Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Johnny Hughes]

On 12/18/20 3:04 PM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
> On 12/18/20 9:20 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:
>> Suppose it is June of 2022 and I have been collecting and archiving
>> all of the various versions of packages that are coming out for CentOS
>> Stream.  Then, maybe RHEL 8.7 is finalized and hits the mirrors.  I
>> can analyze the versions of packages that landed in RHEL 8.7.  Then I
>> can grab those versions from my archive and tag them "8.7".  I could
>> configure my repositories appropriately and build some ISO images.  Of
>> course, I couldn't call that "CentOS 8.7" because RedHat has
>> prohibited that.  But still I could release ISO's of "Enterprise
>> Respin 8.7".  That is the easy problem to overcome.
> 
> Every package in CentOS stream will be signed with CentOS keys, and
> CentOS is now trademark of Red Hat. Are you sure it would be legal to
> publish/distribute CentOS-signed packages under any other name?
> 
> CentOS and other clones were legaly "safe" because they distributed
> their own binaries, but could bot use any RHEL's binaries...
> 
> 

We are not "sure" .. but SIG content is also signed with CentOS
certified keys.  My hope is we can have a SIG to follow on Stream
content at some point.

Whether we will be able to or not, 5 years of lifetime with a 2 year
overlap with the next version of Stream is still enough time for the
majority of users. It is certainly similar to non payed Ubuntu or Debian
(for example)
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Johnny Hughes]

On 12/18/20 12:35 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 10:36:12AM -0600, Christopher Wensink wrote:
>> You have been involved in CentOS for a long time.  Would you mind
>> explaining the structure here.  Do you work for Red hat full time on
>> the CentOS team?  How many people are on that Team that were working
>> on CentOS?  Is CentOS structured as a non-profit company with staff
>> just working on development of this distribution or is this just a
>> group of independent developers working on the same project?  How
>> many people are working on active development of on the Red hat team
>> / CentOS Organization (if any)?
> 
> Johnny can answer this too (and I'll let him cover the specifics about his
> own employment) but since I'm here:
> 
> Like Fedora, there is no formal legal structure around CentOS as a project.
> "A group of developers and stakeholders" is a reasonable description. Red
> Hat is the primary sponsor of both projects, and holds the trademarks and
> other intellectual property — and takes most legal responsibility and risk.
> Red Hat also funds engineering, hardware, and a community budget.
> 
> There is no dedicated CentOS team at Red Hat, just as there is no dedicated
> Fedora team. There are two highly-relevant teams, though. The first is
> Community Platform Engineering, which serves infrastructure and
> build tooling for both projects. Second is the Open Source Program Office,
> which has a team of community managers and leaders. (Rich Bowen and Marie
> Nordin fit in there.) Others are employeed other places — Ben Cotton, who
> serves as Program Manager for both Fedora and CentOS Stream — comes to us
> from the program management office.
> 
> There is no one at Red Hat whose individual job is "develop Fedora".
> Instead, like non-RH community members, lots of different people across Red
> Hat engineering have "maintain my package in Fedora" as part of their job,
> or "work on the Fedora Workstation as a whole". Those people are usually
> also responsible for something similar in RHEL.
> 
> This is true for RDO for OpenStack or OKD for OpenShift, too. And I'd have
> to check for sure but I assume it is also the case for AWX for Ansible.
> 
> So, CentOS Linux is something kind of an aberration, because RH was paying
> people in the CPE team to spend their time on package builds, even though
> they weren't building those packages for RHEL. That's the thing Red Hat
> wants to stop doing. With Stream, packages will be actually built by the
> engineers who are building them for RHEL. People working on CentOS Stream
> _project_ engineering will be more like the way CPE works for Fedora: on
> infrastructure and services around that.
> 
> As I understand it, this was something like 2-3 full-time equivalent
> positions just doing repackaging and associated work. I don't know the
> precise number. That might not seem like a lot, but if you've ever scrambled
> for req's for a project, you know it's a big deal. Red Hat's RHEL
> organization does not actually have a lot of extra fat to spare. But there
> is a lot of work that needs to be done to make the CentOS Stream
> infrastructure.
> 
> So, like I've said before, the given explanation of "we want to actually
> focus resources" makes total sense to me as an important driver. Instead of
> doing what is essentially duplicative work, people paid to work on CentOS
> specifically can act as catalysts, and the hundreds of people in the RHEL
> organization who previously didn't look at CentOS at all are now CentOS
> developers directly.
> 
> 

Matthew's post is spot on.

I work for Red Hat full time (since the end of 2013) and I am part of
the Community Platform Engineering (CPE) team.  Almost everything CentOS
from inside Red Hat currently happens on this team.  In the future, when
RHEL development has full shifted to the new process, the RHEL engineers
will be directly building CentOS Stream.  Right now, the below mentioned
CentOS Stream team does it.

CentOS Infrastructure, CentOS Linux (legacy .. CentOS 7 until EOL in
2024, CentOS 8 Linux until Dec 2021), CentOS Stream (8 and later on
Stream 9), and CentOS CI are all done from this team.

I personally do CentOS Linux 7 builds (and signing / release/announce)
and I also do most of the CentOS 8 Linux builds and releases.

There is a team that does CentOS Stream.  There are about 5 people on
this team (including me).  This team also helps with CentOS Linux 8 from
time to time as well.

There is a team of people that do infrastructure for both Fedora and
CentOS.  This infrastructure team actually maintains all the CentOS
Builders and the mirrors, etc (all hardware, networks, switches, etc).
There are several people on this team.

There is also a team that does CentOS CI, it also contains several people.

Obviously, there are Managers and also agile team leaders who supervise
/ help set and meet goals that do not actually do hands on work with
machines, builds, etc.

Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Pete]

At 13 December, 2020 Simon Avery wrote:
> Reply-To: CentOS mailing list 
> 
> On Sat, 12 Dec 2020 at 23:55, edward via CentOS  wrote:
> 
> > appears facebook is running centos stream and also helping developing
> > centos.
> 
>  A small but important point of order on that statement, based on the
> article you link;
> 
> "an operating system they derive from CentOS Stream. "
> 
> So Stream is the starting point which Facebook then does "facebook things"
> to and forms their own in-house distro. They're not running Stream.

A few engineers from the OS team at fb gave a talk in brussels earlier this
year. It explains what's different from vanilla stream and what the facebook
things that go into it are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA_Nd3crBuA

Skip to 23:30 where they start talking about stream.
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 19.12.2020 01:46, Leon Fauster via CentOS wrote:
> Am 18.12.20 um 19:14 schrieb Matthew Miller:
>> On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 08:12:26AM -0500, Konstantin Boyandin via 
>> CentOS wrote:
> It's purely a developer's distro.
 Has Chris Wright ever recommended CentOS for any purpose other than
 development and testing?
>>> Will a Red Hat CTO, in his right mind, ever recommend a free clone of
>>> RHEL for any purpose other than  development and testing?
>>
>> Right... he's not "lying", he just has a different audience.
>>
>> Red Hat has definitely never ever said in any official way that CentOS 
>> Linux
>> is acceptable for production uses. And that's not going to change with
>> CentOS Stream.
>>
>> You should see people's heads spin around like a scene from a horror 
>> movie
>> when I suggest that people actually do run Fedora operating systems in
>> production!
> 
> 
> In the different threads here in the list - I noticed that everyone
> (not all in quantity) has a different definition of production and 
> development "classification". For instance RH: Their devel license
> talks about not to use it for production. I am still unsure where
> the border for that are? Running a workstation and "producing" output
> that have value for me is a production system. As also a fly radar
> HA cluster running 24/7 is a production system. Anyway, lets see
> what Q1 2021 will bring ...

A good point. I would say that production server is the one used by 
users of a service - the server which is expected to be stable, reliable 
and predictable.

So yes, the workstation I use in my everyday tasks is a production 
system for me.

-- 
Sincerely,

Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 19.12.2020 01:14, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 08:12:26AM -0500, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS
 wrote:
 It's purely a developer's distro.
>>> Has Chris Wright ever recommended CentOS for any purpose other than
>>> development and testing?
>> Will a Red Hat CTO, in his right mind, ever recommend a free clone of
>> RHEL for any purpose other than  development and testing?
> 
> Right... he's not "lying", he just has a different audience.

An audience from another reality, I assume.

Which makes me curious, why Chris Wright doesn't say a word on the 
subject after the announce of CentOS imminent shutdown? I would admire 
to read his words of "now that we decided to shut down CentOS Linux..."

> Red Hat has definitely never ever said in any official way that CentOS
 Linux
> is acceptable for production uses. And that's not going to change with
> CentOS Stream.

(sigh) CentOS was and still is used successfully on production servers 
all over the globe. Those are facts. Whatever Red Hat thinks or advises 
doesn't change the facts. They would never recommended a *free* clone of 
RHEL for production use, even if it would be 100 times more  stable.

> You should see people's heads spin around like a scene from a horror movie
> when I suggest that people actually do run Fedora operating systems in
> production!

I was using Fedora on production servers, so what?

Finally, I choose to use on production something that requires less 
attention on yearly basis. So Fedora moved on to development systems, 
and CentOS/other distributions with long support are now on production ones.

If people are happy with Fedora on production, that's strange to me, but 
why I should object?

-- 
Sincerely,

Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 18.12.2020 23:28, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 12/17/20 7:54 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:
>> On 16.12.2020 22:50, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>>> On 12/15/20 9:59 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:
 On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 7:41 PM Johnny Hughes 
 wrote:

> $250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take
 into
> account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now
 multiply
> that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all
 over
> the world, different countries, different laws.

 I'm genuinely curious about something, and this is mostly academic
 since it's probably the subject of proprietary discussions within
 RedHat.  Presumably, RedHat had a build pipeline for RHEL that worked
 well for them, by supplying alpha/beta releases of point releases to
 their customers and giving them time to "cook" before releasing those
 point releases into production.  Why would RedHat invest millions more
 in buying the CentOS process just to have CentOS act as the beta?
>>>
>>> Why did they change the development process of RHEL ..
>>>
>>> Because they want to do the development in the community.  The current
>>> process of RHEL development is closed .. they want it to be open.  It is
>>> that simple.
>>>
>>> I think Stream is also very usable as a distro.  I think it will be just
>>> as usable as CentOS Linux is now.
>>
>> It's usable, as Fedora is certainly usable - in its separate use cases.
>> It's not bug-for-bug copy of current RHEL, so it's *not* as usable as
>> CentOS Linux was.
>>
>>> It is not a beta .. I keep saying that.  Before a .0 release (the main,
>>> or first, main reelase) is a beta.  Point releases do not really need
>>> betas .. certainly not open to anyone other than customers.  Now CentOS
>>> Stream is available all the time to everyone, customer or not.  Once the
>>> full infrastructure is in place, everyone (not just RHEL customers) can
>>> provide feed back and bugs, do pull requests, etc.
>>
>> Now please tell me whether Chris Wright was lying when saying the below
>> to ZDNet:
>>
>> "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. It's purely a developer's distro."
>>
>> It's purely a developer's distro. Shall I explain difference between a
>> developer's distro and the one suitable for production servers (a
>> rhetoric question)?
> 
> Of course he wasn't lying.  The purpose of ANY CentOS release from a Red
> Hat perspective, is as a developer release.  Red Hat has never produced
> CentOS to be used in production for any reason.

Believe me, I don't care a penny about what Red Hat has in its perspective.

Fact: CentOS is and was successfully used in a variety of production 
servers (where RH, of course, would prefer to see RHEL). CentOS was 
stable and reliable. This is why I, among other sysadmins, was using it. 
It was stable and conservative, that's what I need.

> It is ALSO completely free to use however YOU want to use it.  As is
> CentOS Stream.  If it meets your requirements, you can use it.  Stream
> is no different.
> 
> People who certify things, who certified CentOS Linux for things, are
> free to evaluate and do that with CentOS Stream as well.
> 
> Is it ever going to be like it was before .. no.  If that is a deal
> breaker for you, OK.  Then you can't use CentOS any longer.  Great, if
> you can't use it, then use something else.
> 
> All I can do is what I can do .. All you can do is what you can do.
> What is absolutely not helpful is continued complaining.  A decision
> was made. It is implemented. CentOS Stream is CentOS Stream.

Who's complaining?

I am just displeased to see a corporation, which has no more use in 
CentOS, having decided to just kill it off.

As it was said many a time in the list, if the problem was in money, all 
RH would need to do was to ask. There would have been much response from 
both people and companies. No, RH just doesn't need it. CentOS Stream 
better supports its business model. Just a business decision, nothing 
personal.

I am sorry to see the community being split and displeased, that's all.

I will definitely use CentOS Stream, as development media (as I use 
Fedora), in case someone cares.

> If you never want to use CentOS again .. great, don't use it.  I can't
> make people use CentOS if they don't want to.
> 
> What I will do is what I have been doing for the last 17 years .. I will
> do the best job I can to make the things I can build for any version of
> CentOS Linux (or Stream) the best they can be.  If people can use them,
> OK.  If they can't OK.

I appreciate both your efforts and and efforts of whoever else supported 
CentOS all these years. It was a great work.

