There have been a number of recent conversations on the developer list and this list about CentOS. My initial thought was why not have CentOS and SL merge. Since they have different goals I can understand the reason not to. So my next question is, has no corporate entity offered to sponsor full time people to work on CentOS? It seems like a lot of companies use CentOS for various things. I can't believe no one is willing to help speed development by paying for people to build full time. Has this subject come up before? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20110326/b06ff782/attachment-0001.html>
Am 26.03.2011 um 22:16 schrieb Gary Scarborough:> There have been a number of recent conversations on the developer > list and this list about CentOS. My initial thought was why not > have CentOS and SL merge. Since they have different goals I can > understand the reason not to. So my next question is, has no > corporate entity offered to sponsor full time people to work on > CentOS? It seems like a lot of companies use CentOS for various > things. I can't believe no one is willing to help speed development > by paying for people to build full time. Has this subject come up > before?Every couple of months. People who have enough money to make significant contributions to this goal usually hire a couple of competent admins and do it in-house. For the rest, there is RHEL - or OEL. Do you think one can undercut RHAT or ORCL?
>There have been a number of recent conversations on the developer list and this list about CentOS.? My initial thought was why not have CentOS and SL merge.? Since they have different goals I can understand the reason not to.? So my next question is, has no corporate entity offered to sponsor full time people to work on CentOS?? It seems like a lot of companies use CentOS for various things.? I can't believe no one is willing to help speed development by paying for people to build full time.? Has this subject come up before? >As far as I can tell, it is as simple as this:- The volunteers that create CentOS like things the way it is and it isn't likely to change. We seen it said a number of times, if we don't like it then go somewhere else. I suggest there might be room for another rebuild project that is open to commercially sponsored, i.e. somewhere else. This would n't be a 'rival' because its aims would be different. I'll be honest though, I don't realistically see enough money coming in to put people full-time onto it, though, when you consider market rate for the skills required.
> > What makes you think CentOS is not willing to be commercially sponsored? > (Or only work developing CentOS?) > > I would LOVE to be able to do CentOS as my only job. > > No one that we know of is willing to pay a full time salary for 1 or 2 > or 3 people to develop CentOS.? If they would pay for it, we would > likely do it. > > They might be willing for us to let their current employees do some > CentOS things ... but not willing to pay for CentOS development.Sorry, that was just my impression from previous posts. I guess I have that wrong. Maybe I am confusing the reluctance to take donations at the moment with commercial sponsorship. Thanks for correcting me. Couple of questions, then.... What is the average current time commitment per week, i.e. man hours that is currently volunteered by the core developers? What would that need to increase to, to significantly reduce release times (which I think was the overall goal)? What would the *market rate* be for the skills required? Just to give a rough figure to work with and shouldn't be related to any particular person's current day job. Thanks in advance, Ian.
> > What the CentOS project would be interested in (from a corporate > provider) would be to hire people and allow them to do CentOS related > things. > > We are not interested in being paid in addition to our current work, but > making taking care of CentOS our only work. > > There are many things other than building packages that have to be > maintained for making CentOS go.? These include: > > 1.? We have dozens (more than 100) servers that need to be maintained in > tens of countries all world.? These machines need to be updated and > managed, including monitoring and taking corrective action for any > services that go down. > > 2. We have to maintain lists of update mirrors, rsync mirrors, DVD > mirrors and verify that the "Dynamic DNS list" for all these machines > stay in sync when mirrors drop out or can be added back. > > 3.? Manage the CentOS DNS services, the CentOS mail services, the > mailing lists, the IRC Channels, and the main website. > > 4.? We have to write/configure/change software to ensure our mirrors are > up-to-date and control the release of updates.? Our update system gives > out GEO-IP relevant targets for download of ISOs and updates. > > 5.? We have to research/answer bugs and maintain the bugs.centos.org > website. > > There are many things that we could do if CentOS was our only > responsibility. > > The cost to a corporate entity would be to hire one or more developers > full time and designate them to working only on the project.? If someone > were willing to do that, we would be willing to listen.Right, so rather than money for CentOS to hire its own employees, you'd be looking for corporate sponsor to donate their employee time, i.e. full time person/people. I was more thinking of the former, but I think that was a long shot at best. Oh well hopefully someone might come forward.