The CentOS project, the Linux distribution aimed at the enterprise built from Red Hat’s freely available source code, has hit a significant bump in the road: the project’s main administrator, Lance Davis, has gone missing-in-action. This is kind of a problem as Davis is the sole administrator fo the CentOS.org domain, the IRC channels – and the CentOS funds.
The other members of the CentOS team detailed the project’s predicament in an open letter on the CentOS website:
This is an Open Letter to Lance Davis from fellow CentOS DevelopersIt is regrettable that we are forced to send this letter but we are left with no other options. For some time now we have been attempting to resolve these problems:
You seem to have crawled into a hole … and this is not acceptable.
You have long promised a statement of CentOS project funds; to this date this has not appeared.
You hold sole control of the centos.org domain with no deputy; this is not proper.
You have, it seems, sole ‘Founders’ rights in the IRC channels with no deputy ; this is not proper.
When I (Russ) try to call the phone numbers for UK Linux, and for you individually, I get a telco intercept ‘Lines are temporarily busy’ for the last two weeks. Finally yesterday, a voicemail in your voice picked up, and I left a message urgently requesting a reply. Karanbir also reports calling and leaving messages without your reply.
Please do not kill CentOS through your fear of shared management of the project.
Clearly the project dies if all the developers walk away.
Please contact me, or any other signer of this letter at once, to arrange for the required information to keep the project alive at the ‘centos.org’ domain.
Sincerely,
Russ Herrold
Ralph Angenendt
Karanbir Singh
Jim Perrin
Donavan Nelson
Tim Verhoeven
Tru Huynh
Johnny Hughes
Let’s hope that Davis can be found, and that the problems here can be resolved without further damage to either Davis or the CentOS project.
…A single point of failure.
Yup… just like a Napster… I guess it’s time to go P2P
…
Personally, I hope that he DID ditch the project for a while, because one alternative is that he, or a member of his family has been seriously injured or killed. I say this only because it has actually happened to a good friend of mine. Let’s all hope for the best, for both him and for CentOS.
Given that the developers believe that he is alive and well, money has been taken from Paypal donations and ads and someone is still doing something with the CentOS domain name then this can’t be explained by a mishap.
The main thing is the domain name control. If they sort that out then everything else is fixable. The source code is, after all, still there.
I hope so, too. About three weeks ago we had a guy at work that was a no-call/no-show. My understanding is that he had a bit of a habit of doing that, so no one really thought much of it except, “is this the time he’ll get fired?”. We found out at about 11:00am that he had died in an accident on the way to work that morning. He was only about a quarter of a mile away.
I certainly hope nothing has happened to him, but at least with it being an open source project and all it can be forked/renamed/whatever is needed if necessary. Still, I hope he’s ok.
True, I hope he’s ok, but being a single point of failure is bad business sense. You never know what can happen to you.
Which why we have vice-presidents, Vice-Ceo…
Top 5 signs your open-source project is in trouble
————————————————————–
5. Lately, a lot of check-ins are from J.R. “Bob” Dobbs
4. Cell-tower operators blame you for their power failures
3. You’re sold at Walmart
2. Your project leader takes the summer off for band camp
1. Mcrosoft partners with you
6: Each year you proclaim that THIS is teh year of the linux desktop.
is exactly why many businesses will never opt for a “free” opensource OS. Imagine buying a car and then needing to get it serviced only to find that all the dealers and service departments locked the doors and left with a sign on the door saying, “We’ll be back when we feel like it.”
With a free opensource OS, there’s simply no way to hold anyone responsible unless you pay a second or third party to maintain it for you. In most cases, the old adage “You get what you pay for” still applies.
Edited 2009-07-30 18:04 UTC
Er. Did you miss the bit about CentOS being a free-as-in-beer clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
If you want something with dependable support behind it, buy Red Hat. That’s what we sell. We’re a Fortune 500 company with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, we’re not going anywhere. And we sell a wide range of support options that are rather highly regarded.
The openness of the code has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the support available.