Personally, I advised to whoever I could to buy something from RH to 
support the cause, and supported CentOS in other possible ways I 

Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Ljubomir Ljubojevic]

On 12/18/20 9:20 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:
> Suppose it is June of 2022 and I have been collecting and archiving
> all of the various versions of packages that are coming out for CentOS
> Stream.  Then, maybe RHEL 8.7 is finalized and hits the mirrors.  I
> can analyze the versions of packages that landed in RHEL 8.7.  Then I
> can grab those versions from my archive and tag them "8.7".  I could
> configure my repositories appropriately and build some ISO images.  Of
> course, I couldn't call that "CentOS 8.7" because RedHat has
> prohibited that.  But still I could release ISO's of "Enterprise
> Respin 8.7".  That is the easy problem to overcome.

Every package in CentOS stream will be signed with CentOS keys, and
CentOS is now trademark of Red Hat. Are you sure it would be legal to
publish/distribute CentOS-signed packages under any other name?

CentOS and other clones were legaly "safe" because they distributed
their own binaries, but could bot use any RHEL's binaries...


-- 
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 03:20:30PM -0500, Joshua Kramer wrote:
> 2027 + 1".  Or maybe it's even RHEL 10 by that point.  So maybe long
> term updates won't go through the CentOS Streams process.

Right, as the plan exists right now, long term updates (after five years)
won't go through CentOS Stream.

-- 
Matthew Miller

Fedora Project Leader
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Joshua Kramer]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 11:29 AM Johnny Hughes  wrote:

> People who certify things, who certified CentOS Linux for things, are
> free to evaluate and do that with CentOS Stream as well.

This is what makes me think this isn't as bad as people made it out to
be.  (And yeah, I take full responsibility for being one of those
'people' LOL).  For the community, there are two challenges.  One is
very easy to overcome and the other is an unknown.  (Or perhaps it is
a known, once we can get everyone to see from the same perspective.)

Suppose it is June of 2022 and I have been collecting and archiving
all of the various versions of packages that are coming out for CentOS
Stream.  Then, maybe RHEL 8.7 is finalized and hits the mirrors.  I
can analyze the versions of packages that landed in RHEL 8.7.  Then I
can grab those versions from my archive and tag them "8.7".  I could
configure my repositories appropriately and build some ISO images.  Of
course, I couldn't call that "CentOS 8.7" because RedHat has
prohibited that.  But still I could release ISO's of "Enterprise
Respin 8.7".  That is the easy problem to overcome.

But there's still the question of long term support.  Suppose it is
2027 and some major bug is found in OpenSSL.  For RedHat customers,
RedHat will build a package of OpenSSL for RHEL 8.10 that fixes the
bug.  I would guess that such an OpenSSL package would NOT be the same
one that lands in whatever version of RHEL 9 drops in 2027, since the
OpenSSL in RHEL 9 will be based on a later version of OpenSSL and have
more features.  Presumably that RHEL 8 version of OpenSSL would go
through the CentOS Streams process.  Theoretically I could pick up
that version of the package and provide it as an update to "Enterprise
Respin 8.10".

Except... how could that RHEL8 version of OpenSSL go through the
CentOS Streams process?  Based on what we've been told, at that time,
"CentOS Streams" would really be "Whatever version of RHEL 9 drops in
2027 + 1".  Or maybe it's even RHEL 10 by that point.  So maybe long
term updates won't go through the CentOS Streams process.

So the question for the community is how to account for that second issue.

--JK
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Valeri Galtsev]

> On Dec 18, 2020, at 12:14 PM, Matthew Miller  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 08:12:26AM -0500, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS 
> wrote:
 It's purely a developer's distro.
>>> Has Chris Wright ever recommended CentOS for any purpose other than 
>>> development and testing?
>> Will a Red Hat CTO, in his right mind, ever recommend a free clone of 
>> RHEL for any purpose other than  development and testing?
> 
> Right... he's not "lying", he just has a different audience.
> 
> Red Hat has definitely never ever said in any official way that CentOS Linux
> is acceptable for production uses.

OT: when will I learn to just shut up after arriving at my own decision? 
(rhetoric question)

It doesn’t matter whether RedHat said anything or not. We did use CentOS as 
“binary replica” of RedHat Enterprise (I for one for over decade and a half), 
and did have same level of stability as RedHat Enterprise customers had 
[almost?].Which confirmed the second word in the abbreviated name of the system 
(Community Enterprise OS).

But now there is nothing [in my book] to justify that “Enterprise" word in the 
name.

> And that's not going to change with
> CentOS Stream.
> 
> You should see people's heads spin around like a scene from a horror movie
> when I suggest that people actually do run Fedora operating systems in
> production!

Indeed, that is why many of us who originally switched to Fedora (Hm, when free 
RedHat ceased to exist somewhere near RedHat 8, do people still remember these 
CD/DVD sets?). And shortly after, from Fedora to CentOS.

And no, “development” precursor of RedHat Enterprise which Fedora was is no 
match to “binary replica” of  RedHat Enterprise. And it looks - for not too 
insightful person: myself - that now it will be CentOS a “development” 
precursor of RedHat Enterprise (taking place of Fedora, and potentially same 
production usability as Fedora has). And again, I will be happy for everyone 
who bravely keeps using CentOS (Stream) in production if my feelings are 
gravely wrong. But I myself “chickened out”. Servers: over 6 years ago (to 
FreeBSD, and there no surprises with FreeBSD; but apologies for annoying 
mentioning of the great UNIX successor on this list).

And once again, Thanks a lot for great work, CentOS team! We were enjoying 
excellent fruits of your work,  I - for about decade and a half. And good luck 
to you in future, I know your work will be same great, it is just humble us who 
are unhappy about future arrangement.

Valeri

> 
> -- 
> Matthew Miller
> 
> Fedora Project Leader
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future [ Interesting Article.. ZDNet ]

[John Plemons]

https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudlinux-to-invest-more-than-a-million-dollar-a-year-into-centos-clone/
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Leon Fauster via CentOS]

Am 18.12.20 um 19:14 schrieb Matthew Miller:

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 08:12:26AM -0500, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:

It's purely a developer's distro.

Has Chris Wright ever recommended CentOS for any purpose other than
development and testing?

Will a Red Hat CTO, in his right mind, ever recommend a free clone of
RHEL for any purpose other than  development and testing?


Right... he's not "lying", he just has a different audience.

Red Hat has definitely never ever said in any official way that CentOS Linux
is acceptable for production uses. And that's not going to change with
CentOS Stream.

You should see people's heads spin around like a scene from a horror movie
when I suggest that people actually do run Fedora operating systems in
production!



In the different threads here in the list - I noticed that everyone
(not all in quantity) has a different definition of production and 
development "classification". For instance RH: Their devel license

talks about not to use it for production. I am still unsure where
the border for that are? Running a workstation and "producing" output
that have value for me is a production system. As also a fly radar
HA cluster running 24/7 is a production system. Anyway, lets see
what Q1 2021 will bring ...

--
Leon






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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 10:36:12AM -0600, Christopher Wensink wrote:
> You have been involved in CentOS for a long time.  Would you mind
> explaining the structure here.  Do you work for Red hat full time on
> the CentOS team?  How many people are on that Team that were working
> on CentOS?  Is CentOS structured as a non-profit company with staff
> just working on development of this distribution or is this just a
> group of independent developers working on the same project?  How
> many people are working on active development of on the Red hat team
> / CentOS Organization (if any)?

Johnny can answer this too (and I'll let him cover the specifics about his
own employment) but since I'm here:

Like Fedora, there is no formal legal structure around CentOS as a project.
"A group of developers and stakeholders" is a reasonable description. Red
Hat is the primary sponsor of both projects, and holds the trademarks and
other intellectual property — and takes most legal responsibility and risk.
Red Hat also funds engineering, hardware, and a community budget.

There is no dedicated CentOS team at Red Hat, just as there is no dedicated
Fedora team. There are two highly-relevant teams, though. The first is
Community Platform Engineering, which serves infrastructure and
build tooling for both projects. Second is the Open Source Program Office,
which has a team of community managers and leaders. (Rich Bowen and Marie
Nordin fit in there.) Others are employeed other places — Ben Cotton, who
serves as Program Manager for both Fedora and CentOS Stream — comes to us
from the program management office.

There is no one at Red Hat whose individual job is "develop Fedora".
Instead, like non-RH community members, lots of different people across Red
Hat engineering have "maintain my package in Fedora" as part of their job,
or "work on the Fedora Workstation as a whole". Those people are usually
also responsible for something similar in RHEL.

This is true for RDO for OpenStack or OKD for OpenShift, too. And I'd have
to check for sure but I assume it is also the case for AWX for Ansible.

So, CentOS Linux is something kind of an aberration, because RH was paying
people in the CPE team to spend their time on package builds, even though
they weren't building those packages for RHEL. That's the thing Red Hat
wants to stop doing. With Stream, packages will be actually built by the
engineers who are building them for RHEL. People working on CentOS Stream
_project_ engineering will be more like the way CPE works for Fedora: on
infrastructure and services around that.

As I understand it, this was something like 2-3 full-time equivalent
positions just doing repackaging and associated work. I don't know the
precise number. That might not seem like a lot, but if you've ever scrambled
for req's for a project, you know it's a big deal. Red Hat's RHEL
organization does not actually have a lot of extra fat to spare. But there
is a lot of work that needs to be done to make the CentOS Stream
infrastructure.

So, like I've said before, the given explanation of "we want to actually
focus resources" makes total sense to me as an important driver. Instead of
doing what is essentially duplicative work, people paid to work on CentOS
specifically can act as catalysts, and the hundreds of people in the RHEL
organization who previously didn't look at CentOS at all are now CentOS
developers directly.


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 08:12:26AM -0500, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:
> >> It's purely a developer's distro.
> > Has Chris Wright ever recommended CentOS for any purpose other than 
> > development and testing?
> Will a Red Hat CTO, in his right mind, ever recommend a free clone of 
> RHEL for any purpose other than  development and testing?

Right... he's not "lying", he just has a different audience.

Red Hat has definitely never ever said in any official way that CentOS Linux
is acceptable for production uses. And that's not going to change with
CentOS Stream.

You should see people's heads spin around like a scene from a horror movie
when I suggest that people actually do run Fedora operating systems in
production!


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Christopher Wensink]

Johnny,

You have been involved in CentOS for a long time.  Would you mind 
explaining the structure here.  Do you work for Red hat full time on the 
CentOS team?  How many people are on that Team that were working on 
CentOS?  Is CentOS structured as a non-profit company with staff just 
working on development of this distribution or is this just a group of 
independent developers working on the same project?  How many people are 
working on active development of on the Red hat team / CentOS 
Organization (if any)?


Thanks for your time.

Chris


On 12/18/2020 10:28 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:

On 12/17/20 7:54 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:

On 16.12.2020 22:50, Johnny Hughes wrote:

On 12/15/20 9:59 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 7:41 PM Johnny Hughes  wrote:


$250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
the world, different countries, different laws.

I'm genuinely curious about something, and this is mostly academic
since it's probably the subject of proprietary discussions within
RedHat.  Presumably, RedHat had a build pipeline for RHEL that worked
well for them, by supplying alpha/beta releases of point releases to
their customers and giving them time to "cook" before releasing those
point releases into production.  Why would RedHat invest millions more
in buying the CentOS process just to have CentOS act as the beta?

Why did they change the development process of RHEL ..

Because they want to do the development in the community.  The current
process of RHEL development is closed .. they want it to be open.  It is
that simple.

I think Stream is also very usable as a distro.  I think it will be just
as usable as CentOS Linux is now.

It's usable, as Fedora is certainly usable - in its separate use cases.
It's not bug-for-bug copy of current RHEL, so it's *not* as usable as
CentOS Linux was.


It is not a beta .. I keep saying that.  Before a .0 release (the main,
or first, main reelase) is a beta.  Point releases do not really need
betas .. certainly not open to anyone other than customers.  Now CentOS
Stream is available all the time to everyone, customer or not.  Once the
full infrastructure is in place, everyone (not just RHEL customers) can
provide feed back and bugs, do pull requests, etc.

Now please tell me whether Chris Wright was lying when saying the below
to ZDNet:

"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. It's purely a developer's distro."

It's purely a developer's distro. Shall I explain difference between a
developer's distro and the one suitable for production servers (a
rhetoric question)?


Of course he wasn't lying.  The purpose of ANY CentOS release from a Red
Hat perspective, is as a developer release.  Red Hat has never produced
CentOS to be used in production for any reason.

It is ALSO completely free to use however YOU want to use it.  As is
CentOS Stream.  If it meets your requirements, you can use it.  Stream
is no different.

People who certify things, who certified CentOS Linux for things, are
free to evaluate and do that with CentOS Stream as well.

Is it ever going to be like it was before .. no.  If that is a deal
breaker for you, OK.  Then you can't use CentOS any longer.  Great, if
you can't use it, then use something else.

All I can do is what I can do .. All you can do is what you can do.
What is absolutely not helpful is continued complaining.  A decision
was made. It is implemented. CentOS Stream is CentOS Stream.

If you never want to use CentOS again .. great, don't use it.  I can't
make people use CentOS if they don't want to.

What I will do is what I have been doing for the last 17 years .. I will
do the best job I can to make the things I can build for any version of
CentOS Linux (or Stream) the best they can be.  If people can use them,
OK.  If they can't OK.

