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.”

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