That was exactly my point. My first sentence should have read “free opensource” instead of just opensource. My bad.
Edited 2009-07-30 18:02 UTC
Ah. That would have made a lot more sense, then.
It’s still not entirely accurate, though. There’s a crossover point at which it becomes more efficient to buy external support than do your own. That crossover point could lie at several different points along several different curves depending on the project and company you’re talking about. It’s going to be different for a heavily tech-focused company and a pet food company, for instance. It’s going to be different for an internal project in the IT department versus a project rolled out to the entire company and on which all your revenue depends. It’s going to be different for a 5-person company compared to a 10,000-person company.
There’s clearly many situations in which running enterprise-grade bits but doing the support yourself makes sense, which is why CentOS and similar things exist in the first place. All it comes down to is the management job of correctly identifying whether you’re in a case where it makes more sense to run CentOS (or Debian, or whatever) and do your own support, or buy in RHEL (or SLED or Mandriva Corporate or whatever).
I don’t think there’s any evidence for this statement. I don’t believe that Debian or Ubuntu or many other free distributions will disappear in the next few weeks.
No, more like they left the doors open and said: “We simply don’t feel like fixing your car for free today, but feel free to fix it yourself, or hire a real mechanic you can depend on, btw the service manual is on the table here.”
Edit: also, you misspoke, you meant to say: “Imagine being given a car for free”
Edited 2009-07-30 18:12 UTC
If they left the tools behind, I’d LOVE that.
For once I could pay cost of parts and not get raped by 1.) Needing Special tools I don’t have / can’t afford
and
2.) Outrageous Labor charges based on billable hours inflated three-fold listed in a book.
I know good mechanics that do 20 billable hours in an 8 hour day.
Sadly, in the case of CentOS, it seems some of the tools are missing, and the shop has no power on
So you might be better off taking a copy of the service manual and going elsewhere if things don’t improve…
GPL question. Can they take the code and bring up CentOS.net or .info whatever and start new forums say “ahh darn it” to the 1 time lost funds, start new funds? Then change all the .org references in the code and call it good? Keep the logos etc?
Actually, that’s a trademark question, not a GPL question. They can do this as long as the original trademark owner doesn’t fight them. It’s the responsibility of trademark owners to protect their marks, otherwise they may lose them.
That is a stupid thing to say.
Businesses rely on 3rd party contractors that are just one guy (single point of failure) all the time.
While occasionally you do have somebody just disappear, the fruits of having work done by a small time operation are always cheaper, and often better quality (due to the work/bull#$^% ratio being higher) that contracting with a big organization like IBM who then assigns 3 salespeople a few junior technical workers to “manage” your business account.
But that single point of failure will bite a business just as it will an OSS project.
Smart businesses avoid single points of failure where they can. This was trivially avoidable and should never have been allowed by policy. That is the point to be concerned about here. It’s not like they haven’t had over 5 years to notice and address the issue.
Because no commercial entity has ever went bankrupt or close doors over night. Nope, has never happened. If you’ve ever paid for a product the company will care about you forever.
Exactly, and no corporate entity has ever been taken over and the new owners told you: No more updates for you mister; But thank god you can migrate to our really really really great other product……for a price.
Or companies where you need to buy a support contract to be able to file bug reports about their bug ridden product (*cough* Cisco *cough*). And then perhaps, by the grace of god, they might actually fix your show stopper bug in year.
No sir, never heard of those kind of companies.
I’m not saying open source is the best and the cure for everything, but you sure are naive if you think commercial cooperation’s are there to protect your interest.
OK, go get your free car and when it breaks down, wait for the community to fix it. Never mind that you’re on the way to the hospital.
Same goes for your free opensource OS. I’m trying to run a business and wham, my web server running the free opensource OS goes down. So I’m just going to wait for the “community” to fix it for me? You must be crazy. That’s why people buy an OS instead of relying on something they got for free. They can pick up the phone and get support because there are employees on the other end who want to get paid and have a job. Try calling CentOS right now and getting some support. I’m glad I’m not using their software!