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Johnny Hughes]

On 12/17/20 7:54 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:
> On 16.12.2020 22:50, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>> On 12/15/20 9:59 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:
>>> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 7:41 PM Johnny Hughes  wrote:
>>>
 $250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
 account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
 that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
 the world, different countries, different laws.
>>>
>>> I'm genuinely curious about something, and this is mostly academic
>>> since it's probably the subject of proprietary discussions within
>>> RedHat.  Presumably, RedHat had a build pipeline for RHEL that worked
>>> well for them, by supplying alpha/beta releases of point releases to
>>> their customers and giving them time to "cook" before releasing those
>>> point releases into production.  Why would RedHat invest millions more
>>> in buying the CentOS process just to have CentOS act as the beta?
>>
>> Why did they change the development process of RHEL ..
>>
>> Because they want to do the development in the community.  The current
>> process of RHEL development is closed .. they want it to be open.  It is
>> that simple.
>>
>> I think Stream is also very usable as a distro.  I think it will be just
>> as usable as CentOS Linux is now.
> 
> It's usable, as Fedora is certainly usable - in its separate use cases. 
> It's not bug-for-bug copy of current RHEL, so it's *not* as usable as 
> CentOS Linux was.
> 
>> It is not a beta .. I keep saying that.  Before a .0 release (the main,
>> or first, main reelase) is a beta.  Point releases do not really need
>> betas .. certainly not open to anyone other than customers.  Now CentOS
>> Stream is available all the time to everyone, customer or not.  Once the
>> full infrastructure is in place, everyone (not just RHEL customers) can
>> provide feed back and bugs, do pull requests, etc.
> 
> Now please tell me whether Chris Wright was lying when saying the below 
> to ZDNet:
> 
> "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. It's purely a developer's distro."
> 
> It's purely a developer's distro. Shall I explain difference between a 
> developer's distro and the one suitable for production servers (a 
> rhetoric question)?
> 

Of course he wasn't lying.  The purpose of ANY CentOS release from a Red
Hat perspective, is as a developer release.  Red Hat has never produced
CentOS to be used in production for any reason.

It is ALSO completely free to use however YOU want to use it.  As is
CentOS Stream.  If it meets your requirements, you can use it.  Stream
is no different.

People who certify things, who certified CentOS Linux for things, are
free to evaluate and do that with CentOS Stream as well.

Is it ever going to be like it was before .. no.  If that is a deal
breaker for you, OK.  Then you can't use CentOS any longer.  Great, if
you can't use it, then use something else.

All I can do is what I can do .. All you can do is what you can do.
What is absolutely not helpful is continued complaining.  A decision
was made. It is implemented. CentOS Stream is CentOS Stream.

If you never want to use CentOS again .. great, don't use it.  I can't
make people use CentOS if they don't want to.

What I will do is what I have been doing for the last 17 years .. I will
do the best job I can to make the things I can build for any version of
CentOS Linux (or Stream) the best they can be.  If people can use them,
OK.  If they can't OK.

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 18.12.2020 14:46, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 12/17/20 5:54 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:
>> It's purely a developer's distro.
> 
> Has Chris Wright ever recommended CentOS for any purpose other than 
> development and testing?

Will a Red Hat CTO, in his right mind, ever recommend a free clone of 
RHEL for any purpose other than  development and testing?

>> Shall I explain difference between a
>> developer's distro and the one suitable for production servers (a
>> rhetoric question)?
> 
> How did you imagine you would look when you asked a CentOS maintainer if 
> he understands the importance of the thing he's been doing for 17 years?

That's completely unrelated to my statements.

Please do worry about your own look. Thanks.

-- 
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Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/17/20 5:54 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:

It's purely a developer's distro.



Has Chris Wright ever recommended CentOS for any purpose other than 
development and testing?




Shall I explain difference between a
developer's distro and the one suitable for production servers (a
rhetoric question)?


How did you imagine you would look when you asked a CentOS maintainer if 
he understands the importance of the thing he's been doing for 17 years?



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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 16.12.2020 22:50, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 12/15/20 9:59 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 7:41 PM Johnny Hughes  wrote:
>>
>>> $250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
>>> account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
>>> that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
>>> the world, different countries, different laws.
>>
>> I'm genuinely curious about something, and this is mostly academic
>> since it's probably the subject of proprietary discussions within
>> RedHat.  Presumably, RedHat had a build pipeline for RHEL that worked
>> well for them, by supplying alpha/beta releases of point releases to
>> their customers and giving them time to "cook" before releasing those
>> point releases into production.  Why would RedHat invest millions more
>> in buying the CentOS process just to have CentOS act as the beta?
> 
> Why did they change the development process of RHEL ..
> 
> Because they want to do the development in the community.  The current
> process of RHEL development is closed .. they want it to be open.  It is
> that simple.
> 
> I think Stream is also very usable as a distro.  I think it will be just
> as usable as CentOS Linux is now.

It's usable, as Fedora is certainly usable - in its separate use cases. 
It's not bug-for-bug copy of current RHEL, so it's *not* as usable as 
CentOS Linux was.

> It is not a beta .. I keep saying that.  Before a .0 release (the main,
> or first, main reelase) is a beta.  Point releases do not really need
> betas .. certainly not open to anyone other than customers.  Now CentOS
> Stream is available all the time to everyone, customer or not.  Once the
> full infrastructure is in place, everyone (not just RHEL customers) can
> provide feed back and bugs, do pull requests, etc.

Now please tell me whether Chris Wright was lying when saying the below 
to ZDNet:

"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. It's purely a developer's distro."

It's purely a developer's distro. Shall I explain difference between a 
developer's distro and the one suitable for production servers (a 
rhetoric question)?

-- 
Sincerely,

Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Lamar Owen]

On 12/16/20 5:09 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:

Hi Lamar, glad to interact w/ you on the list.  We both have been doing
this for a long time.



Yes, indeed. (Xenix V7 on a TRS-80 Model 16 in 1988..., I STILL use my 
vi skills from that time i my life!)



I was not thrilled about this decision and it would not have been the
one made if things were up to me alone.  Obviously they are not. I did
support the issue from the perspective of the CentOS Board.  Sometimes
we have to make hard decisions in life. Many times, one wishes for
another option.  I do think I chose the best option available.
...



Yes, how true.  Been there, done that, on a much smaller scale.



... People can contact (via email) centos-questi...@redhat.com

...  Other than
it is one of the things the CentOS Board negotiated for before our vote.



Thanks for the pointer.  I see I have some writing to do.  And thanks 
for pushing for that feedback mechanism!


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Leon Fauster via CentOS]

Am 17.12.20 um 17:38 schrieb Nicolas Kovacs:

Le 15/12/2020 à 10:09, Thomas Bendler a écrit :

If you have to deal with proprietary software, OEL is currently the only
cost-free
option you have (if an RHEL clone is wanted). The advantage with OEL is that
most proprietary software supports OEL out-of-the-box, you don't have to do
"naming" tricks to run software like SAP.

Switching to OEL is quite easy (https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol) and the
same method could be used to switch to something else if better options are
available.


+1 on that.

Oracle may be bad, but Oracle Linux is great.



Its great because it has RHEL inside (just joking in a storming weather) :-)

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Nicolas Kovacs]

Le 15/12/2020 à 10:09, Thomas Bendler a écrit :
> If you have to deal with proprietary software, OEL is currently the only
> cost-free
> option you have (if an RHEL clone is wanted). The advantage with OEL is that
> most proprietary software supports OEL out-of-the-box, you don't have to do
> "naming" tricks to run software like SAP.
> 
> Switching to OEL is quite easy (https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol) and the
> same method could be used to switch to something else if better options are
> available.

+1 on that.

Oracle may be bad, but Oracle Linux is great.

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Johnny Hughes]

On 12/16/20 6:07 PM, Peter Eckel wrote:
> Hi Johnny, 
> 
>> $250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
>> account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
>> that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
>> the world, different countries, different laws.
>>
>> .. THEN buy 30 machines minimum (servers, not workstations) for
>> building and testing, buy a service contract for those 30 machines, host
>> the bandwidth required to sync out to 600 worldwide servers.
>>
>> We need all the CI machines .. that is a bunch of blade servers for
>> that.  They need service contacts too.
> 
> I don't doubt your numbers, they sound perfectly reasonable to me. 
> 
> On the other hand: How many of the employees will be laid off or reallocated 
> now that CentOS point releases are no longer published? How many of the 
> servers will be shut down, how many service contracts will be cancelled? 
> What's your estimate of the reduction in bandwidth that will be saved by 
> replacing point releases by a stream of releases with more frequent updates?



CentOS Linux 7 will be fully supported until the scheduled EOL in 2024
and the current employees working on CentOS Linux will continue to work
with the CPE team on CentOS Stream and other projects.
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Peter Eckel]

Hi Johnny, 

> $250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
> account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
> that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
> the world, different countries, different laws.
> 
> .. THEN buy 30 machines minimum (servers, not workstations) for
> building and testing, buy a service contract for those 30 machines, host
> the bandwidth required to sync out to 600 worldwide servers.
> 
> We need all the CI machines .. that is a bunch of blade servers for
> that.  They need service contacts too.

I don't doubt your numbers, they sound perfectly reasonable to me. 

On the other hand: How many of the employees will be laid off or reallocated 
now that CentOS point releases are no longer published? How many of the servers 
will be shut down, how many service contracts will be cancelled? What's your 
estimate of the reduction in bandwidth that will be saved by replacing point 
releases by a stream of releases with more frequent updates?

> In any event it doesn't matter.  The decision is made. If people don't
> want to use CentOS Stream, then don't.  The decision is not changing.

Too bad.

I've just completed a migration of about 30 servers from CentOS 6 to CentOS 8, 
expecting to get another 9 years of lifetime out of that (substantial) work. 
Now I have one year left of that, in which I need to plan what to do. One 
option is to go with the flow and switch to Stream, but I must admit that it's 
not my favourite one. Rocky, Lenix or maybe Springsdale would be the next best 
guesses. But given the fact that I migrated the whole setup process to Ansible 
it might be a good idea to jump off the cliff and switch to Debian or FreeBSD. 
As I said, I have one year left  which I plan to use for evaluation of options.

Two of my big customers will definitely not have that range of options. One of 
them is a RHEL shop with a tendency to try Debian, and last week they strongly 
thought about leaving the RHEL space entirely. The FOSS team there had made 
substantial effort over the last year to get CentOS on the list of 
company-approved operating systems (currently that's only RHEL and Debian), and 
now that work has gone down the drain completely. You can imagine how they feel 
now.

The other one is stuck with RHEL-based distributions (Oracle, you know) - but 
they consider switching to OEL with support as well. At least they'll get rid 
of the hassle with the RHN that way, which can be a pain in the backside.

I doubt those two are the only ones. My guess is this decision will backfire 
big time. I would love to stand corrected in one year's time, because I really 
like the RHEL way of doing things. Or rather, I liked it. Until last week. 
Still a great set of products, but the trustworthiness of Red Hat has taken a 
big hit for me, and for my customers as well.

Anyway, thank you and the rest of the CentOS team for all the great work you've 
done and are doing. It is appreciated, and it will not be forgotten.

  Peter.
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Johnny Hughes]

On 12/16/20 12:28 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> On 12/16/20 10:50 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>> Why did they change the development process of RHEL .. Because they
>> want to do the development in the community. The current process of
>> RHEL development is closed .. they want it to be open. It is that simple.
> Johnny, let me say first of all thanks for these years of hard work.  I
> for one am grateful for your continued and dogged pursuit of what must
> be a mostly thankless task.  Thanks for the explanations from your point
> of view of this transition, too.
> 
> Having said that, I believe that in terms of RHEL development and
> transparency that CentOS Stream will be a very big win.  With working
> resolutions to the 'unsupported by Red Hat but not third-party
> out-of-tree driver kABI breaks frequently' and 'third-party out-of-tree
> hardware driver kABI breaks frequently' issues I'm sure it can be a very
> usable system for what I need CentOS for.  And it will be very nice to
> be able to have actual feedback that might actually make a difference in
> the development of each next point release.  That will work nicely for
> my main daily driver laptop.  Maybe or maybe not for my servers; that
> has yet to be seen.
> 
> But as I posted in my reply to Mike McGrath, Red Hat's reneging on the
> September 24, 2019 statement that "nothing changes" for CentOS,
> especially CentOS 8, still smarts.  A lot.  (I know it must be worse for
> you and the other devs.)
> 

Hi Lamar, glad to interact w/ you on the list.  We both have been doing
this for a long time.

I was not thrilled about this decision and it would not have been the
one made if things were up to me alone.  Obviously they are not. I did
support the issue from the perspective of the CentOS Board.  Sometimes
we have to make hard decisions in life. Many times, one wishes for
another option.  I do think I chose the best option available.

It is very depressing to me that something I love (CentOS Linux) is
going away and being replaced.  I would wish for a different way. But I
know that this decision is final.

As always. I will do my absolute best to make any CentOS Project
offering the best it can possibly be.  I therefore will give my absolute
all to CentOS Stream and do what I can to make it work for as many
people as possible.

Also, Red Hat is working on lower cost (and sometimes even free)
scenarios for current CentOS users for thigns they may not have though
of.  People can contact (via email) centos-questi...@redhat.com

This is not a list for sales leads .. it is a list to help CentOS users.
 Anyone can use it to see if they qualify for one of the upcoming ways
to RHEL.  I don't personally know anything about that list.  Other than
it is one of the things the CentOS Board negotiated for before our vote.

