CentOS - Dec 2020 - I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

> Am 13.12.2020 um 19:53 schrieb Phelps, Matthew <mphelps at
cfa.harvard.edu>:
> 
> ?On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 11:48 PM Gordon Messmer <gordon.messmer at
gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>>> On 12/11/20 9:56 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>>> And I will repeat that millions of CentOS users found free clone of
RHEL
>>> trustworthy enough to use it for production, even without
"official
>>> endorsement".
>> 
>> 
>> Exactly.  That's why it's so weird that those people, today,
think that
>> CentOS Stream won't be usable, based on their interpretation of the
>> official statements from Red Hat.  Red Hat's statements weren't
taken
>> into consideration before, but now they're a sign of doom?
>> 
>> 
>>> If they ... even allowed ANYONE ELSE that was not employed by Red
Hat in
>>> 2014 to even come close to learning the secrets of rebuild, no
backlash
>>> would have happened
>> 
>> 
>> I'm going to stop you there, because the CentOS maintainers kept
that
>> process out of public visibility long before Red Hat was ever involved.
>> If you think users should know more about the process, then you are
>> pointing fingers at the *wrong* people.
>> 
>> I don't want this to become a flame war.  So rather than pointing
>> fingers, let's focus on the fact that CentOS Stream promises to be
>> developed in the open, resolving the problem that you're
describing.
>> 
>> Red Hat is fixing the thing you're complaining about.
>> 
>> Red Hat is giving us the thing that has been requested more often, by
>> more people, than any other change in CentOS, and the result is that
the
>> press is full of stories about users being angry, because five people
on
>> the mailing lists sent a lot of messages.  (About half of the traffic
in
>> the threads on centos and centos-devel comes from five people, and
>> various people replying to them.)
>> 
>> 
> As one of those "five people" I assure you, this is not just a
few angry
> voices. If you, or anyone at Red Hat believe this is the case, you are very
> sadly mistaken.
> 
> Here is the problem: When IBM took over Red Hat, and hence CentOS, these
> words were posted on the CentOS Blog:
> 
> 
> "What does this mean for Red Hat?s contributions to the CentOS
project?
> 
> In short, nothing.
> 
> Red Hat always has and will continue to be a champion for open source and
> projects like CentOS. IBM is committed to Red Hat?s independence and role
> in open source software communities so that we can continue this work
> without interruption or changes.
> 
> Our mission, governance, and objectives remain the same. We will continue
> to execute the existing project roadmap."
> 
> 
> 
> This was *last year*. (CF
> https://blog.centos.org/2019/07/ibm-red-hat-and-centos/) Note the last
> sentence. The roadmap then had CentOS 8 supported through May 2029.
> 
> The simple fact is Red Hat reneged on a promise that hordes of us believed
> and made a lot of plans on. It is now going to be very expensive, and
> stress inducing to have to completely rethink everything we have done, and
> are doing.
> 
> You damn right we are angry.
> 
> 
> And there's *a lot* more than five of us.
Here is number six.
> 
> 
> 
>>> But no, as soon as Oracle started rebuilding RHEL source code Red
Hat
>>> first made things difficult for everyone to create kernels (source
code
>>> was not srpms anymore but tar?)
>> 
>> 
>> You're misinformed.  Kernels are still built from SRPM, but the
archive
>> used is no longer an upstream release with a series of patches.
>> 
>> The reason for the change is not insidious.  It's unfortunate that
the
>> pristine source + patches can't be maintained, I agree, but
speaking as
>> a developer: maintaining hundreds of patches that touch intersecting
>> files and rebasing them all when earlier patches are updated is an
>> incredibly difficult and time consuming task.  And, if I remember
>> correctly, applying all of those patches took almost as long as
building
>> the kernel.  If it takes that long to just prepare the source code,
>> that's a major hit to productivity when a developer needs to work
on the
>> code or build the SRPM to validate changes.
>> 
>> And, ultimately, there's very little value in shipping those
patches
>> when the vast majority of them are already in the current version of
the
>> upstream kernel, and they're merely backported to the older release
that
>> Red Hat supports.  It's an entirely different story when
distributions
>> are shipping patches that they don't push upstream, but that's
not
>> generally what you see with the kernel package.
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> CentOS mailing list
>> CentOS at centos.org
>> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> *Matt Phelps*
> 
> *Information Technology Specialist, Systems Administrator*
> 
> (Computation Facility, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)
> 
> Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
> 
> 
> 60 Garden Street | MS 39 | Cambridge, MA 02138
> email: mphelps at cfa.harvard.edu
> 
> 
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>
> > And there's *a lot* more than five of us.
>
> Here is number six.
>
Just one of those groups energised from this decision is Rocky Linux. There
are 4,606 people on their Slack right now, which did not even exist a week
ago.

 Yeah, it's more than five.