You wish! Have you dealt with very many customer service reps? Few companies truly have very good customer service. At least with Open Source, you get more than what you paid for because you pay nothing.
Your irony detector is not working.
Or the company that built the car and millions of other could be worth billions of $ and still fold and be shuttered leaving you with a modern car with no dedicated support.
You would be forced to get support elsewhere, or if you’re lucky the other companies would pick up the slack and provide maintainance to you for some reasonable amoutn of time.
You’re right, that would never happen in a paid product! Heaven forbid a billion dollar corporation like car companies..I mean what’s the likelihood of someone like General Motors going bankrupt and shuttering a whole division like Saturn, leaving owner in the lurch…nah would never happen…
Precisely why Open Source (Free or not) is better than proprietary closed source.
In the end, at least you have the ability to fix it yourself, or hire someone else to fix it.
With proprietary closed source, you are basically…dead in the water.
That’s bull. Just because an OS is free and opensource doesn’t mean I have (or almost any other entity) the tools, and experience to fix it. That’s like saying that because I own and operate a television, then I can fix one when it fails. NOT! Unless you have the resources of a small army or a large IT dev staff, you’re out of luck if your free and opensource OS has problems. Waiting for the “community” to fix your problem is not an option when time is money and you run a business.
If I buy an OS or a car and the maker goes out of business, there are still options. There are always 2nd and 3rd parties who will continue to provide support. That’s why free opensource OSs will never be adopted by mainstream businesses.
1995 called. They want their bizarre misconceptions back.
In case you haven’t noticed, major OSS products aleady *do* have second and third party support providers, in an assortment of free and commercial forms. And open-source OSes already *have* been adopted by mainstream businesses. Especially on the server end.
What decade *do* you come from, anyway?
Edited 2009-07-31 14:48 UTC
Yeah right. Try picking up the phone right now and calling someone to fix my broken web server running CentOS. Or any other free opensource OS.
They can call me. Supporting Linux (desktop, server, other) for businesses is one of the things that I do professionally. Twenty-one years of prefessional Unix administration. Fourteen years experience with Linux. Lot’s of experience with Windows integration. Happy customers all around. (They actually tell me so.) And Linux is what I have used exclusively on my own desktop and servers since 1998. (And nonexclusively since 1995.)
And there are much larger fish than me doing the same.
Small world, isn’t it?
Edited 2009-07-31 15:45 UTC
Yeah, and I suppose you have an office in every major city and rural area too. Who do you think you are, Santa Clause? You can’t be everywhere.
Or do you expect me to pay for your flight when I live 2500 miles from you? No, I’ll call a local IT support shop who can fix the OS that I paid for from his store and it will be fixed in a few hours at a reasonable price.
And using Linux and other free OSs on YOUR desktop is just fine, since you’re in the IT business. Most business owners aren’t running IT businesses.
Edited 2009-07-31 17:04 UTC
No. That’s why I specifically mentioned that far bigger fish than me are doing the same thing. (And you are completely ignoring that because it nullifies your argument and you don’t have an actual counter-argument to it.)
However, I am glad that you brought up this point. Because it happens to be one of my major advantages over, say, a Red Hat support contract. Most (though not all) of my customers are local. (The local ones do tend to have branch offices in other cities and/or states. But the main servers are, for the most part, local to me.) Most support can, of course, be done remotely. And in fact most of the support that I do is remote. However, there are those times, often during a crisis, in which there is just nothing that can replace driving across town to find that, for example, a network cable end was marginal, or a port went out on a network switch, or that mice were living inside the PC case. (Yes, I have dealt with that and it was really gross.)
You asked who businesses can pick up the phone and call. In Oklahoma City, I’m one of the people they can call. And unlike with support direct from the OS vendor, I can pick up the phone and tell them “I’ll be right there”.
Edited 2009-07-31 17:27 UTC
“No, I’ll call a local IT support shop who can fix the OS that I paid for from his store and it will be fixed in a few hours at a reasonable price.”