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Lamar Owen]

On 12/16/20 10:50 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
Why did they change the development process of RHEL .. Because they 
want to do the development in the community. The current process of 
RHEL development is closed .. they want it to be open. It is that simple.
Johnny, let me say first of all thanks for these years of hard work.  I 
for one am grateful for your continued and dogged pursuit of what must 
be a mostly thankless task.  Thanks for the explanations from your point 
of view of this transition, too.


Having said that, I believe that in terms of RHEL development and 
transparency that CentOS Stream will be a very big win.  With working 
resolutions to the 'unsupported by Red Hat but not third-party 
out-of-tree driver kABI breaks frequently' and 'third-party out-of-tree 
hardware driver kABI breaks frequently' issues I'm sure it can be a very 
usable system for what I need CentOS for.  And it will be very nice to 
be able to have actual feedback that might actually make a difference in 
the development of each next point release.  That will work nicely for 
my main daily driver laptop.  Maybe or maybe not for my servers; that 
has yet to be seen.


But as I posted in my reply to Mike McGrath, Red Hat's reneging on the 
September 24, 2019 statement that "nothing changes" for CentOS, 
especially CentOS 8, still smarts.  A lot.  (I know it must be worse for 
you and the other devs.)


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[R C]

On 12/16/20 10:39 AM, Frank Saporito wrote:

I may be cynical, but I think this is a business decision.

By gaining control of CentOS, RedHat gained control of its biggest 
(apparent) competitor.  This action should increase the value of 
RedHat.  A few years later, IBM buys RedHat for a staggering 34 
BILLION dollars.  I would expect that before the purchase, there is an 
internal "PowerPoint" slide discussing the elimination of CentOS 
Linux.  Despite the commentary otherwise, I believe CentOS Stream is a 
type of "beta" release.  RedHat can release changes into CentOS Stream 
to make sure it is all good before the point release of RHEL to the 
paying customers.


Or maybe not.



That is exactly my thought. IBM is a very big company, 'physically' as 
well as capital wise  and they do top notch, state of the art, research and


development, and they can pretty much solve any problem. The only 
problem that IBM always had a problem with dealing with is their 
competition.


(The numerous, researchers, scientists, mathematicians, engineers they 
employ,  tremendously increases their overhead, hence everything IBM is 
expensive.


(I expect that to happen to their licensing too, for redhat in the future)




FCS

On 12/15/20 10:59 PM, Gordon Messmer wrote:

On 12/15/20 7:59 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:

Why would RedHat invest millions more
in buying the CentOS process just to have CentOS act as the beta?



Indeed.

Often, when you can't find a reasonable answer to a question, it is 
because the premise of the question itself is wrong.



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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future ("Long goodbye"?)

[Valeri Galtsev]

> On Dec 16, 2020, at 11:38 AM, R C  wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/16/20 9:45 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>> My apologies about top posting.
>> 
>> I join Matthew on all counts.
>> 
>> The following might sound as a rant, but it is not, given the circumstances 
>> we have been put into.
>> 
>> First, and most important: thank you CentOS team for all great work you have 
>> done during all these years. As user who used results of your work without 
>> giving much back (not counting maintaining public mirror, or helping others 
>> on the list whenever I felt my expertise adequate), I can not express how 
>> high I value what you gave to all of us.
>> 
>> Now, that CentOS as we knew it (as a “binary replica” of RedHat Enterprise) 
>> ceases to exist many of us are trying to figure out new long term solution 
>> for their “enterprise” sort of systems. Luckily I only partly have to do 
>> that, as for servers I already did migration quite long ago. My mentioning 
>> it on this list was causing more annoyance than I would like to, so I 
>> stopped mentioning it. But now it is time to mention it again, just to help 
>> everyone arrive at best decision. But first some thoughts on migration to 
>> different Linux Distro:
>> 
>> One of obvious possibilities is to migrate to some other “binary clone” of 
>> RHEL. One can find several, Oracle Linux (even though many are cautious of 
>> Oracle, they - Oracle - didn’t drown out of existence mysql so far, maybe 
>> thanks to mariadb fork existence, …), Scientific Linux (which is effort of 
>> really small team, and I evaluated it well below CentOS when I had to make 
>> decision, and it confirmed true over time), and others... However, once 
>> RedHat (or rather its owner IBM) made fundamental decision, it is not as 
>> much about the one who clones (binary rebuilds) of RHEL, as it is about RHEL 
>> itself. At least fo me it is. As, by undermining trust, even if they roll 
>> everything back to what it was, the trust is already lost by the knowledge 
>> of everyone that any moment they can do that in a future. This alternative 
>> is just out of question for me. Will I maintain RHEL for my current or 
>> potential future employer? Yes, definitely. Will I recommend fair (and way 
>> cheaper, better, longer lasting) alternative? By all means, yes, and with my 
>> experience of migration, and documented migration steps, etc...
>> 
>> Another possibility for pure Linux folks is switch to different distro. Not 
>> with 10 years life cycle (here RedHat was unique), but shorter one, yet with 
>> much easier upgrade from one release to another. [Even knowing about Ubuntu 
>> LTS] Debian would be my choice, which I am going to pursue for CentOS number 
>> crunchers and workstations I maintain. Laptops are Debian clone Ubuntu since 
>> long ago. This will be “rolling release", i.e. mostly you will have to 
>> upgrade packages to latest release, and constantly will take chance 
>> something will break with change of internals of given software from one 
>> release to another. It will be more work (for 24/7/365 servers most gravely 
>> notable). But it may outweigh the single event when your “enterprise” life 
>> is cancelled one day, and you have to redo the whole infrastructure all at 
>> once. Think about it and about peace of mind avoiding that eventuality.
>> 
>> This leads me at last to telling that my sever infrastructure was migrated 
>> long ago to FreeBSD. One can chose different BSD successor based on one’s 
>> own assessment of suitability. First of all, pure Linux folk, it is not that 
>> challenging as one may think. I would say here the same thing I was telling 
>> to my users who we just starting to use UNIX (or Linux). How many command do 
>> you need to know to start using UNIX? Just 5-6 is enough. Start doing 
>> things, and in a couple of Months you will feel you know everything. In 6 
>> Months you will be top expert:
> 
> 
> 
> I work in HPC, pretty much exclusively with redhat and it's 
> clones/derivatives, in very large scale environments.  I mostly do R 
> 'stuff', and very much rely on our admins doing that, I constantly talk with 
> them for advice, or just to discuss system stuff, most of them have been 
> doing this longer then I have. I still consider myself a rookie.
> 
> so yeah   6 months   *chuckle*   you should consider applying in 
> places like that if you're that good.
> 

No I am not considering myself “that good”. Even after running FreeBSD servers 
for what? about last decade probably. And running or using UNIXes long ago 
before I became "Linux guy”. Not at all.

But this is not about myself, this is for those who decide to switch to 
[Free]BSD. Remember how soon after starting with Linux you felt comfortable 
with it? Now mind it that being Linux expert, you will become facile with [Free 
or any other]BSD much sooner. You will likely get rid of “Linuxisms” 6 Month 
down the road, and develop strong BSD-isms when dealing with Linux then.

Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Frank Saporito]

I may be cynical, but I think this is a business decision.

By gaining control of CentOS, RedHat gained control of its biggest 
(apparent) competitor.  This action should increase the value of 
RedHat.  A few years later, IBM buys RedHat for a staggering 34 BILLION 
dollars.  I would expect that before the purchase, there is an internal 
"PowerPoint" slide discussing the elimination of CentOS Linux.  Despite 
the commentary otherwise, I believe CentOS Stream is a type of "beta" 
release.  RedHat can release changes into CentOS Stream to make sure it 
is all good before the point release of RHEL to the paying customers.


Or maybe not.

FCS

On 12/15/20 10:59 PM, Gordon Messmer wrote:

On 12/15/20 7:59 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:

Why would RedHat invest millions more
in buying the CentOS process just to have CentOS act as the beta?



Indeed.

Often, when you can't find a reasonable answer to a question, it is 
because the premise of the question itself is wrong.



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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future ("Long goodbye"?)

[R C]

On 12/16/20 9:45 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

My apologies about top posting.

I join Matthew on all counts.

The following might sound as a rant, but it is not, given the circumstances we 
have been put into.

First, and most important: thank you CentOS team for all great work you have 
done during all these years. As user who used results of your work without 
giving much back (not counting maintaining public mirror, or helping others on 
the list whenever I felt my expertise adequate), I can not express how high I 
value what you gave to all of us.

Now, that CentOS as we knew it (as a “binary replica” of RedHat Enterprise) 
ceases to exist many of us are trying to figure out new long term solution for 
their “enterprise” sort of systems. Luckily I only partly have to do that, as 
for servers I already did migration quite long ago. My mentioning it on this 
list was causing more annoyance than I would like to, so I stopped mentioning 
it. But now it is time to mention it again, just to help everyone arrive at 
best decision. But first some thoughts on migration to different Linux Distro:

One of obvious possibilities is to migrate to some other “binary clone” of 
RHEL. One can find several, Oracle Linux (even though many are cautious of 
Oracle, they - Oracle - didn’t drown out of existence mysql so far, maybe 
thanks to mariadb fork existence, …), Scientific Linux (which is effort of 
really small team, and I evaluated it well below CentOS when I had to make 
decision, and it confirmed true over time), and others... However, once RedHat 
(or rather its owner IBM) made fundamental decision, it is not as much about 
the one who clones (binary rebuilds) of RHEL, as it is about RHEL itself. At 
least fo me it is. As, by undermining trust, even if they roll everything back 
to what it was, the trust is already lost by the knowledge of everyone that any 
moment they can do that in a future. This alternative is just out of question 
for me. Will I maintain RHEL for my current or potential future employer? Yes, 
definitely. Will I recommend fair (and way cheaper, better, longer lasting) 
alternative? By all means, yes, and with my experience of migration, and 
documented migration steps, etc...

Another possibility for pure Linux folks is switch to different distro. Not with 10 
years life cycle (here RedHat was unique), but shorter one, yet with much easier 
upgrade from one release to another. [Even knowing about Ubuntu LTS] Debian would be 
my choice, which I am going to pursue for CentOS number crunchers and workstations I 
maintain. Laptops are Debian clone Ubuntu since long ago. This will be “rolling 
release", i.e. mostly you will have to upgrade packages to latest release, and 
constantly will take chance something will break with change of internals of given 
software from one release to another. It will be more work (for 24/7/365 servers 
most gravely notable). But it may outweigh the single event when your “enterprise” 
life is cancelled one day, and you have to redo the whole infrastructure all at 
once. Think about it and about peace of mind avoiding that eventuality.

This leads me at last to telling that my sever infrastructure was migrated long 
ago to FreeBSD. One can chose different BSD successor based on one’s own 
assessment of suitability. First of all, pure Linux folk, it is not that 
challenging as one may think. I would say here the same thing I was telling to 
my users who we just starting to use UNIX (or Linux). How many command do you 
need to know to start using UNIX? Just 5-6 is enough. Start doing things, and 
in a couple of Months you will feel you know everything. In 6 Months you will 
be top expert:




I work in HPC, pretty much exclusively with redhat and it's 
clones/derivatives, in very large scale environments.  I mostly do R 
'stuff', and very much rely on our admins doing that, I constantly talk 
with them for advice, or just to discuss system stuff, most of them have 
been doing this longer then I have. I still consider myself a rookie.


so yeah   6 months   *chuckle*   you should consider applying in 
places like that if you're that good.






  the one who knows what he knows and knows what he doesn’t know. My choice was 
based on the following facts: FreeBSD is most widely used (even Microsoft was 
once noticed to run some of their servers on FreeBSD). FreeBSD has excellent 
documentation. FreeBSD community is as eager to help the one who got stuck with 
something as our CentOS community is. They have as excellent experts as Johnny, 
Matthew, ... sorry I can not mention everyone, that will take separate huge 
post...

And now, with my servers gone to FreeBSD long ago, I can share this nice 
experience. On FreeBSD (base system is separate, and Linux, BTW, decided to go 
same excellent way), and extra stuff can be added from huge port collection, 
most part of which is available as binary packages. Ports/packages are up to 
their maintainers, and pretty much 

Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future ("Long goodbye"?)

[John Plemons]

I would like to echo the thanks in this post, and to add a bit of 
information that I have learned doing some quick research on where to 
go.  Scientific Linux is basically no more, they deferred to Centos and 
pretty much ended their distribution.
Oracle seems to be the easiest and quickest migration, they have a 
script which will make all of the changes to your server, switching you 
over to the Oracle flavor of Linux. On the horizon is Rocky Linux, a 
start up from the people who brought you Centos. As well as Cloud OS who 
says they are going to pick up where Centos left off, and continue a 
down stream version of the product. Worst case, we / you will have 
Oracle to fall back on if Rocky Linux or Cloud OS doesn't come through..

But once again, a BIG THANK YOU to Centos for all the years of work.

John Plemons


On 12/16/2020 11:45 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

My apologies about top posting.

I join Matthew on all counts.

The following might sound as a rant, but it is not, given the 
circumstances we have been put into.


First, and most important: thank you CentOS team for all great work 
youhave done during all these years. As user who used results of your 
work without giving much back (not counting maintaining public mirror, 
or helping others on the list whenever I felt my expertise adequate), 
I can not express how high I value what you gave to all of us.


