CentOS turbulence and enterprise Linux tradeoffs

"CentOS has never been the most transparent of projects; its lists do not carry the kind of open discussion that can be found with Debian, Fedora, or (increasingly) openSUSE. Most CentOS users perhaps worry little about where their software comes from, but there are those who have tried to help the project and bring its workings more into the open. One of those, well-known RPM packager Dag Wieers, threw in the towel in June:

""It was not an easy decision and I feel sad for having to take it, but I decided to resign from the CentOS project. I hope the team can fix the project's leadership, communication and transparency issues (even within the team), because each is very important for the health of the CentOS community."

"Problems within the project became more public on July 30, when a disturbing open letter was posted on centos.org. The immediate issue was the disappearance of project founder Lance Davis, whose last post on the centos-devel mailing list was in April, 2008. Evidently Lance hadn't been heard from for some time in other parts of the project as well. A missing founder can be a problem, but it gets worse: when Lance vanished from sight, he took with him control over the project's domain name and IRC channels."

Complete Story

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