[Gllug] Red Hat versus other qualifications

[Joel Bernstein]

On 1 Jul 2009, at 14:35, Richard Jones wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 12:15:29PM +0100, Joel Bernstein wrote:
>>> broken backports of what? (that's a genuine question, btw)
>>
>> Perl 5.8 is a good example.
>
> People really need to start finding other examples.  This single
> Perl example is getting old.
>
> The issue was not raised through ordinary support channels.  Instead
> it was sent directly to Bugzilla, languished there for a month
> (because Bugzilla is not the proper support channel, as anyone who has
> Red Hat support would know), and then was fixed when it was raised by
> a customer through the correct support channels.  In fact it was
> released as a hotfix.

I don't agree. That addresses (but hardly justifies, IMO) RH's  
handling of the issue when it was eventually raised with sufficient  
visibility, but not the compound of errors that led to releasing the  
buggered Perl in the first place.

For obvious reasons nobody at RH wants to stand up and say to their  
clients "you know, this platform you pay us to support for you  
actually isn't such a good idea at all, and maybe the hoops we have to  
jump through to provide long-term-support on Linux means our product  
isn't all we cracked it up to be", but if they manage other packages  
like this I'd be hard pushed to understand how the benefits would  
outweigh the risks. You can call this FUD and I'd be happy to be told  
that this is an isolated, outlying event where an inadequately trained  
maintainer failed to follow process and caused a big mess. As a  
customer I'd also want to know that the processes had been improved to  
prevent a repeat, though. Unless I've radically misunderstood what  
went on to create that particular episode, RH's perl-5.8 maintainer  
did something no packager should ever do. It should be a really big  
deal to RH, just as it was a really big deal for the users.

>> Red Hat seem to have released more broken Perls than any other vendor
>> I've dealt with.
>
> I think by "more broken Perls" you mean "one broken Perl".

I make it 3 in recent memory. Which is one more than Apple so far.  
Wait until Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" is out and I'll be cross at  
Apple more than Red Hat again for a while I expect.

/joel
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