On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 9:41 AM Nicolas Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr>
wrote:>
> Le 14/12/2020 ? 15:25, James Pearson a ?crit :
> > As others have said, it misses the _really_ important bit about the
> > traditional CentOS model which is to follow the RHEL ~10 year life
cycle
>
> I totally agree with you.
>
> But when you disagree with someone (e.g. the CentOS team), it's good at
least
> to hear the person out.
>
If you have followed the other threads in the subject, there is
one called "[CentOS]
https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/" where centos
and redhat are talking with the users, developers (like the bloke who
does epel), and supporters about the changes. I would say that means
people are discussing that in the list. If you missed that, please
look for it in the mail archive.
> Back at the university here in Montpellier, we had a funny exercise in one
of
> the courses. Every one of us had to pick a subject where he or she had a
strong
> position. I remember I chose nuclear energy, which I think is a bad choice.
And
> in the exercise, I had to *defend* nuclear energy against its opponents.
>
> And I published the link to the article because it's a fine text and
nicely
> argumented.
>
I usually try to avoid reading anything on medium.com because of
its paywall and how it controls what users get to see; I can provide a
link to what a group who left it wrote if you want. But, for the sake
of hearing you out, I opened the doc in a browser in incognito mode.
In it the author states
'CentOS will no longer be old, crusty, and barely alive, trailing RHEL
by months at times.'
First, the word choice in that sentence, which prevails the article,
is anything but nicely argumented as you put it. Second, Centos stream
will have some patches before RHES but the security patches will be
done *after* RHES. In my book that sounds like it checks the
"trailing RHEL by months at times" box where it counts. So, his pretty
drawing is very innaccurate.
Further down the author tells us that "IBM did not do this. The CentOS
governing board, some of which work for Red Hat, did this." Thanks to
the "[CentOS]
https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/"
thread it became known that redhat told the centos steering committee
that centos was changing and they -- centos committee -- had the
option to vote to approve those changes -- unanimously -- while redhat
reserved the right to overrule the entire voting. To understand the
significance of this, we need to remember what the "C" in CentOS stand
for: community.
The author also states "This was not done intentionally. It is also
water under the bridge." I would like to focus on the last sentence.
That sounds very final and implies the "C" in Centos matters little
(refer to my previous comment on the decision process).
Then the author goes on and says 'If you are someone who is thinking,
?CentOS is now just the RHEL beta,? please ask yourself, did you use
to consider RHEL to be the CentOS beta? If not, you shouldn?t be
thinking that now about CentOS.' Like in other parts of this "nicely
argumented article" the author is very condescending, implying anyone
who does not agree with his point is a nitwit. In fact, his "The way
software makes it in is the same. It just hits CentOS first instead of
RHEL first" statement is misleading because of the security patches
case I pointed earlier.
Another of the author's points is that "[...] if RHEL is the gold
standard of stability (which many would suggest it is) then why would
CentOS Stream, a distro effectively taking its place in the line-up,
be less stable?" That clashes with what Chris Wright, the Red Hat CTO
stated
"To be exact, CentOS Stream is an upstream development platform for
ecosystem developers. It will be updated several times a day. This is
not a production operating system."
(source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201212012342/https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/transforming-development-experience-within-centos)
Further down the author argues 'It?s no secret that CentOS competes
with RHEL. I?ve personally heard CTOs tell Red Hat salespeople, ?why
should I buy RHEL when I can use CentOS for free?? I die inside when I
hear that. It is a fair and good question, but asking it tends to fire
up a salesperson and gives them direct financial reasons to hate on
CentOS.' If that is the case, that shows Red Hat salespeople need some
training; there is a RH partner who commented out recently in the list
that his company has no issues helping groups with not enough budget
to use centos, understanding its limitations, and upselling those who
need the commercial version because of the support (last time I used
the RHES support it was quite good).
> Cheers,
>
> Niki
>
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