Its been made apparent to me that I am the one violating community norms and looking for policies that do not exist. I am sorry for offense and over reaction.
Tyler On Apr 14, 2014, at 7:25 AM, Tyler Riddle <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello all, > > I have concerns regarding the work the cloud team has been publishing wearing > the label of Debian/Wheezy which at this time of discussion is currently > stable. I have voiced these concerns on topical threads in this forum to stop > what I considered to be a change that is in no way acceptable and consensus > has agreed that the change should not be made (specifically that automatic > updates should be enabled in the Debian/Wheezy labeled GCE image). That issue > is not the root of the problem and having consensus that automatic updates > should not be happening isn't actually the correct way to handle this > situation. > > The fact that consensus of the cloud team prevented the change is the problem > because changes like that should not even be possible to stable. I've been > trying to make my point and I'm encountering arguments that are not > addressing the issue. Because of this I think a formal discussion is in order > and on the table should be discussions about policies governing the release > of cloud images. > > First, who am I? I'm a Unix enthusiast as well as open source author and > contributor. I've been using Debian since 1994 and have continued to use > Debian as well as nearly every other Unix that exists to date (even the > really mean ones like HP-UX). I was a user of the EC2 Debian/Wheezy AMIs > until the rate of changes on the AMIs started ruining my operations. Trying > to actually use the AMIs produced though was so painful the best option I > could find was to stop using the work of the Debian cloud team because > operations are impacted far more by upstream changes to the AMIs than > anything going wrong on their own or because of difficulties in EC2 related > workflows that the OS is going to solve for me. > > Its quite clear there is not a fundamental understanding of what my root > concern is. One misunderstanding seems to be that I do not want changes to > Debian/Stable that are good for commercial organizations. This is false. I do > not want changes to Debian/Stable, period. The economic incentives of > commercial operations will produce large pressures to make changes right now > and is why the topic is run together with "stop changing stable." In the case > of GCE the team is co-authoring the image for GCE with Google and this now > becomes a direct and extremely important consideration. > > It also seems that people think that I am against the cloud, against the > cloud users, or against Debian trying to help users with the cloud. This is > false. I am against a development process targeting brand new technology that > supposedly has many new problems that definitely no one knows how to solve > well with the results being tested on unsuspecting users looking for Debian > stable. Please read that again if it is not clear: the problem is testing the > work on users who are expecting Debian Stable not the work, not the cloud, > and not the software. > > It also seems that people think I want to change things to make them simpler. > This is false. I want changes to stop. Changes are the problem here. > > There are going to be some tough questions here and while reading them please > ask yourself the following question: whom is the work of the cloud team > supposed to be helping? > > 1) Exactly what is the charter of the cloud team? Why is it here? > > 2) Is the cloud team producing official Debian images? If not why are the > published Debian Wheezy images not clearly labeled as being Debian Wheezy > (cloud edition containing experimental software) > > 3) If the cloud team publishes official images where are policies regarding > what is and is not allowed to be published and labeled as Debian Wheezy > and/or stable as time goes on? > > 4) Why do the cloud images contain customizations such as changing the > administrative username to admin instead of root? > > I see two things that are new here. The first is that before "the cloud" > Debian Stable came on CDs and there was not any ambiguity about what is and > is not Debian Stable. Seasoned veterans of Debian will expect published > Debian operating systems to work like they always have. The other new thing > is that "the cloud" is the combination of virtual machines and a workflow > thats supposed to treat each individual node as being rather unimportant. > > Virtual machines are easy and well solved in Debian/Wheezy. The concept that > each individual OS instance is throw away is a very difficult one to solve > and I think everyone doing this work is aware of that. It is so difficult to > solve, in fact, that its going to take a very long time to solve, with a lot > of testing and a lot of false moves. > > And that last reason is exactly why developing and testing the cloud > solutions on end users expecting Debian Stable is a serious problem. Please > compare the output and release cycle of the cloud team against the output and > release cycle of release engineering for the CDs. > > Do I think the cloud team should abandon all the work done to date? No, I > think that will be severely disruptive. Do I think the cloud team should not > have ever tried to publish software that solves the workflow problems and > provide customizations on top of Wheezy beyond extending the CD/DVD image > creation process to handle VMs universally? Yes I do. Do I think the cloud > team should never have tried to solve it at all? No, I don't. > > In short the output of the cloud team is not Debian Wheezy yet when it hits > the EC2 AMI list it sure looks like it: > https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00AA27RK4/ref=srh_res_product_title?ie=UTF8&sr=0-2&qid=139748542126 > The only indication here that this isn't identical to an install cd is the > tiny warning that you'll have to login is admin and not root. > > Does this make sense? I hope the cloud team can understand the importance of > tightly controlling exactly what is published as Debian Stable. > > Tyler > > >
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