[openib-general] Need for ONE OpenIB Release process that all members can agree to and that follows OpenIB Bylaws

[Roland Dreier]

I think the central issue is that there is a conflation of two very
different things: an OpenIB release, and distributions of that OpenIB
release.  In my opinion, the correct consumers to have in my when
thinking of the OpenIB release are the _distributors_: Red Hat,
Novell, Debian, Ubuntu or any other vendors who feel that they can
provide value by packaging, distributing and supporting the OpenIB release.

OpenIB should not think of the release as also being a distribution.
OpenIB has no capacity to provide support (no phone lines, no field
engineers, etc), and it doesn't make sense to try and build this
capacity to compete with commercial vendors who already have it.

The standard in the open source world, as exemplified by projects such
as the Linux kernel, the Gnome project, KDE, X.org, gcc, etc, etc, is
for the open source project to focus on producing a release that
distributors can package and get to end users.  It is _not_ on
producing something that anyone other than the most sophisticated
early adopters on the bloodiest bleeding edge will install directly.

 - R.