[CentOS] Blog article: CentOS is NOT dead

Phelps, Matthew
Tue, 15 Dec 2020 23:11:07 -0000

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 5:04 PM Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org>
wrote:

> On 12/14/20 8:25 AM, James Pearson wrote:
> > Nicolas Kovacs
> >>
> >> Here's an interesting read which makes a point for CentOS
Stream:
> >>
> >>
>
https://freedomben.medium.com/centos-is-not-dead-please-stop-saying-it-is-at-least-until-you-read-this-4b26b5c44877
> >>
> >> tl;dr: Communication about Stream was BAD, but Stream itself might
be a
> good
> >> thing. Here's why.
> >
> > 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>
> > It doesn't matter how good/rock solid/whatever CentOS Stream turns
out
> to be, but if it only has a 5 year life cycle for each major release, then
> it no good to me (and I suspect many others)
> >
>
>
> There is a 2 year overlap with the next version of stream as well .. in
> this case CentOS Stream 9.  How long is Debian or Ubuntu LTS maintained
> for free?
>
> 5 years may not be long enough for you .. but it certainly pretty long.
>  And I am TRYING to get that extended.  I may not be successful, we'll
> have to see.
>
> > The article also mentions "CentOS will no longer be old, crusty,
and
> barely alive, trailing RHEL by months at times" - then why didn't
Redhat
> put resources into CentOS to improve that?
> >
>
> Do you have any idea how much money Red Hat is paying to maintain
> CentOS.  And they are maintaining CentOS 7, even now, until 2024.  There
> are dozens of machines and several administrators to maintain them.
>
> > Redhat must have known, that if they killed off traditional CentOS,
then
> users will simply go elsewhere for a RHEL rebuild ?
>
> If you chose not to use CentOS Stream, that is up to you.  What is the
> OS of your TV set.  What is the firmware of your computer.  Those things
> are now pretty much irrelevant and commoditized.
>
> At some point the underlying OS is going to be much less important and
> the important part will be the layered parts that contain your apps and
> not the OS Layer.
>
> If you want a RHEL clone, that's fine.  There will be one available.
> Someone will make one.
>
> The real and complete vision of what CentOS Stream will become will not
> be compolete until around the end of QTR1 2021.  If you chose not to try
> it, that is up to you.   I truly think Stream will be a much better and
> more quickly fixed OS when everything is in place.
>

I don't expect you to answer Johnny, but why didn't Red Hat wait until
Stream was "complete'" or ready, or whatever.



> >
> > I agree that Redhat really screwed up this announcement - they would
> have got a lot more kudos if they had announced CentOS Stream to exist
> along with keeping the current traditional CentOS ...
> >
>
> Again .. pay 8 or more people the going rate to just maintain CentOS.
> Buy the dozens of machines and pay for the datacenter, bandwidth,
> hardware services for machines, etc.  This is very expensive.  Maybe the
> company you work for will do that out of the goodness of their heart?
>
>
I guess I don't understand. Isn't Red Hat going to pay for CentOS Stream
engineers, hardware, etc? How much more would it be to use them to build
point releases? Won't much of the personnel and infrastructure be the same?
Is Red Hat going to just get rid of all the CentOS resources? I don't
understand why the resources maintaining CentOS 7, and 8 Stream, can't be
used to build CentOS 8.4/5 etc?

As bummed out as I am about this whole situation, and believe me i
am.
> But even I can clearly see that Red Hat has gone above and beyond the
> requirements of open source software and I am quite tired of all the
> 'they should be happy to pay several million dollars a year to give
away
> a working product."  If it is so easy or cheap to do .. then you guys
do
> it.  I did it for 17 years.  Much of my time was on top of a normal 40
> hour work week.
>
>
Again, we all appreciate it. It's not you we're mad at.


> Red Hat contributes to every major upstream project .. they maintain
> several very key major projects.  They let employees contribute to
> projects and pay for them to work on upstream projects.  how many things
> do they have to do for free?
>
> > James Pearson
>
>
>
>
I understand all your points, and I get it, but the fact is Red Hat
committed to the roadmap (c.f.
https://blog.centos.org/2019/07/ibm-red-hat-and-centos/) and now they're
abruptly breaking a promise. One that is affecting a lot of already
overstressed and underpaid people. If they said this would happen at the
beginning of CentOS 8, or better CentOS 9, then fine. But now?

It sucks big time.

--

*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


cfa.harvard.edu | Facebook <http://cfa.harvard.edu/facebook> | Twitter
<http://cfa.harvard.edu/twitter> | YouTube
<http://cfa.harvard.edu/youtube>
| Newsletter <http://cfa.harvard.edu/newsletter>