CentOS - Oct 2018 - Upstream and downstream (was Re: What are the differences between systemd and non-systemd Linux distros?)

On 10/18/2018 4:41 PM, Warren Young wrote:
> On Oct 18, 2018, at 9:41 AM, mark <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
>> people are tired of screaming and yelling about
>> systemd, because we've had years now of the response being
"tough, it's
>> the Wave of the Future"
> We covered that back when RHEL 7 was still in beta: the time is far too
late to change the init system of RHEL 7.  The fact that you?re tired of being
ignored doesn?t enter into it: you could still be yelling about it, and it still
wouldn?t change.  Red Has simply isn?t going to swap out its Enterprise Linux
init system within a major release cycle.
>
> I believe it?s certain that RHEL 8 (and thus CentOS 8) will also be
systemd-based, since we?d be hearing about the change by now via Fedora if it
were otherwise.
>
This brings to mind a video I was pointed to not long ago of Brendan 
Conoboy's talk at a Dojo recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQsUdLPJW20

For quite a long time, many (perhaps most) folks had assumed that Fedora 
functioned more or less directly as the internal alpha for RHEL, with a 
branch at some point occurring, followed by pruning of packages, 
hardening, vendor testing, and release. Subsequently, CentOS (even after 
the RH integration) functioned *strictly* as a clean-room downstream 
rebuild, with the ability to do unsupported things, like alternate 
architectures, or heavier kernels, restricted to what could be done 
while maintaining a 100% binary compatible rebuild. Any contributions 
back up where taken to be incidental, from CentOS users reporting bugs 
that could be verified against RHEL.

Conoboy, on the other hand, takes great pains during the speech to 
describe a much more fluid and complex interaction between CentOS and 
its upstream, and puts forth CentOS as a mechanism (perhaps the best 
mechanism) for the winder EL community to contribute (something?) back 
into RHEL's future. He also gives clear signals that various Fedora 
steps have been in directions that Red Hat did not want EL necessarily 
going, and that the simplistic assumptions we've commonly been making 
aren't really correct.

Obviously, there seems to be a bit of a discrepancy there.

The wider EL community is trapped between a rock and a hard place 
somewhat. If you try to direct Fedora into the needs of EL users, you 
stand a good chance of getting told to pound stand, and that EL is 
getting in the way of bleeding-edge progress. Traditionally, CentOS has 
had its hands tied since it aims to be 100% compatible with upstream. 
Red Hat (and Red-Hat-as-a-sponsor-of-CentOS) might do well to clarify 
just what type of back-and-forth it wants out of the wider EL-using 
community. Does it want direct feedback in the form of tickets? Should 
people form SIGs? Obviously RHEL7 is not changing init systems, but 
where should one talk about the future?

>> Poettering is like upper management: they
>> know, I mean, Everything, so why should they need to talk to end users
(or
>> working sysadmins)?
> The suggestion that Red Hat is not listening to working system
administrators beggars belief.  That?s pretty much the basis of their company?s
major income stream.
>
> What Red Hat is not doing is filling every demand from all working system
administrators.  They?re choosing which demands to address, as any software
project management must.
This seems a bit specious. How many working SA's and Engineers at paid 
shops call up their Red Hat rep for something like this? This isn't the 
type of thing you demand a strategy conference call from them for unless 
you're absolutely huge, or you have a very bored manager. People just 
complained (heavily) about it internally, went back to fixing the latest 
crisis, and hoped the adults working on RHEL would do the right thing 
when it came to reliability. I'm sure Red Hat understands that looking 
at the financials of dropped licenses and counting up the total of any 
vague, complaining support tickets are not the whole picture.

On the other point (while keeping personalities out of it)... I think EL 
users are likely to have more experience in large, enterprise 
organizations -- the kind of orgs where technical decisions sometimes 
take a back seat to politics. Everyone's seen a land grab in person, and 
everyone's seen, and probably done themselves -- I know I have, 
techniques for getting a toe-hold, leveraging it into a larger area of 
control, and ensuring your project becomes pretty much indispensable. 
The suggestion that this has occasionally happened at Red Hat and that 
questionable technical situations might have resulted doesn't seem 
unreasonable, even if it is indeed out of scope for this list.


