CentOS - Jul 2021 - Centos versions in the future?

On 08.07.21 19:53, Gionatan Danti wrote:
> Il 2021-07-08 16:46 Leon Fauster via CentOS ha scritto:
>> Maybe "we" could fill this gap? Describe this state of EPEL?
Did you
>> requested such missing packages? From the early on (EL8.0) I requested
>> such EPEL packages, some fedora maintainers branched there packages
into
>> EPEL8. Even a request for a devel package was honored and the rpm was
>> included by RH later in 8.1. This is a community, so communicate!
>> Everything else is a product in ready state that must be paid.
> 
> For what it is worth, I opened various RH bugzilla enhancement request 
> in the 10+ years of using CentOS. One of the last: 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1902781
> 
> That said, lets face in: current CentOS is not really a community, at 
> least in the sense that a community can steer the project direction. 
> Nobody polled for Stream or asked about it. Stream simply happened due 
> to an unilateral Red Hat decision. *Which is PERFECTLY fine*, unless 
> trying to masking it behind the "community" word.
> 
> My view is that RH/CentOS would be relatively inadequate for many roles 
> without the outstanding work done by EPEL and the rest of the CentOS 
> community, unless you are an hyperscaler who can do its own internal 
> package additions. Red Hat failing to recognize the enormous value of 
> EPEL and former CentOS model really baffles me.

Good phrased. I see it exactly like this but let me take a dialectic
position just for the sake of insights. CentOS Linux (or Rocky Linux)
is a downstream rebuild, right? So, the fences are already set.
Right now, I am seeing a lot of requests in the Rocky forum, to add
new shiny stuff to the distribution and the answer to most of this
is (more or less); "we (Rocky) are a 1:1 rebuild of upstream and we can
not add new stuff in an arbitrary way". So, when talking about a
community then we have different concepts behind it. A RH ecosystem
community is not the same as a Debian community. It was never and it
will never be the same.

I see the RH ecosystem as a hybrid opportunity (perspective from the 
outside), so not all "directions" can be influenced but there is
enough
room to contribute to directions especially with Stream now.


PS: Do not get me wrong; the whole communication from RH about this
"CentOS Change" is catastrophically.

--
Leon

On Thu, Jul 8, 2021 at 5:12 PM Leon Fauster via CentOS <centos at
centos.org>
wrote:
> Right now, I am seeing a lot of requests in the Rocky forum, to add
> new shiny stuff to the distribution and the answer to most of this
> is (more or less); "we (Rocky) are a 1:1 rebuild of upstream and we
can
> not add new stuff in an arbitrary way". So, when talking about a
> community then we have different concepts behind it.
>
Well said.  It is worth pointing out also that, while Kurtzer and other
Rocky community leads are devoted to keeping Rocky 1:1 with upstream, they
are also committed to engaging with the CentOS Stream community themselves
(if they find a bug in upstream code and they can fix it, Kurtzer and
others have stated multiple times that they will contribute the fix into
Stream), and to encouraging such engagement among those who desire to see
improvements with upstream.  In other words, if we are uncomfortable with
the direction Stream is going, the preferred approach is mobilisation
within and engagement with the Stream community to have those changes
realised there, so that they flow into Enterprise Linux and everyone
benefits.