Dude, what planet are you from? Do you think that if you have a problem with Windows, I mean a real bug, that your local shop will be able to do ANYTHING about it? You think Microsoft just gives out its source code to whoever? You will be at the mercy of waiting for Microsoft to fix it. It might be quick. Then again, like the last IE bug, it might take a year. If its just a hardware failure or user glitch, I am sure your local shop can help you. After all, if they are worth their salt, they will have someone who is linux trained. I think I am glad you don’t use Linux….you deserve Windows.
And I’m not talking about IT companies who have large IT staffs who can internally support a “free” opensource OS. If you haven’t noticed, most of the worlds businesses are not IT companies and they don’t have the tools or expertise of fix their OS when it fails or needs support. They have to rely on external sources for that.
That’s why “free” opensource OSs will not be adopted by mainstream businesses. They cannot afford to be shut down while the “community” comes up with a fix.
Edited 2009-07-31 15:08 UTC
Umm. This happens regardless of the software being opensource or not. There are plenty of instances of commercial companies going bust or closing shop without leaving much recourse to their customers and in those instances customers have actually PAYED for the software. At least with OSS, the software is free and open and anyone willing can take the ball and run with it. You are not left with an unsupported piece of software that no one can improve if they wanted to. As long as there is an active development community around the software and the code is open then there really isn’t an issue other than a fork and a name change if the situation warrants it. Can you do that with Truespace?
When choosing software, the question of “will they still be around/actively-developed in a year” is certainly important. But – while I’m personally cynical of the view that open source is a “magic bullet” – I still think there are other factors that have more relevance to that question than the development model.
In general, I think that the overall “ecosystem” of a piece of software is more important than whether the software is commercial or open source. To pick a near-and-dear example, look at web-based CMS software. Say you have the choice between a commercial app with a small number of devs and a relatively small userbase – and an open source app like WordPress, with thousands (millions?) of users and a thriving community of plugin developers, etc.
In that scenario, I know which one I would consider to be a safer bet (the latter).
I’ve had exactly the same thing happen with closed source software at a few different companies I’ve worked for. We buy some software and the next thing you know the company has gone bankrupt or dropped support for your platform or simply stop answering the phone and you’re left with unsupported software without any future updates. At least with open source you still have the source and can still get support and updates from other places.
Bad analogy because that’s exactly what happened when Chrysler closed a bunch of dealerships and revoked their right to service my car! Happens all the time. I chose that dealership because I didn’t like the service of the other one. Of course find somebody to fix the bugs in Windows XP that you need for a critical project. You might as well be using Be.
Serious businesses evaluate which option is the best in each case and pick accordingly. Sometimes that will be a free Linux, sometimes it will be one with commercial support.
Most companies don’t get their Windows support directly from MS but from 2nd or 3rd parties. What’s the difference?
Reliable underground sources have informed me that Lance was seen being abducted by agents of The City of Tuttle, and is likely on his way to the auction block now. As I live about 20 minutes from Tuttle (Yes, really.) I’m heading there now. I’ll let you know what happened when I return. If I return…
Edited 2009-07-30 18:12 UTC
Regardless of the reliability of OSS software support in general, this was a poor way for the “Community ENTerprise OS” to deal with the situation. Even once it was determined that some sort of general call needed to be put out, there was no reason to prepackage sensationalism in the open letter itself.
The CentOS team normally conducts themselves in a highly professional manner. This is quite out of character for them. And they did recently report a break in on one of their servers: http://lwn.net/Articles/340130/
Hmmmm….
Edited 2009-07-30 18:39 UTC
I agree really. Apparently they’ve been trying to get something out of Lance for over a year and it’s obvious he has been acting improperly. They should have then just moved to make sure they had control of the domain name and then completely disassociated themselves and CentOS from him.
