories were failing.

Eric, can you integrate the FAQ into the front page of fedoralegacy.org ?
Once that is done, I'll change DNS for download.fedoralegacy.org to point to
fedoralegacy.org.

Done. I've removed most unneeded pages, posted notices on most of the main
pages left, and put a modified version of the suggested FAQ on the front
page.

Of course, this is just the web site, not the wiki...

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

[David A. Ranch]

Post by Eric Rostetter
Done. I've removed most unneeded pages, posted notices on most of the main
pages left, and put a modified version of the suggested FAQ on the front
page.

1. On the front page just below the red frame, it says:
--
The current model for supporting maintenance distributions is being
re-examined. In the meantime, we are unable to extend any support to Red
Hat Linux or Fedora Core releases.
--

It's not being re-examined. I would change that line to say "The
FedoraLegacy Project has shutdown and has ceiesed offering any RPM
updates for all legacy Redhat and FedoraCore distributions. Please see
below for additional information."

2. The 4th Q&A section on the page is mis-formatted. Move the "A:" to a
newline

3. I would add a link to the Fedora-legacy-list archives as a final
bullet for people to learn more about the shutdown beyond this short faq
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legacy-list/

4. The download page should be completely removed or at least completely
stripped. Why offer information on how to Legacy-enable old distros if
the master download.fedoralegacy.org site is forever dead?

5. Any news on how long the website will stay up? Who runs this
server? Redhat or someone else?

--David

[Eric Rostetter]

Post by David A. Ranch
It's not being re-examined.

As far as I know, it is still being examined.

Post by David A. Ranch
I would change that line to say "The
FedoraLegacy Project has shutdown and has ceiesed offering any RPM
updates for all legacy Redhat and FedoraCore distributions. Please see
below for additional information."

I think the information below makes that fairly clear.

Post by David A. Ranch
2. The 4th Q&A section on the page is mis-formatted. Move the "A:" to a
newline

Fixed.

Post by David A. Ranch
3. I would add a link to the Fedora-legacy-list archives as a final
bullet for people to learn more about the shutdown beyond this short faq
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legacy-list/

This is not under my control... Maybe someone else can do this though.

Post by David A. Ranch
4. The download page should be completely removed or at least
completely stripped. Why offer information on how to Legacy-enable old
distros if the master download.fedoralegacy.org site is forever dead?

Because people claim they want to still keep the mirrors going so people
can download the updates...

Post by David A. Ranch
5. Any news on how long the website will stay up? Who runs this
server? Redhat or someone else?

AFAIK Jesse does...

Post by David A. Ranch
--David

[Jesse Keating]

Post by Eric Rostetter

Post by David A. Ranch
It's not being re-examined.

As far as I know, it is still being examined.

Yeah, I think I need to get the final OK from the board on the 13 month thing,
so that we can stop saying examined.

[Jesse Keating]

Post by Eric Rostetter

5. Any news on how long the website will stay up?  Who runs this
server?  Redhat or someone else?

AFAIK Jesse does...

The server is my personal webhost. The domain is good until the 12th of
December, I most likely will not renew the domain.

[Eric Rostetter]

Post by David A. Ranch

Post by Eric Rostetter
I'm betting if there was a reason to keep them alive, the funding would
be found without any problem... But the sad truth is, there is no
way to justify spending the money on them, as there is no real value
to them. They lost their value when the project shutdown.

I personally find value in keeping distributions secure.

Since there will be no new updates, they will not keep distributions
secure.

Post by David A. Ranch
I don't need
new features.. just maintenance. I know a /LOT/ of companies that
still use Redhat 6.2, 7.x, etc. in lab environments.

Sure, but keeping the mirrors up does not real good. They are just
getting obsolete patches and a false sense of security.

Post by David A. Ranch
security. I do value security and I'm willing to donate X number of
dollars for that security but it sounds like I'm in the minority.

A lot of people say they are willing to donate "X" dollars, but in most
cases they are not really willing to do so, or their "X" is too small.
In any case, you are probably too late, unless your "X" is very large!

Post by David A. Ranch
What I'm really curious on is how CentOS can/will erode RHEL revenue.

That topic isn't appropriate to this list.