Fedora has several hundred people with commit rights. The packager group in the Fedora account system currently lists 884 accounts. With the help of the python-fedora modules
( https://fedorahosted.org/python-fedora/ ) you can interact with the Fedora account system and the Fedora packagedb system you can get more fine-grained information.

For example.. just looking at the ‘devel’ branch I see:
Total Maintainers (package owner or co-maintainer) : 763
Total Packages with a Maintainer listed as owner/comaint: 8639

Every account listed a package owner or co-maintainer has cvs commit rights for that package. 763 individuals are have cvs commit rights and are actively helping to maintain 8639 srpms.

If you want the python script that I used to produce those numbers I’ll gladly post it. Sadly this article forum doesn’t let me attach code.

So those 763 people have commit rights, and are listed as package maintainers. Do they all use those rights on a regular basis? To know that you’d need to delve into the Fedora mailinglist dedicated to archiving all the packaging commit transactions. A very detailed accounting of the commit activity you could use the archives from this list:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-commits/

I haven’t found the time to datamine that mailinglist yet.

Beyond the python module codebase and the publicly archived commit log mailinglist… if you have any further ideas on ways to add transparency to the Fedora packaging process…feel free to give me suggestions.

-jef

And as for spacewalk, how long did it take Red Hat to open Satellite server? Wow…something along the lines of 6 years or so? And where is the value there? It is a pain to setup and I have to use NON-GPL code to run it. Yea, it still requires Oracle although now I don’t have to pay for a license as I use to have to do.

For your information, Mr. Spaleta, I will go on record to say that it is none of YOUR business.

Now if you put “your money where your fingers are” and be transparent about your dealings, financial information and everything YOU ask about Canonical, you may be able to gain some miniscule amount of credibility. Right now, you are simply wasting time and space with your questions and your rhetoric shows that Ubuntu is a credible threat to your existence in some form or fashion.

Although I may not agree with your views (from time to time), I do appreciate you looping back with me and our readers. And it’s clear that we both see value in healthy debate and ongoing dialog.

No doubt, the initial Landscape had a small installed base of paying customers. I wish I could give you firm numbers but I really don’t have a good feel for the early deployments. I hope to become far more familiar with Landscape’s installed base (and paying customers) as the dedicated server rolls out.

No, I am not compensated to question Canonical. But I’ve no way for you to verify that as I am not going to give you access to my personal financial statements. You have to implicitly trust that I will answer that question truthfully. And if you don’t already trust me then there was no point asking that question. So thanks for showing the trust.

You’ll also have to trust me when I say that my ultimate motivation is transparency and accuracy. If Landscape is a popular value-add service..I want to see customers on record saying that. I have grave concerns about the sustainability of the corporate/community model Canonical has setup. The financial situation associated with Canonical is completely opaque and yet critical to the long term sustainability of the Ubuntu community. By their own count, Canonical admits there are only like 150 people with commit rights to work on Ubuntu packages and apply patches. That’s an incredibly small technical contributor base given the estimated size of the user base. If Canonical takes a lot of missteps in terms of business decisions there’s not a lot of community technical expertise to take up the slack if Canonical has to reorient manpower around poor business execution in any area.

If Canonical doesn’t want to talk about landscape adoption, then I’m going to continue attempt to find customers who will. And for the record I’ve seen exactly 1 person admit to paying for landscape service contract to date. Would you regard Landscape as a sound business offering if the odds of an Ubuntu user contracting for its services being less than me being hit by lightening?

-jef

Canonical officially announced Landscape Dedicated Server on Aug. 4. We blog about it on Aug. 7. And within minutes of our blog post you submitted a comment asking if there are readers who are willing to discuss their pre-order plans for Landscape Dedicated Server.

That seems a bit extreme, since so many readers are only now learning about Landscape Dedicated Server. Enterprise products like this aren’t pre-ordered with a click of a button within minutes/days of an announcement. They are thoroughly investigated first.

To the best of my knowledge, only a few organizations are beta testing Landscape Dedicated Server. As testers and deployments begin we will be sure to interview the users. Are they willing to pay for Landscape Dedicated Server? Why or why not? We’ll find the answers once beta testers have given it a real try.

In the meantime, challenging WorksWithU readers to disclose their pre-order buying plans for Landscape Dedicated Server sounds like an attempt to dismiss the product before it even gets out the door.

Full disclosure on my part: I’ve been an editor for 20 years. And yes, Canonical now sponsors this site. But we work very hard to keep all posts balanced — pointing out where Canonical is heading, where weak points remain etc.

Now it’s your turn. Are you compensated to question every move Canonical makes? Or is there some other motivation for your comments?

Joe Panettieri
Editorial Director
WorksWithU