-jc

On Oct 18, 2018, at 6:52 PM, Japheth Cleaver <cleaver at terabithia.org>
wrote:
> 
> Conoboy, on the other hand, takes great pains during the speech to describe
a much more fluid and complex interaction between CentOS and its upstream, and
puts forth CentOS as a mechanism (perhaps the best mechanism) for the winder EL
community to contribute (something?) back into RHEL's future.
I don?t see a change as significant as a new (or old!) init system making its
way up from CentOS or Fedora to RHEL.

But hey, if you wanted to spend your time trying, that?s a *far* better use of
your time than griping about systemd on mailing lists.

I think forking CentOS 5 or 6 is less effort, but hey, your time, your project.

If anyone out there is thinking this is too much work, some of the major Linux
distributions are, or were at one point, largely one-person efforts.  It is
certainly not a lot of work, but you don?t need a multibillion dollar company to
fork CentOS.

Both projects could fail, and it would still be a much better signal to Red Hat
what the people want.  Again: working code argues best.

On Oct 18, 2018, at 7:35 PM, Warren Young <warren at etr-usa.com>
wrote:
> 
> It is certainly not a lot of work
Typo: remove ?not?.  Running your own Linux distro is a *lot* of work.  Just ask
our benefactors here!

Also, I should clarify that I?m not calling for action for my own benefit.  I?m
a happy CentOS 7 user; it would take a *very* nice alternative to make me
switch.  I?m just saying that I?d much rather see people starting a project to
produce a new distro than more anti-systemd griping.

If the project is successful, the user community can then vote with its feet.

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 05:52:12PM -0700, Japheth Cleaver
wrote:
> The wider EL community is trapped between a rock and a hard place
> somewhat. If you try to direct Fedora into the needs of EL users,
> you stand a good chance of getting told to pound stand, and that EL
> is getting in the way of bleeding-edge progress. Traditionally,
For what it's worth (I hope something!) I think this is an outdated fear or
assumption. Before Fedora.next, the "default user" for Fedora was
assumed to
be an indiviual desktop user, and the overall Fedora OS offering meant to be
one-size-fits-all but modeled to that user. That wasn't working, partly
for the reason you identify here. Nonetheless, something like 20% of Fedora
usage is on servers, and a lot of people work with Fedora in parallel with
a Enterprise Linux deployment. We needed to find a place for those users to
have a voice.

So, Fedora Server was explicitly chartered as not just for its own sake
(although we intend to make that true as well) but also the intentional
upstream for downstream enterprise Linux consumers. That doesn't mean that
every change there goes into RHEL, or is RH blessed or even Red Hat aligned
? but the needs of EL users are *definitely* taken into account.

> wider EL-using community. Does it want direct feedback in the form
> of tickets? Should people form SIGs? Obviously RHEL7 is not changing
> init systems, but where should one talk about the future?
If this is your interest, I'd really encourage you to get more involved
in Fedora Server. We could use your input.


-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader

On Sat, October 20, 2018 8:23 am, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 05:52:12PM -0700, Japheth Cleaver wrote:
>> The wider EL community is trapped between a rock and a hard place
>> somewhat. If you try to direct Fedora into the needs of EL users,
>> you stand a good chance of getting told to pound stand, and that EL
>> is getting in the way of bleeding-edge progress. Traditionally,
>
> For what it's worth (I hope something!) I think this is an outdated
fear
> or
> assumption. Before Fedora.next, the "default user" for Fedora was
assumed
> to
> be an indiviual desktop user, and the overall Fedora OS offering meant to
> be
> one-size-fits-all but modeled to that user. That wasn't working, partly
> for the reason you identify here. Nonetheless, something like 20% of
> Fedora
> usage is on servers, and a lot of people work with Fedora in parallel with
> a Enterprise Linux deployment. We needed to find a place for those users
> to
> have a voice.
I would like to hear the reasons of those who chose to use Fedora on their
server. Specifically what advantages one has found compared to other
alternatives. And also what kind of server that is. Single
user/home/family one? Serving some department or similar (say 100 people,
who may need services 24/7/365)? I know, this is just my curiosity, as I
did make my own choice, but curiosity grossly fueled by the fact that my
choice is grossly different.