Now, that CentOS as we knew it (as a “binary replica” of RedHat 
Enterprise) ceases to exist many of us are trying to figure out new 
long term solution for their “enterprise” sort of systems. Luckily I 
only partly have to do that, as for servers I already didmigration 
quite long ago. My mentioning it on this list was causing 
moreannoyance than I would like to, so I stopped mentioning it. But 
now it is time to mention it again, just to help everyone arrive at 
best decision. But first some thoughts on migration to different Linux 
Distro:


One of obvious possibilities is to migrate to some other “binary 
clone” of RHEL. One can find several, Oracle Linux (even thoughmany 
are cautious of Oracle, they - Oracle - didn’t drown out ofexistence 
mysql so far, maybe thanks to mariadb fork existence, …), Scientific 
Linux (which is effort of really small team, and I evaluated it well 
below CentOS when I had to make decision, and it confirmed trueover 
time), and others... However, once RedHat (or rather its owner 
IBM)made fundamental decision, it is not as much about the one who 
clones (binary rebuilds) of RHEL, as it is about RHEL itself. At least 
fo me it is. As, by undermining trust, even if they roll everything 
back to what it was, the trust is already lost by the knowledge of 
everyone that any moment they can do that in a future. This 
alternative is just out of question for me. Will I maintain RHEL for 
my current or potential future employer? Yes, definitely. Will I 
recommend fair (and way cheaper, better, longer lasting) alternative? 
By all means, yes, and with my experience of migration, and documented 
migration steps, etc...


Another possibility for pure Linux folks is switch to different 
distro.Not with 10 years life cycle (here RedHat was unique), but 
shorter one, yet with much easier upgrade from one release to another. 
[Even knowing about Ubuntu LTS] Debian would be my choice, which I am 
going to pursue for CentOS number crunchers and workstations I 
maintain. Laptops are Debianclone Ubuntu since long ago. This will be 
“rolling release", i.e. mostly you will have to upgrade packages to 
latest release, and constantly will take chance something will break 
with change of internals of given software from one release to 
another. It will be more work (for 24/7/365 servers most gravely 
notable). But it may outweigh the single event when your “enterprise” 
life is cancelled one day, and youhave to redo the whole 
infrastructure all at once. Think about it and about peace of mind 
avoiding that eventuality.


This leads me at last to telling that my sever infrastructure was 
migrated long ago to FreeBSD. One can chose different BSD successor 
based on one’s own assessment of suitability. First of all, pure Linux 
folk, it is not that challenging as one may think. I would say here 
the same thing I was telling to my users who we just starting to use 
UNIX (or Linux). How many command do you need to know to start using 
UNIX? Just 5-6 isenough. Start doing things, and in a couple of Months 
you will feel you know everything. In 6 Months you will be top expert: 
the one who knows what he knows and knows what he doesn’t know. My 
choice was based on the following facts: FreeBSD is most widely used 
(even Microsoft was once noticed to run some of their servers on 
FreeBSD). FreeBSD has excellent documentation. FreeBSD community is as 
eager to help the one who got stuck with something as our CentOS 
community is. They have as excellent experts as Johnny, Matthew, ... 
sorry I can not mention everyone, that will take 

Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future ("Long goodbye"?)

[Valeri Galtsev]

My apologies about top posting.

I join Matthew on all counts.

The following might sound as a rant, but it is not, given the circumstances we 
have been put into.

First, and most important: thank you CentOS team for all great work you have 
done during all these years. As user who used results of your work without 
giving much back (not counting maintaining public mirror, or helping others on 
the list whenever I felt my expertise adequate), I can not express how high I 
value what you gave to all of us.

Now, that CentOS as we knew it (as a “binary replica” of RedHat Enterprise) 
ceases to exist many of us are trying to figure out new long term solution for 
their “enterprise” sort of systems. Luckily I only partly have to do that, as 
for servers I already did migration quite long ago. My mentioning it on this 
list was causing more annoyance than I would like to, so I stopped mentioning 
it. But now it is time to mention it again, just to help everyone arrive at 
best decision. But first some thoughts on migration to different Linux Distro:

One of obvious possibilities is to migrate to some other “binary clone” of 
RHEL. One can find several, Oracle Linux (even though many are cautious of 
Oracle, they - Oracle - didn’t drown out of existence mysql so far, maybe 
thanks to mariadb fork existence, …), Scientific Linux (which is effort of 
really small team, and I evaluated it well below CentOS when I had to make 
decision, and it confirmed true over time), and others... However, once RedHat 
(or rather its owner IBM) made fundamental decision, it is not as much about 
the one who clones (binary rebuilds) of RHEL, as it is about RHEL itself. At 
least fo me it is. As, by undermining trust, even if they roll everything back 
to what it was, the trust is already lost by the knowledge of everyone that any 
moment they can do that in a future. This alternative is just out of question 
for me. Will I maintain RHEL for my current or potential future employer? Yes, 
definitely. Will I recommend fair (and way cheaper, better, longer lasting) 
alternative? By all means, yes, and with my experience of migration, and 
documented migration steps, etc...

Another possibility for pure Linux folks is switch to different distro. Not 
with 10 years life cycle (here RedHat was unique), but shorter one, yet with 
much easier upgrade from one release to another. [Even knowing about Ubuntu 
LTS] Debian would be my choice, which I am going to pursue for CentOS number 
crunchers and workstations I maintain. Laptops are Debian clone Ubuntu since 
long ago. This will be “rolling release", i.e. mostly you will have to upgrade 
packages to latest release, and constantly will take chance something will 
break with change of internals of given software from one release to another. 
It will be more work (for 24/7/365 servers most gravely notable). But it may 
outweigh the single event when your “enterprise” life is cancelled one day, and 
you have to redo the whole infrastructure all at once. Think about it and about 
peace of mind avoiding that eventuality.

This leads me at last to telling that my sever infrastructure was migrated long 
ago to FreeBSD. One can chose different BSD successor based on one’s own 
assessment of suitability. First of all, pure Linux folk, it is not that 
challenging as one may think. I would say here the same thing I was telling to 
my users who we just starting to use UNIX (or Linux). How many command do you 
need to know to start using UNIX? Just 5-6 is enough. Start doing things, and 
in a couple of Months you will feel you know everything. In 6 Months you will 
be top expert: the one who knows what he knows and knows what he doesn’t know. 
My choice was based on the following facts: FreeBSD is most widely used (even 
Microsoft was once noticed to run some of their servers on FreeBSD). FreeBSD 
has excellent documentation. FreeBSD community is as eager to help the one who 
got stuck with something as our CentOS community is. They have as excellent 
experts as Johnny, Matthew, ... sorry I can not mention everyone, that will 
take separate huge post...

And now, with my servers gone to FreeBSD long ago, I can share this nice 
experience. On FreeBSD (base system is separate, and Linux, BTW, decided to go 
same excellent way), and extra stuff can be added from huge port collection, 
most part of which is available as binary packages. Ports/packages are up to 
their maintainers, and pretty much all of the ones I use are available as 
different versions, still maintained and patched, so you not necessarily have 
to upgrade to latest version when it is released. In this respect, individual 
ports or packages can live as “enterprise” portions of your ecosystem 
themselves (each with its own life cycle, still…) This actually is not as 
challenging as it may sound, as long before end of life of some package version 
(like PHP-5), at every update you will get warning that it will be end of life 
soon (starts 

Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Johnny Hughes]

On 12/15/20 9:59 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 7:41 PM Johnny Hughes  wrote:
> 
>> $250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
>> account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
>> that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
>> the world, different countries, different laws.
> 
> I'm genuinely curious about something, and this is mostly academic
> since it's probably the subject of proprietary discussions within
> RedHat.  Presumably, RedHat had a build pipeline for RHEL that worked
> well for them, by supplying alpha/beta releases of point releases to
> their customers and giving them time to "cook" before releasing those
> point releases into production.  Why would RedHat invest millions more
> in buying the CentOS process just to have CentOS act as the beta?

Why did they change the development process of RHEL ..

Because they want to do the development in the community.  The current
process of RHEL development is closed .. they want it to be open.  It is
that simple.

I think Stream is also very usable as a distro.  I think it will be just
as usable as CentOS Linux is now.

It is not a beta .. I keep saying that.  Before a .0 release (the main,
or first, main reelase) is a beta.  Point releases do not really need
betas .. certainly not open to anyone other than customers.  Now CentOS
Stream is available all the time to everyone, customer or not.  Once the
full infrastructure is in place, everyone (not just RHEL customers) can
provide feed back and bugs, do pull requests, etc.

All users can also interact with all interim versions of packages, not
just the items that get released.  You can also see what is coming at
any time if you are a RHEL customer.

If you are building things for RHEL .. you can build against what will
be the RHEL + 0.1 source code.  You (as the developer) can also make
that open to public / community.  Developers can also do SIGs in CentOS
Stream.





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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/15/20 7:59 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:

Why would RedHat invest millions more
in buying the CentOS process just to have CentOS act as the beta?



Indeed.

Often, when you can't find a reasonable answer to a question, it is 
because the premise of the question itself is wrong.



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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Joshua Kramer]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 7:41 PM Johnny Hughes  wrote:

> $250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
> account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
> that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
> the world, different countries, different laws.

I'm genuinely curious about something, and this is mostly academic
since it's probably the subject of proprietary discussions within
RedHat.  Presumably, RedHat had a build pipeline for RHEL that worked
well for them, by supplying alpha/beta releases of point releases to
their customers and giving them time to "cook" before releasing those
point releases into production.  Why would RedHat invest millions more
in buying the CentOS process just to have CentOS act as the beta?
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Joshua Kramer]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 9:14 PM Bernstein, Noam CIV USN NRL (6393)
Washington DC (USA) via CentOS  wrote:

> Every package that ends up in a RHEL point release is in Stream at some 
> point, right?  While I can certainly believe that the cost for the entire 
> CentOS effort is much more than $250K, dropping CentOS point releases just 
> means not gathering the particular versions that ended up in the 
> corresponding RHEL point release.

This is exactly what I was talking about.  I didn't ask, "how much
does it cost to build CentOS".  More specifically I was speculating on
the amount of additional effort that was specifically required to do
CentOS point release support, over and above the standard CentOS
development (that RedHat would still be paying for).  Having said
that- it's possible that RedHat has heavily modified the build path
for CentOS, since now it's upstream of RHEL instead of downstream; and
if that's the case it could be that the new build path makes it
impossible to build point releases.  Having said THAT- it should be
relatively simple to tag specific versions of packages in CentOS once
those packages are released in a RHEL point release, then do an ISO
build off of that.  (I was guesstimating that it would take one FTE
worth of time to do such tagging or other work needed to build the
point releases based on the work that had already been done on the
Stream updates, that's where I got the $250k from.)

It seems as if it ought to actually be less expensive to do things
this way than it has traditionally been to do CentOS... since
traditionally, the CentOS team has had to pull the SRPMS for RHEL,
duplicate a bunch of effort that RedHat had done to build them in the
first place, and reconcile differences.  Now since CentOS is actually
part of the real RHEL build process, the work to create CentOS is paid
for by RHEL.  Officially.

Maybe THAT is the problem.  Since CentOS is now part of the official
RHEL build pipeline, RedHat is unwilling to allow that work to be used
to build the traditional CentOS point releases.  They aren't going to
directly contribute work that is paid for by RHEL to do the free
CentOS releases.  In order to do the 'clean room' implementation of
point releases they would have to essentially re-duplicate ALL of the
work that has traditionally been required to build CentOS... and
THAT'S where the requirement of 8 FTE developers and dozens of servers
comes from.  They would build RHEL point releases and then they would
put forth the 8 FTE worth of effort to do a clean-room rebuild of
those releases in the form of CentOS, as they always have done.

>From an internal view, if I were a RedHat business manager, I could
totally see a legitimate desire to not fund a free product with the
resources used to build my paid flagship product.

Having realized all of the above- and I understand this is pure
speculation on my part- from an external view, as a community member,
it looks different.  It seems like RedHat is saying, "WAAAH WAAAH YOU
CAN'T HAVE MY TOYS GIVE THEM BACK OR ELSE"  Even if the above is
true regarding internal RHEL management not wanting RHEL funding a
free product, *there is NO practical difference* on the effects
towards the community.  It is still the case that by taking this
course of action RedHat has branded itself as being a bad faith actor.
It is still the case that it would only cost RedHat a trivial amount-
perhaps substantially less than the $250k I estimated- to continue to
do CentOS point releases based off of RHEL.  It is still the case that
RedHat could earn back a huge chunk of the trust that it destroyed, by
deciding to spend this trivial amount to continue the status quo of
CentOS builds.

RedHat needs to keep the following in mind: there is still value in
RHEL.  Patent indemnification, contractually guaranteed SLA's for
defects for mission critical systems, and so forth.  This is the whole
idea of RedHat's existence, isn't it?  To take all of these hundreds
of free software packages and repackage them and sell the value that
the legal and contractual guarantees offer.  As a community we don't
want that for CentOS.  We know it's "not legally supported".  We know
that, if it breaks, we get to fix it ourselves or keep all the broken
pieces.  What we do want is a system that is repeatable, stable, and
known.  CentOS point releases provide that.  CentOS Stream doesn't.
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Bernstein, Noam CIV USN NRL (6393) Washington DC (USA) via CentOS]

On Dec 15, 2020, at 7:41 PM, Johnny Hughes 
mailto:joh...@centos.org>> wrote:

$250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
the world, different countries, different laws.

