Re: an article that talks about sourcefourge and itanium

[Jim Kingdon <kingdon@redhat.com>]

> There's some interesting stuff in the second half about how Augustine
> thinks that sourceforge helped VA/Linux increase support contract
> revenue.
> 
> http://www.upside.com/Open_Season/392eeb7b0_yahoo.html

Thanks for the link.  At the risk of beating a dead horse, the rest of
this message is about sourceware's funding and such.

I've heard at least one Red Hat customer say they like having their
work being done on sourceware (rather than a Red Hat internal server),
because they can track it better.  And Tiemann also asked me how we
were going with the search for a new "owner".

I think at this point it might be a question of what do we want out of
Red Hat?  (watch out, there is a "careful what you wish for, you might
get it" element to this).  Do we want IS to leave us alone?  Do we
want them to handle everything (and if so can they provide the kind of
service we're looking for)?  Do any of us want to be (full/part time
or consultant) sysadmins?  Do we want to farm out specific tasks to
sysadmin?  Do we want to automate those tasks so they don't need
farming out?

I'm willing to help formulate answers to those questions (for now the
answer has been that we want to muddle through as we have been and let
people contribute on the basis of
make-small-contributions-first-then-get-more-access, and although that
may sound flippant, some thought has gone into it).