If you’re going to act then do it. The sensationalism wasn’t necessray and an open letter cannot possibly achieve anything now after what has happened.
they need a way to get on public record saying this guy is gone rogue so they can move to replace him. Obviously, he’s not restricted the website, but if THEY are accepting money (as some type of not-for-profit organization) then THEY have to account for it or have big problems. Getting a new domain name isn’t the problem, moving to new servers or hosting isn’t the problem, it’s accounting for the “common property” of the group and funds other people have given them.
Mind you, with hindsight a kick probably wasn’t such a bad idea…………
According to centos.org, Lance showed back up (after years) and they had a “routine meeting” in which much was resolved. Though how they could have a “routine meeting” under the circumstances, and less than a day after the publication of that open letter, is unclear.
Edited 2009-08-01 23:40 UTC
“Our project leader has vanished.”
“Again? awwww fork it.”
As someone already said, the case would trigger a fork if he doesn´t show-up again.
Anyway, if everything fail, there are still 2 options:
* Go to Red Hat;
* Test Scientific Linux compatibility.
Hope he will show-up and that all disputs get settled.
Yes, Scientific Linux is a valid option made by serious institutions
https://www.scientificlinux.org/
SL is a Linux release put together by Fermilab, CERN, and various other labs and universities around the world. Its primary purpose is to reduce duplicated effort of the labs, and to have a common install base for the various experimenters.
The base SL distribution is basically Enterprise Linux, recompiled from source.
That’s not the serious problem here though. The problem is the funds that only he knows where they are and what they went to.
Disclaimer: I have no idea what this “missing in action” really means. Are we talking about days? Weeks? Months? Even the last one can (could) be justified in community projects.
Nevertheless, a sad state of affairs. I have been a big fan of CentOS. Mainly because it, as a community project, stands out in the current state of affairs, dominated by endless pseudo-usability trends, FooKits of the week, too short support cycles, too rapid development cycles at the cost of stability and good software engineering practices, endless experiments with core components of the system, increasing complexity, ever-growing pile of bugs, et. cetera. (Real credit obviously goes to Red Hat.)
When you want to get work done and try to minimize moving parts in an arguably shaky overall system, CentOS is a good choice.
PS.
I might try Scientific Linux if this turns out to be a catastrophe.
Edited 2009-07-30 19:54 UTC
The CentOS project was a lifesaver in my career. I hope that there is a resolution, But if not, FORK IT.
FORK EVERYTHING!
This happens so monotonously regularly with Linux distro’s.
New distro ->Fork->fork again, abandoned.
Yet another new distro ->fork, ->fork->fork again, abandoned..
Exactly. Linux is in forking hell! That’s why my company sticks to commercial OSs.
The old adage “You get what you pay for” still applies.
I hope everything settles out fine. But it is always possible to fork the project if necessary. Anyway, Open Source FTW! \o/
What’s with this “fork-mania” in the OSS community these days? On several sites where this has been reported I have seen references to “forking” CentOS. Their admin has completely disappeared (for years now, it seems) and he owns the current domain and the irc channel. The existing CentOS team is all ready to cut over to a different domain at this point with the figurative press of a button. But they’d like to keep the old domain. Where, exactly is the “fork” in that?
If Red Hat moved their domain from redhat.com to redhatinc.com, would that be a “fork” of Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
Now, if you *really* mean “fork”, then I suggest you look at the failed past attempts at forking and maintaining RHEL. It’s not trivial. But somehow we’ve developed this culture where people have seen the word “fork” used so much that they think it’s a trivial thing to do, with no real consequences.
Edited 2009-07-31 13:54 UTC
If you’re afraid of CentOS future you can try an Israeli project based on RHEL – linux.startcom.org
Has anyone thought to check his house?
I know, wacky, physical interaction in this day and age.
If different Linux distros were State Contractors in New Jersey, I’d take a guess that the most mafia controlled State Contractor had taken out this guy since it seems like an easy way of letting the project suffer.
Although I admire the work done by the moderator, this is the danger when your company depend on a single person. If your business is using opensource I would suggest going for RedHat, Suse etc