Every package that ends up in a RHEL point release is in Stream at some point, 
right?  While I can certainly believe that the cost for the entire CentOS 
effort is much more than $250K, dropping CentOS point releases just means not 
gathering the particular versions that ended up in the corresponding RHEL point 
release.

Even for someone outside of CentOS, it sounds as simple as constantly 
downloading everything that's released in Stream (since apparently old rpm 
revisions won't stay in the CentOS repo), then looking at which versions made 
it into the RHEL point release, and copying just those to a repo for update.   
Am I missing some complex step?
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Phelps, Matthew]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 7:41 PM Johnny Hughes  wrote:

> On 12/15/20 6:12 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:
> >> I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
> >> reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually
> the
> >> stated motivation
> >> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2
> >
> > First, I will note that I think the idea of creating *a version of*
> > CentOS that is called "Stream", with the intent that it leads RHEL by
> > a bit, is a GREAT idea, for exactly the stated reasons!
> >
> > There's one problem I have with this asserted motivation.  Stream is
> > not being done as *a version of* CentOS.  It is being done as *THE*
> > CentOS, which means you're discontinuing point releases.  As far as
> > "maintaining CentOS point releases to follow RHEL"- this is what is
> > being discontinued.  How much money, in developer time and other
> > incidentals, does this cost RedHat per year?  Of course this is a
> > proprietary number.  But let's imagine that this number is $250k per
> > year.  Out of what was it, about $433M of profit (2019)?  So it would
> > cost RedHat 0.06% of profit to hire more developers to keep issuing
> > CentOS point releases.
> >
> > What does RedHat "buy" in return for spending 0.06% of its profit on
> > maintaining point releases?
> > -Community trust and goodwill.  Those members of the community that
> > cannot afford RedHat licenses for whatever reason still know that the
> > #1 player in the Linux marketplace still has their back.  Then when
> > those folks move on to enterprises that can afford RH licensing (and
> > in some cases demand it), will select RedHat because of this trust and
> > goodwill.  They will be highly likely to recommend other RedHat
> > products- since it all "works together" and they'll know RHEL (i.e.
> > CentOS) well.  Also note that this trust and goodwill means
> > "convenience", even within enterprises that have a large budget with
> > RedHat.  If I have a project and I want to spin up 100 OS instances
> > just for the heck of it, I can.  I don't need to ask anyone, I don't
> > need to reserve or download any entitlement key files.  I don't need
> > to debug weird problems when entitlement key files don't work.
> > -Control of part of the ecosystem.  Those companies that build their
> > products to run on RHEL (or in RHEL containers) are able to (and
> > encouraged to) certify those products on RHEL because they are able to
> > use CentOS.
> >
> > But more to the point, what does RedHat LOSE by saving 0.06% of its
> > profit?  The damage to community trust and goodwill far exceeds the
> > gains that would be realized if the status quo were kept in place.
> > Yes, it's true that many of the folks who used CentOS would never turn
> > into paying customers.  But due to this situation, you have thousands
> > of system administrators who are actively looking to completely
> > abandon the RedHat ecosystem altogether.  When it comes time to
> > recommend products... they aren't going to recommend RHEL.  They
> > aren't going to recommend JBoss, or Fuse, or 3Scale API management.
> > It's clear that RedHat can't be trusted with some parts of its
> > portfolio, so why should we trust ANY of its products?
>
> So don't trust them.  Move to something else if you think something is
> better.
>
> >
> > If it is 100% factually correct that the ONLY motivation for killing
> > point releases is the stated motivation, then it's just a simple
> > matter of finding a spare $250k (or whatever that cost is) from the
> > almost-half-a-billion dollar corporate coin purse.  The return on
> > investment has been, and will continue to be, immeasurable...
> $250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
> account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
> that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
> the world, different countries, different laws.
>
>  .. THEN buy 30 machines minimum (servers, not workstations) for
> building and testing, buy a service contract for those 30 machines, host
> the bandwidth required to sync out to 600 worldwide servers.
>
> We need all the CI machines .. that is a bunch of blade servers for
> that.  They need service contacts too.
>
> In any event it doesn't matter.  The decision is made. If people don't
> want to use CentOS Stream, then don't.  The decision is not changing.
> ___
>

We won't.

Thanks for all your work in the past. Good luck to you.

And to Red Hat I have one more thing to say:

Buh bye!


###


-- 

*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: mphe...@cfa.harvard.edu


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Johnny Hughes]

On 12/15/20 6:12 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:
>> I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
>> reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually the
>> stated motivation
>> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2
> 
> First, I will note that I think the idea of creating *a version of*
> CentOS that is called "Stream", with the intent that it leads RHEL by
> a bit, is a GREAT idea, for exactly the stated reasons!
> 
> There's one problem I have with this asserted motivation.  Stream is
> not being done as *a version of* CentOS.  It is being done as *THE*
> CentOS, which means you're discontinuing point releases.  As far as
> "maintaining CentOS point releases to follow RHEL"- this is what is
> being discontinued.  How much money, in developer time and other
> incidentals, does this cost RedHat per year?  Of course this is a
> proprietary number.  But let's imagine that this number is $250k per
> year.  Out of what was it, about $433M of profit (2019)?  So it would
> cost RedHat 0.06% of profit to hire more developers to keep issuing
> CentOS point releases.
> 
> What does RedHat "buy" in return for spending 0.06% of its profit on
> maintaining point releases?
> -Community trust and goodwill.  Those members of the community that
> cannot afford RedHat licenses for whatever reason still know that the
> #1 player in the Linux marketplace still has their back.  Then when
> those folks move on to enterprises that can afford RH licensing (and
> in some cases demand it), will select RedHat because of this trust and
> goodwill.  They will be highly likely to recommend other RedHat
> products- since it all "works together" and they'll know RHEL (i.e.
> CentOS) well.  Also note that this trust and goodwill means
> "convenience", even within enterprises that have a large budget with
> RedHat.  If I have a project and I want to spin up 100 OS instances
> just for the heck of it, I can.  I don't need to ask anyone, I don't
> need to reserve or download any entitlement key files.  I don't need
> to debug weird problems when entitlement key files don't work.
> -Control of part of the ecosystem.  Those companies that build their
> products to run on RHEL (or in RHEL containers) are able to (and
> encouraged to) certify those products on RHEL because they are able to
> use CentOS.
> 
> But more to the point, what does RedHat LOSE by saving 0.06% of its
> profit?  The damage to community trust and goodwill far exceeds the
> gains that would be realized if the status quo were kept in place.
> Yes, it's true that many of the folks who used CentOS would never turn
> into paying customers.  But due to this situation, you have thousands
> of system administrators who are actively looking to completely
> abandon the RedHat ecosystem altogether.  When it comes time to
> recommend products... they aren't going to recommend RHEL.  They
> aren't going to recommend JBoss, or Fuse, or 3Scale API management.
> It's clear that RedHat can't be trusted with some parts of its
> portfolio, so why should we trust ANY of its products?

So don't trust them.  Move to something else if you think something is
better.

> 
> If it is 100% factually correct that the ONLY motivation for killing
> point releases is the stated motivation, then it's just a simple
> matter of finding a spare $250k (or whatever that cost is) from the
> almost-half-a-billion dollar corporate coin purse.  The return on
> investment has been, and will continue to be, immeasurable... 
$250K is not even close.  That is one employee, when you also take into
account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc.  now multiply
that by 8.  Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
the world, different countries, different laws.

 .. THEN buy 30 machines minimum (servers, not workstations) for
building and testing, buy a service contract for those 30 machines, host
the bandwidth required to sync out to 600 worldwide servers.

We need all the CI machines .. that is a bunch of blade servers for
that.  They need service contacts too.

In any event it doesn't matter.  The decision is made. If people don't
want to use CentOS Stream, then don't.  The decision is not changing.
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Joshua Kramer]

> I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
> reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually the
> stated motivation
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2

First, I will note that I think the idea of creating *a version of*
CentOS that is called "Stream", with the intent that it leads RHEL by
a bit, is a GREAT idea, for exactly the stated reasons!

There's one problem I have with this asserted motivation.  Stream is
not being done as *a version of* CentOS.  It is being done as *THE*
CentOS, which means you're discontinuing point releases.  As far as
"maintaining CentOS point releases to follow RHEL"- this is what is
being discontinued.  How much money, in developer time and other
incidentals, does this cost RedHat per year?  Of course this is a
proprietary number.  But let's imagine that this number is $250k per
year.  Out of what was it, about $433M of profit (2019)?  So it would
cost RedHat 0.06% of profit to hire more developers to keep issuing
CentOS point releases.

What does RedHat "buy" in return for spending 0.06% of its profit on
maintaining point releases?
-Community trust and goodwill.  Those members of the community that
cannot afford RedHat licenses for whatever reason still know that the
#1 player in the Linux marketplace still has their back.  Then when
those folks move on to enterprises that can afford RH licensing (and
in some cases demand it), will select RedHat because of this trust and
goodwill.  They will be highly likely to recommend other RedHat
products- since it all "works together" and they'll know RHEL (i.e.
CentOS) well.  Also note that this trust and goodwill means
"convenience", even within enterprises that have a large budget with
RedHat.  If I have a project and I want to spin up 100 OS instances
just for the heck of it, I can.  I don't need to ask anyone, I don't
need to reserve or download any entitlement key files.  I don't need
to debug weird problems when entitlement key files don't work.
-Control of part of the ecosystem.  Those companies that build their
products to run on RHEL (or in RHEL containers) are able to (and
encouraged to) certify those products on RHEL because they are able to
use CentOS.

But more to the point, what does RedHat LOSE by saving 0.06% of its
profit?  The damage to community trust and goodwill far exceeds the
gains that would be realized if the status quo were kept in place.
Yes, it's true that many of the folks who used CentOS would never turn
into paying customers.  But due to this situation, you have thousands
of system administrators who are actively looking to completely
abandon the RedHat ecosystem altogether.  When it comes time to
recommend products... they aren't going to recommend RHEL.  They
aren't going to recommend JBoss, or Fuse, or 3Scale API management.
It's clear that RedHat can't be trusted with some parts of its
portfolio, so why should we trust ANY of its products?

If it is 100% factually correct that the ONLY motivation for killing
point releases is the stated motivation, then it's just a simple
matter of finding a spare $250k (or whatever that cost is) from the
almost-half-a-billion dollar corporate coin purse.  The return on
investment has been, and will continue to be, immeasurable... IF y'all
do damage control ASAP.

--JK

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 12:06 PM Matthew Miller  wrote:
>
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 01:48:21AM -0700, R C wrote:
> > I think that Centos, being that close to RHEL, should have had a
> > licensing scheme for personal use, small business use, just to make
> > things 'fair'.
>
> So, again, please stay tuned. Not for licensing schemes for CentOS, but for
> programs for these use cases for RHEL. See 
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q10
> and please really do mail centos-questi...@redhat.com with your use cases.
> This is answered by humans designing these programs, not by sales.
>
>
> > I don't think their (IBM/RHEL) course is going to change though,
> > redhat going "commercial" has been going on for a decade and a half
> > or so, and it looks like initial investors have a desire
> > cashing/selling out at this point.
>
> I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
> reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually the
> stated motivation
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2
>
>
> --
> Matthew Miller
> 
> Fedora Project Leader
> ___
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[John R. Dennison]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 10:45:43AM -0700, R C wrote:
> 
> I didn't know that fact, but hey that could be a pretty cool tribute.

It was in Greg's announcement of Rocky Linux.  Right up near the top
if I recall correctly.






John
-- 
Time is the coin of your life.  It is the only coin you have, and only you
can determine how it will be spent.  Be careful lest you let other people
spend it for you.

-- Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), American poet, historian, and novelist


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Tom Bishop]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 12:07 PM Matthew Miller  wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 11:24:03AM -0600, Tom Bishop wrote:
> > I know you and other RHEL folks keep saying this about cashing out etc,
> but
> > they could have kept stream and Centos stable at the same time but chose
> > not to. Ya know, if it walks like a duck and quacks as a duck...who knows
> > maybe this goes down as one of the best decisions ever for RH but I think
> > its going to hurt them in more ways then they ever thought about.
>
> As I've also said before, I have no special insight into how RH and the
> CentOS board came to this timeline, but I _am_ inclined to believe that the
> motivation is the one that they give: they want to focus attention and
> resources. Look at CloudLinux saying that they plan to invest a million
> dollars a year into doing their rebuild. It's easy to _say_ "Red Hat could
> easily have done both".
>
>
> --
> Matthew Miller
> 
> Fedora Project Leader
> ___
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

Please, yeah poor, poor Redhat, they are struggling these days, *cough*
they needed to do this in order to survive. I thought it didn't have
anything to do with cashing in. Really it's there choice if the decide to
run it into the ground or not, to many bean counters get involved and it
all becomes about making money, nowhere close to the original ideals for
the company when it was started.

