CentOS - Dec 2020 - https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/

On Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 03:15:17PM +0000, Pete Biggs
wrote:
> Forgive a bit of cynicism ...
Sure, some cynicism is absolutely warranted. It's a big change.

> "If you want to keep using RHEL for free, you will have to put up with
> making sure that our paying customers get better quality releases"
I mean.... That's not the _worst_ deal I've ever heard. But actually
it's
better than you've stated, because the benefit to others happens even
regardless of the paying customers -- others using CentOS Stream also
benefit. And for that matter since many of fixes go upstream, users of open
source in general.

(In some ways, this is like: being a paying customer of RHEL also benefits
other paying customers. And for that matter, those paying customers benefit
all of the free users, and Fedora, and hundreds of upstreams.)

> "CentOS will become the developer playground"
This one is categorically not the case. Even Fedora isn't a developer
playground. Everything landing in CentOS Stream is actually *planned* (with
emphasis intentional) to go in a future RHEL release.

Previously, all the development around RHEL releases was done in secret, in
the Red Hat black box. Now it's out of the box and can be watched. There may
be some launch pains, but I expect the average quality of an update hitting
CentOS Stream to be very high.

> >
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innovative-future-enterprise-linux]
> Red Hat's perspective is "CentOS is ours now; IBM have told us to
make
> sure it's pulling its weight or we aren't allowed to put any
resources
> into it"
Of course, that link says nothing of the sort. It's easy to imagine IBM
conspiracies, but the honest truth is that there's nothing to that. Now, I
don't know everything, and it may be the case that IBM is secretly
pulling all sorts of invisible strings and making Red Hat management dance,
but I do know about *this* particular thing and IBM had nothing to do with
it.



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

Forget about IBM.

We were told way back in 2014, when Red Hat bought CentOS, that CentOS
would remain independent from RedHat. This is clearly bullshit now. So we
were totally misled into adopting the platform with the belief that what we
were getting would stay the same, an unsupported recompile of RHEL and its
updates.

This is no longer what we will be getting, and even worse, it is no longer
what we will be getting AFTER BEING ASSURED that CentOS 8 would remain in
parallel with RHEL 8 until 2029.

This is a classic bait-and-switch money grab and it is going to hurt *a
lot* of people in the form of a shitload of added work to change platforms.

It's totally contemptible and a complete betrayal to loyal enthusiasts.

I have ZERO respect for RedHat now, and unless the decision is reversed,
I'll prosthelytize against them as loud as I can, on as many platforms as I
can.

I . Am. PISSED.

-Matt

P.S. Where is Karanbir? He is supposedly the Chair of the CentOS Board. I
want to hear from him on this.







On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 5:54 PM Matthew Miller <mattdm at mattdm.org>
wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 03:15:17PM +0000, Pete Biggs wrote:
> > Forgive a bit of cynicism ...
>
> Sure, some cynicism is absolutely warranted. It's a big change.
>
>
> > "If you want to keep using RHEL for free, you will have to put up
with
> > making sure that our paying customers get better quality
releases"
>
> I mean.... That's not the _worst_ deal I've ever heard. But
actually it's
> better than you've stated, because the benefit to others happens even
> regardless of the paying customers -- others using CentOS Stream also
> benefit. And for that matter since many of fixes go upstream, users of open
> source in general.
>
> (In some ways, this is like: being a paying customer of RHEL also benefits
> other paying customers. And for that matter, those paying customers benefit
> all of the free users, and Fedora, and hundreds of upstreams.)
>
>
> > "CentOS will become the developer playground"
>
> This one is categorically not the case. Even Fedora isn't a developer
> playground. Everything landing in CentOS Stream is actually *planned* (with
> emphasis intentional) to go in a future RHEL release.
>
> Previously, all the development around RHEL releases was done in secret, in
> the Red Hat black box. Now it's out of the box and can be watched.
There
> may
> be some launch pains, but I expect the average quality of an update hitting
> CentOS Stream to be very high.
>
>
> > >
>
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innovative-future-enterprise-linux
> ]
> > Red Hat's perspective is "CentOS is ours now; IBM have told
us to make
> > sure it's pulling its weight or we aren't allowed to put any
resources
> > into it"
>
> Of course, that link says nothing of the sort. It's easy to imagine IBM
> conspiracies, but the honest truth is that there's nothing to that.
Now, I
> don't know everything, and it may be the case that IBM is secretly
> pulling all sorts of invisible strings and making Red Hat management dance,
> but I do know about *this* particular thing and IBM had nothing to do with
> it.
>
>
>
> --
> Matthew Miller
> <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
> Fedora Project Leader
> _______________________________________________
> 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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On Tue, 2020-12-08 at 17:54 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 03:15:17PM +0000, Pete Biggs wrote:
> > "CentOS will become the developer playground"
> 
> This one is categorically not the case. Even Fedora isn't a developer
> playground. Everything landing in CentOS Stream is actually *planned* (with
> emphasis intentional) to go in a future RHEL release.
It's all the talk of SIGs and developing and testing and that Stream
will be the centerpiece of that. That's what I meant. 
> 
> Previously, all the development around RHEL releases was done in secret, in
> the Red Hat black box. Now it's out of the box and can be watched.
There may
> be some launch pains, but I expect the average quality of an update hitting
> CentOS Stream to be very high.
I don't get that from the documents released today.  If Stream is *not*
a test-bed, then surely the code that appears in Stream must be fully
formed in secret behind the scenes first. Yes, it will appear piecemeal
rather than in one big chunk, but it has been categorically denied that
Stream is not a RHEL 8.n+1 beta and is more a RHEL 8.n+1 RC/rolling
release. 


I think what a lot of people are concerned about is the rolling-release
aspect of this. There will be no definitive versioning of CentOS in the
future - all you will be able to say is "fully updated" and it
won't be
possible to slot a CentOS system in to exactly match a RHEL version.
Will third party RPMs built against RHEL 8.x be installable on a CentOS
8 Stream system? The answer is surely "it depends", but there are a
lot
of hardware vendors that target drivers to RHEL releases, which may
well make CentOS non-viable for hardware that doesn't have drivers
built in to the kernel.

I suspect that for a large proportion of scenarios Streams will be
perfectly OK. But we still get software/instruments that specifically
say "only RHEL 7.4" or something like that (yes, it's a support
nightmare).  

P.