Always happy to hear different [from mine] opinions which may be based on
different objectives.

Valeri
>
> So, Fedora Server was explicitly chartered as not just for its own sake
> (although we intend to make that true as well) but also the intentional
> upstream for downstream enterprise Linux consumers. That doesn't mean
that
> every change there goes into RHEL, or is RH blessed or even Red Hat
> aligned
> ??? but the needs of EL users are *definitely* taken into account.
>
>
>> wider EL-using community. Does it want direct feedback in the form
>> of tickets? Should people form SIGs? Obviously RHEL7 is not changing
>> init systems, but where should one talk about the future?
>
> If this is your interest, I'd really encourage you to get more involved
> in Fedora Server. We could use your input.
>
>
> --
> Matthew Miller
> <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
> Fedora Project Leader
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On 10/20/2018 6:23 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 05:52:12PM -0700, Japheth Cleaver wrote:
>> The wider EL community is trapped between a rock and a hard place
>> somewhat. If you try to direct Fedora into the needs of EL users,
>> you stand a good chance of getting told to pound stand, and that EL
>> is getting in the way of bleeding-edge progress. Traditionally,
> For what it's worth (I hope something!) I think this is an outdated
fear or
> assumption. Before Fedora.next, the "default user" for Fedora was
assumed to
> be an indiviual desktop user, and the overall Fedora OS offering meant to
be
> one-size-fits-all but modeled to that user. That wasn't working, partly
> for the reason you identify here. Nonetheless, something like 20% of Fedora
> usage is on servers, and a lot of people work with Fedora in parallel with
> a Enterprise Linux deployment. We needed to find a place for those users to
> have a voice.
>
> So, Fedora Server was explicitly chartered as not just for its own sake
> (although we intend to make that true as well) but also the intentional
> upstream for downstream enterprise Linux consumers. That doesn't mean
that
> every change there goes into RHEL, or is RH blessed or even Red Hat aligned
> ? but the needs of EL users are *definitely* taken into account.
>> wider EL-using community. Does it want direct feedback in the form
>> of tickets? Should people form SIGs? Obviously RHEL7 is not changing
>> init systems, but where should one talk about the future?
> If this is your interest, I'd really encourage you to get more involved
> in Fedora Server. We could use your input.
>
This does indeed remind me of the "ring" concept, with the (perhaps 
overloaded) "Core" being something that all subsequent variations on
top
of Fedora (or Fedora-as-upstream) can use with potentially more and more 
alterations in policy, build, selection, and UX the further downstream 
you get.

The problem is that it seems like very low level decisions are and have 
been made that align most closely with the needs of the "individual 
desktop user" rather than in a more neutral manner that allows for 
meaningful distinctions *outside* of minor configs. Fedora Server can 
override Fedora configs, but it still has to deal with those Fedora-wide 
changes. Knowing at least that, for now, Fedora Server is trying to 
serve in this role is definitely encouragement to get more involved 
there, but I do fear a larger paradigm shift is involved.


Some of the Fedora-pushing is most visible in the use of Packaging 
Guidelines to implement that Fedora-specific policy; the outright 
*banning* of initscripts in RPMs (rather than allowing them to continue 
as subpackages or conditionals a la tcp_wrappers) is the ur-example, but 
there are more. Fedora inherited a lot of the moral leadership of RHL, 
but if there's question whether it can safely be considered
"upstream"
for EL (to say nothing of providing guidance other RPM-based distros), 
then I wonder if a further reorganization is necessary beyond Fedora 
into Fedora+Workstation/Server/Atomic.

Maybe if we had something above both Fedora *and* EL (whether the EL is 
RHEL or a Community *Input* ENTprise OS) which worked to enforce maximal 
downstream flexibility for its packages (rawhide specs, if you were), it 
might reduce some of this tension and provide an easier entry point for 
people wanting to get more involved in EL, but not interfere with 
overall Fedora questions. (That's really two distinct proposals there, 
but I hope my meaning comes through.)

-jc