>
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[R C]

On 12/15/20 11:07 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 11:24:03AM -0600, Tom Bishop wrote:

I know you and other RHEL folks keep saying this about cashing out etc, but
they could have kept stream and Centos stable at the same time but chose
not to. Ya know, if it walks like a duck and quacks as a duck...who knows
maybe this goes down as one of the best decisions ever for RH but I think
its going to hurt them in more ways then they ever thought about.

As I've also said before, I have no special insight into how RH and the
CentOS board came to this timeline, but I _am_ inclined to believe that the
motivation is the one that they give: they want to focus attention and
resources.


yup, I think you are right, they'll pay attention and focus on resources 
...




  Look at CloudLinux saying that they plan to invest a million
dollars a year


WOW  a million a year, that is amazing, that will definitely get 
things going, with that kind of  money you can hire 3 HS students and 
two college drop outs, that's


how MS started too.



  into doing their rebuild. It's easy to _say_ "Red Hat could
easily have done both".



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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 11:24:03AM -0600, Tom Bishop wrote:
> I know you and other RHEL folks keep saying this about cashing out etc, but
> they could have kept stream and Centos stable at the same time but chose
> not to. Ya know, if it walks like a duck and quacks as a duck...who knows
> maybe this goes down as one of the best decisions ever for RH but I think
> its going to hurt them in more ways then they ever thought about.

As I've also said before, I have no special insight into how RH and the
CentOS board came to this timeline, but I _am_ inclined to believe that the
motivation is the one that they give: they want to focus attention and
resources. Look at CloudLinux saying that they plan to invest a million
dollars a year into doing their rebuild. It's easy to _say_ "Red Hat could
easily have done both".


-- 
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Fedora Project Leader
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Jon Pruente]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 11:31 AM Phelps, Matthew 
wrote:

> Not to mention the constant barrage of "You just want free Red Hat" and
> "CentOS users are moochers" and "We deserve value from all those CentOS
> users, so we're going to turn them into beta testers for RHEL." I have
> gotten these responses here and on twitter from CentOS and Red Hat
> employees.
>
> So, sorry, but this line about this not being a money grab is an obvious
> crock of excrement.
>

Or the line that they "never promised 2029" and that it "was a mistake".
THey keep trying to make it out as if the lifetime of CentOS was separate
from RHEL. Yet, this interview comes out where Rich Bowen says exactly that
it is, like we all expected it to be.

> First, it's important to understand that the dates that the CentOS
project lists as EOL (End Of Life) dates are, and always have been,
dependent on Red Hat. That is, we can say that CentOS Linux 7 will be EOL
on a particular date, but if the dates around RHEL 7 shift, hypothetically
speaking, then so will those around CentOS Linux 7. That's what happened
with CentOS Linux 8. This decision was made by Red Hat and the CentOS Board.
https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Red_Hat_to_move_focus_away_from_CentOS_in_favour_of_Stream%3B_CentOS_team_discuss_implications_with_Wikinews
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[R C]

On 12/15/20 10:31 AM, Jon Pruente wrote:

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 2:48 AM R C  wrote:


'Rocky Linux' guy might actually be on to something (although I'd pick
another distro name)


The name comes from his CentOS co-founder Rocky McGaugh, who is no longer
with us, in his memory.


I didn't know that fact, but hey that could be a pretty cool tribute.




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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Peter Huebner]

Am Dienstag, den 15.12.2020, 12:06 -0500 schrieb Matthew Miller:
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 01:48:21AM -0700, R C wrote:
> > I think that Centos, being that close to RHEL, should have had a
> > licensing scheme for personal use, small business use, just to make
> > things 'fair'.
> 
> So, again, please stay tuned. Not for licensing schemes for CentOS,
> but for
> programs for these use cases for RHEL. See
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q10
> and please really do mail centos-questi...@redhat.com with your use
> cases.
> This is answered by humans designing these programs, not by sales.
> 
But with the move of CentOS/RedHat to restrict the previously promised
support time for CentOS 8, they loose alot of trust in future
statements.
Trust must be earned and RedHat/CentOS/IBM has carelessly wasted that
trust.

> > I don't think their (IBM/RHEL) course is going to change though, 
> > redhat going "commercial" has been going on for a decade and a half
> > or so, and it looks like initial investors have a desire
> > cashing/selling out at this point.
> 
> I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
> reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually
> the
> stated motivation
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2
> 
> 
We will see, what happens in the future, but currently i cannot
recommend without serious doubt to trust RedHat in the long run.

--
Peter Huebner

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[R C]

On 12/15/20 10:30 AM, Phelps, Matthew wrote:

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 12:24 PM Tom Bishop  wrote:


On Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 11:06 AM Matthew Miller  wrote:




I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually the
stated motivation
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2


--
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Fedora Project Leader
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I know you and other RHEL folks keep saying this about cashing out etc, but
they could have kept stream and Centos stable at the same time but chose
not to. Ya know, if it walks like a duck and quacks as a duck...who knows
maybe this goes down as one of the best decisions ever for RH but I think
its going to hurt them in more ways then they ever thought about.
___


Not to mention the constant barrage of "You just want free Red Hat" and
"CentOS users are moochers" and "We deserve value from all those CentOS
users, so we're going to turn them into beta testers for RHEL." I have
gotten these responses here and on twitter from CentOS and Red Hat
employees.


Yup, a lot of "Centos Users" are the ones running and building for RHEL 
infrastructure, there's a lot more in it for IBM to take over RHEL than 
there is to take over Ubuntu, mint or build something new. The thought 
more than likely is "an established market is already out there".


I don't think that IBM is in the business of "Hey let's do something 
really nice, because we don't really need/want the money"





So, sorry, but this line about this not being a money grab is an obvious
crock of excrement.



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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[R C]

On 12/15/20 10:24 AM, Tom Bishop wrote:

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 11:06 AM Matthew Miller  wrote:




I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually the
stated motivation
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2


--
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Fedora Project Leader
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I know you and other RHEL folks keep saying this about cashing out etc, but
they could have kept stream and Centos stable at the same time but chose
not to. Ya know, if it walks like a duck and quacks as a duck...who knows
maybe this goes down as one of the best decisions ever for RH but I think
its going to hurt them in more ways then they ever thought about.


I think you are exactly on target there with your thoughts. IBM looks 
after their investors and their customers, they never really cared about 
"personal computing" (pun intended), nor small business computing, and 
evidently, as history shows, suck at it when they made an attempt or two.




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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Jon Pruente]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 2:48 AM R C  wrote:

> 'Rocky Linux' guy might actually be on to something (although I'd pick
> another distro name)
>

The name comes from his CentOS co-founder Rocky McGaugh, who is no longer
with us, in his memory.
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Phelps, Matthew]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 12:24 PM Tom Bishop  wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 11:06 AM Matthew Miller  wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> > I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
> > reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually the
> > stated motivation
> > https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2
> >
> >
> > --
> > Matthew Miller
> > 
> > Fedora Project Leader
> > ___
> > CentOS mailing list
> > CentOS@centos.org
> > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>
>
> I know you and other RHEL folks keep saying this about cashing out etc, but
> they could have kept stream and Centos stable at the same time but chose
> not to. Ya know, if it walks like a duck and quacks as a duck...who knows
> maybe this goes down as one of the best decisions ever for RH but I think
> its going to hurt them in more ways then they ever thought about.
> ___
>

Not to mention the constant barrage of "You just want free Red Hat" and
"CentOS users are moochers" and "We deserve value from all those CentOS
users, so we're going to turn them into beta testers for RHEL." I have
gotten these responses here and on twitter from CentOS and Red Hat
employees.

So, sorry, but this line about this not being a money grab is an obvious
crock of excrement.


-- 

*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: mphe...@cfa.harvard.edu


cfa.harvard.edu | Facebook  | Twitter
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Tom Bishop]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 11:06 AM Matthew Miller  wrote:

>
>
>
> I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
> reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually the
> stated motivation
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2
>
>
> --
> Matthew Miller
> 
> Fedora Project Leader
> ___
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos


I know you and other RHEL folks keep saying this about cashing out etc, but
they could have kept stream and Centos stable at the same time but chose
not to. Ya know, if it walks like a duck and quacks as a duck...who knows
maybe this goes down as one of the best decisions ever for RH but I think
its going to hurt them in more ways then they ever thought about.
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[R C]

On 12/15/20 10:06 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 01:48:21AM -0700, R C wrote:

I think that Centos, being that close to RHEL, should have had a
licensing scheme for personal use, small business use, just to make
things 'fair'.

So, again, please stay tuned. Not for licensing schemes for CentOS, but for
programs for these use cases for RHEL. See 
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q10
and please really do mail centos-questi...@redhat.com with your use cases.
This is answered by humans designing these programs, not by sales.


Oh I know, there are already programs like that. For example, want to 
learn how to play with Kubernetes, sure, here get a free full trial 
licence for RHEL to do that (but you can only get one.). Use cases; I 
think a lot of people using Centos do it, because they can easily/free 
build a server/workstation pretty much the same as at work, the only 
difference being the background being blue instead of red.


Sure, redhat might help these  "use cases" out, but that means you are 
accepting a gift from a company that has an interest in selling to your 
employer, and most employers will definitely not allow that and 
terminate those who do.


From what I understand, RHEL and Centos go different ways so a lot of 
"the community" will start looking for alternatives, and will find them. 
We'll see how it goes.


(the order of magnitude in increase of email on these lists, might be an 
indication about the quality of that idea.)





I don't think their (IBM/RHEL) course is going to change though,
redhat going "commercial" has been going on for a decade and a half
or so, and it looks like initial investors have a desire
cashing/selling out at this point.

I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually the
stated motivation
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2



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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 01:48:21AM -0700, R C wrote:
> I think that Centos, being that close to RHEL, should have had a
> licensing scheme for personal use, small business use, just to make
> things 'fair'.

So, again, please stay tuned. Not for licensing schemes for CentOS, but for
programs for these use cases for RHEL. See 
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q10
and please really do mail centos-questi...@redhat.com with your use cases.
This is answered by humans designing these programs, not by sales.


> I don't think their (IBM/RHEL) course is going to change though, 
> redhat going "commercial" has been going on for a decade and a half
> or so, and it looks like initial investors have a desire
> cashing/selling out at this point.

I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually the
stated motivation
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2


-- 
Matthew Miller

Fedora Project Leader
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Thomas Bendler]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 9:18 AM Patrick Bégou <
patrick.be...@legi.grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:

> I'm also using CentOS for a while and I'm deploying a CentOS8 cluster
> for some months because it was supported until 2029! Bad idea.
> For me, using debian has 2 important drawbacks
> - some of proprietary software we are using is certified RHEL and SLES.
> Deploying on CentOS is out-of-thebox. Deploying on debian (we have also
> debian servers) is often a nightmare and some functionalities still
> doesn't work (and support reply "debian is not supported"). We have no
> alternative for these softwares.
> [...]


If you have to deal with proprietary software, OEL is currently the only
cost-free
option you have (if an RHEL clone is wanted). The advantage with OEL is that
most proprietary software supports OEL out-of-the-box, you don't have to do
"naming" tricks to run software like SAP.

Switching to OEL is quite easy (https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol) and the
same method could be used to switch to something else if better options are
available.

Kind regards Thomas
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Ljubomir Ljubojevic]

On 12/15/20 9:48 AM, R C wrote:
> The only thing RHEL can 'bank on' in the near future is that there is
> nothing else around yet. (but problems like these never lasted long in
> the past)

Springdale made by Princeton exists longer then CentOS:
https://puias.math.ias.edu/

They have "network" CD ISO for 8.1 and boot.iso for 8.3.


-- 
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[R C]

I think that Centos, being that close to RHEL, should have had a 
licensing scheme for personal use, small business use, just to make 
things 'fair'.


It should be fine to use Centos as a "Community Enterprise OS", as a 
stepping stone, but once it starts taking off, like it did with some big 
enterprises, there should have been an obligation to switch to Redhat, 
and pay up.


Centos/RHEL, pretty much being done/over, means that startups are 
confronted with a competitive problem, AND also, upcoming sys 
people/talent not having the opportunity to get into "that world" is a 
problem. I think it is detrimental to the further use of anything RHEL.  
The only thing RHEL can 'bank on' in the near future is that there is 
nothing else around yet. (but problems like these never lasted long in 
the past)


'Rocky Linux' guy might actually be on to something (although I'd pick 
another distro name), if he can pull that off (which is not even that 
far fetched), he can expect 6/7 figure development checks from 
organizations that used the model as it is now, or used to be, 
organizations that use the OS at scale (think multiple 8 figure price 
tag machinery).


I don't think their (IBM/RHEL) course is going to change though,  redhat 
going "commercial" has been going on for a decade and a half or so, and 
it looks like initial investors have a desire cashing/selling out at 
this point.


Centos is kind of equivalent to RHEL, as you mentioned, heck, I have 
RHEL support because of countless licenses where I work AND I can use 
the knowledge databases and support for 'anything remotely' work 
related. I even was explicitly told I can use it for anything at home if 
I wish.



I am not too worried though,  there will be something new, it will just 
not be Centos, nor RHEL, and that just happens every or two decade or 
so, that is just history repeating itself.



Ron




On 12/15/20 1:17 AM, Patrick Bégou wrote:

I'm also using CentOS for a while and I'm deploying a CentOS8 cluster
for some months because it was supported until 2029! Bad idea.
For me, using debian has 2 important drawbacks
- some of proprietary software we are using is certified RHEL and SLES.
Deploying on CentOS is out-of-thebox. Deploying on debian (we have also
debian servers) is often a nightmare and some functionalities still
doesn't work (and support reply "debian is not supported"). We have no
alternative for these softwares.
- hardware support for servers rely also on some certifications and they
are mainly for RHEL or SLES (or Unbutu but for laptops, not servers) and
in case of trouble the support has yet answered "please use a certified
os". Centos is considered as RHEL by the support. Not sure that with
stream it will be the same.

Patrick

Le 14/12/2020 à 17:57, Lamar Owen a écrit :

On 12/12/20 10:34 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:

My only concern ATM is whether RH can change its CentOS 7 maintenance
plans as well, all of a sudden.

This is what bothers me, too, but in a slightly different way.  Even
for the GPL software, Red Hat actually doesn't have to provide public
access to the source code; the only thing required by GPL is that
those who receive binaries must be able to get sources.  So, even
though it has been said that the source will be available, well, it
was also said that C8 would be supported to 2029.  There are enough
packages in RHEL with non-GPL licenses where it would be very
difficult to rebuild the whole distribution without them, and RH is
not required by those licenses (MIT, BSD, and others) to redistribute
those modified sources even to people who have been distributed
binaries.  So, while I want to believe that the sources will remain
available, that belief relies on trust, which unfortunately is less
abundant these days.

So while using another rebuild seems to be a good stopgap solution, I
do wonder if it will prove to be sustainable post-2021.  I'm
personally looking at which of the four (that we know about) to
possibly go to; I just really doubt I am going to use Oracle; Rocky
isn't really there yet and is very young; Springdale is available,
mature, and academically supported (nothing wrong with that, just a
statement); CloudLinux OS Project Lenix isn't yet released.  Out of
the bunch, Springdale would be my first choice right now because it's
been around a very long time and is available now.  C8 is supposed to
be around until end of 2021, so there is some time for the dust to
settle and the way to become more clear, though.  But CentOS 8 Stream
is only an option for me if the hardware driver KABI synchronization
issue is solved and stays solved.  RHEL?  Under the current
subscription models we just can't afford it. (Cost also keeps SLES out
of the running.)

But I'm now seriously considering just simply going to something that
is both older than Red Hat, fully and totally open, extremely
well-supported by a diverse developer community, and used by a whole
lot of people.  Yes, that's Debian; 

Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Patrick Bégou]

I'm also using CentOS for a while and I'm deploying a CentOS8 cluster
for some months because it was supported until 2029! Bad idea.
For me, using debian has 2 important drawbacks
- some of proprietary software we are using is certified RHEL and SLES.
Deploying on CentOS is out-of-thebox. Deploying on debian (we have also
debian servers) is often a nightmare and some functionalities still
doesn't work (and support reply "debian is not supported"). We have no
alternative for these softwares.
- hardware support for servers rely also on some certifications and they
are mainly for RHEL or SLES (or Unbutu but for laptops, not servers) and
in case of trouble the support has yet answered "please use a certified
os". Centos is considered as RHEL by the support. Not sure that with
stream it will be the same.

Patrick

Le 14/12/2020 à 17:57, Lamar Owen a écrit :
> On 12/12/20 10:34 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:
>> My only concern ATM is whether RH can change its CentOS 7 maintenance
>> plans as well, all of a sudden. 
> This is what bothers me, too, but in a slightly different way.  Even
> for the GPL software, Red Hat actually doesn't have to provide public
> access to the source code; the only thing required by GPL is that
> those who receive binaries must be able to get sources.  So, even
> though it has been said that the source will be available, well, it
> was also said that C8 would be supported to 2029.  There are enough
> packages in RHEL with non-GPL licenses where it would be very
> difficult to rebuild the whole distribution without them, and RH is
> not required by those licenses (MIT, BSD, and others) to redistribute
> those modified sources even to people who have been distributed
> binaries.  So, while I want to believe that the sources will remain
> available, that belief relies on trust, which unfortunately is less
> abundant these days.
>
> So while using another rebuild seems to be a good stopgap solution, I
> do wonder if it will prove to be sustainable post-2021.  I'm
> personally looking at which of the four (that we know about) to
> possibly go to; I just really doubt I am going to use Oracle; Rocky
> isn't really there yet and is very young; Springdale is available,
> mature, and academically supported (nothing wrong with that, just a
> statement); CloudLinux OS Project Lenix isn't yet released.  Out of
> the bunch, Springdale would be my first choice right now because it's
> been around a very long time and is available now.  C8 is supposed to
> be around until end of 2021, so there is some time for the dust to
> settle and the way to become more clear, though.  But CentOS 8 Stream
> is only an option for me if the hardware driver KABI synchronization
> issue is solved and stays solved.  RHEL?  Under the current
> subscription models we just can't afford it. (Cost also keeps SLES out
> of the running.)
>
> But I'm now seriously considering just simply going to something that
> is both older than Red Hat, fully and totally open, extremely
> well-supported by a diverse developer community, and used by a whole
> lot of people.  Yes, that's Debian; until I realized where the name
> came from (Deb and Ian) it read to me like a play on 'deviant.'  The
> 'stable' period is shorter, for sure.  The tradeoffs are pretty
> simple: guaranteed openness versus less change for ten years.
>
> So, let's look at that last piece.  CentOS 6's support just ended;
> what have the last nine years and three months of actual C6 support
> looked like?  I supported several C6 machines, and there were distinct
> challenges early on, at least for the first four years or so.  Since
> then, on the server, it's been very stable, but really old; key pieces
> of infrastructure software we use slowly became unusable on C6 due to
> the old versions of specific packages, and either a third-party repo
> with newer packages or a newer CentOS was needed.
>
> Third-party repos have improved over the years, but some of the
> earlier C6 machines I installed had packages from Linuxtech, Dag,
> ATrpms, City-Fan (one particular DVD burner that just had to have the
> non-wodim cdrtools for some reason; yes, I know all the warnings about
> that repo), and others.  Having EPEL and Dag both package a few things
> that I needed, but package them differently, introduced me to package
> pinning and repo priorities I don't miss those days.  Seriously
> stable in the core repos means very little when you need much less
> stable third-party repos to get actual work done. That's also why
> Fedora isn't really an option, just too much package churn; been
> there, done that, a few years ago.
>
> So I've started re-evaluating just why I use CentOS anyway; the answer
> really boils down to the fact that I started out with Red Hat Linux in
> 1997 (I live in North Carolina, and I've always liked supporting local
> companies) and I just really don't want to change; it feels like I've
> wasted so much effort if I change now (that was 

Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Chris Schanzle via CentOS]

On 12/14/20 3:47 PM, Leroy Tennison wrote:
> The whole issue of "support longevity" raises an issue I've been pondering, 
> is 10-year support a good thing from a security perspective?  At work we use 
> Ubuntu LTS which has only a five year support cycle (you can pay for an extra 
> five years) but, even with that, issues have arisen.  Although they do 
> security and bug fix updates, the package versions remain basically the same. 
>  So, if a package is on version 1.2.3, it remains 1.2.3 with bug fixes and 
> security patches for the life of the distribution. Does Red Hat/CentOS do the 
> same thing?

Yes.  Nearly always.  Exceptions are in release notes as "rebasing".


> The reason I ask is I ran into an issue where OpenVPN was updated in a later 
> release to support a more robust security architecture which wasn't available 
> until I upgraded.  A configuration change could have addressed a security 
> weakness in the older version so that the issue wasn't one of a security 
> patch.

This, in a nutshell, is why it is better for stability within a release, to 
back-port fixes.  Yes, it takes a lot more effort by Red Hat to maintain 
software this way.

When you decide a package needs a significantly newer version, that's when you 
start looking at new releases of the OS.





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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Leroy Tennison]

The whole issue of "support longevity" raises an issue I've been pondering, is 
10-year support a good thing from a security perspective?  At work we use 
Ubuntu LTS which has only a five year support cycle (you can pay for an extra 
five years) but, even with that, issues have arisen.  Although they do security 
and bug fix updates, the package versions remain basically the same.  So, if a 
package is on version 1.2.3, it remains 1.2.3 with bug fixes and security 
patches for the life of the distribution. Does Red Hat/CentOS do the same thing?

The reason I ask is I ran into an issue where OpenVPN was updated in a later 
release to support a more robust security architecture which wasn't available 
until I upgraded.  A configuration change could have addressed a security 
weakness in the older version so that the issue wasn't one of a security patch. 
 However, the change required a lot of effort to implement.

Now I'm wondering about packages in general.


From: CentOS  on behalf of Lamar Owen 

Sent: Monday, December 14, 2020 10:57 AM
To: CentOS mailing list 
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

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On 12/12/20 10:34 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:
> My only concern ATM is whether RH can change its CentOS 7 maintenance
> plans as well, all of a sudden.
This is what bothers me, too, but in a slightly different way.  Even for
the GPL software, Red Hat actually doesn't have to provide public access
to the source code; the only thing required by GPL is that those who
receive binaries must be able to get sources.  So, even though it has
been said that the source will be available, well, it was also said that
C8 would be supported to 2029.  There are enough packages in RHEL with
non-GPL licenses where it would be very difficult to rebuild the whole
distribution without them, and RH is not required by those licenses
(MIT, BSD, and others) to redistribute those modified sources even to
people who have been distributed binaries.  So, while I want to believe
that the sources will remain available, that belief relies on trust,
which unfortunately is less abundant these days.

So while using another rebuild seems to be a good stopgap solution, I do
wonder if it will prove to be sustainable post-2021.  I'm personally
looking at which of the four (that we know about) to possibly go to; I
just really doubt I am going to use Oracle; Rocky isn't really there yet
and is very young; Springdale is available, mature, and academically
supported (nothing wrong with that, just a statement); CloudLinux OS
Project Lenix isn't yet released.  Out of the bunch, Springdale would be
my first choice right now because it's been around a very long time and
is available now.  C8 is supposed to be around until end of 2021, so
there is some time for the dust to settle and the way to become more
clear, though.  But CentOS 8 Stream is only an option for me if the
hardware driver KABI synchronization issue is solved and stays solved.
RHEL?  Under the current subscription models we just can't afford it.
(Cost also keeps SLES out of the running.)

But I'm now seriously considering just simply going to something that is
both older than Red Hat, fully and totally open, extremely
well-supported by a diverse developer community, and used by a whole lot
of people.  Yes, that's Debian; until I realized where the name came
from (Deb and Ian) it read to me like a play on 'deviant.'  The 'stable'
period is shorter, for sure.  The tradeoffs are pretty simple:
guaranteed openness versus less change for ten years.

So, let's look at that last piece.  CentOS 6's support just ended; what
have the last nine years and three months of actual C6 support looked
like?  I supported several C6 machines, and there were distinct
c

Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Ian B]

> Lots of chat stuff...

Something interesting happens when there's change. People get involved in a
different way, and it can actually be positive.

Centos for me is an example of something that many people took for granted
(including myself). Now there's change and the start of things like Rocky,
I think a lot of people learn something new with a new distro, and feel
like they can get involved, people learn again what it takes, there's a new
energy. Personally I hope Centos, Rocky all thrive.

My main negative is the shortening of end of life, it's caught me out.
That's a big no-no in this world as far as I'm concerned. It's all been
said already though.

Ian


>
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Lamar Owen]

On 12/12/20 10:34 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:
My only concern ATM is whether RH can change its CentOS 7 maintenance 
plans as well, all of a sudden. 
This is what bothers me, too, but in a slightly different way.  Even for 
the GPL software, Red Hat actually doesn't have to provide public access 
to the source code; the only thing required by GPL is that those who 
receive binaries must be able to get sources.  So, even though it has 
been said that the source will be available, well, it was also said that 
C8 would be supported to 2029.  There are enough packages in RHEL with 
non-GPL licenses where it would be very difficult to rebuild the whole 
distribution without them, and RH is not required by those licenses 
(MIT, BSD, and others) to redistribute those modified sources even to 
people who have been distributed binaries.  So, while I want to believe 
that the sources will remain available, that belief relies on trust, 
which unfortunately is less abundant these days.


So while using another rebuild seems to be a good stopgap solution, I do 
wonder if it will prove to be sustainable post-2021.  I'm personally 
looking at which of the four (that we know about) to possibly go to; I 
just really doubt I am going to use Oracle; Rocky isn't really there yet 
and is very young; Springdale is available, mature, and academically 
supported (nothing wrong with that, just a statement); CloudLinux OS 
Project Lenix isn't yet released.  Out of the bunch, Springdale would be 
my first choice right now because it's been around a very long time and 
is available now.  C8 is supposed to be around until end of 2021, so 
there is some time for the dust to settle and the way to become more 
clear, though.  But CentOS 8 Stream is only an option for me if the 
hardware driver KABI synchronization issue is solved and stays solved.  
RHEL?  Under the current subscription models we just can't afford it. 
(Cost also keeps SLES out of the running.)


But I'm now seriously considering just simply going to something that is 
both older than Red Hat, fully and totally open, extremely 
well-supported by a diverse developer community, and used by a whole lot 
of people.  Yes, that's Debian; until I realized where the name came 
from (Deb and Ian) it read to me like a play on 'deviant.'  The 'stable' 
period is shorter, for sure.  The tradeoffs are pretty simple: 
guaranteed openness versus less change for ten years.


So, let's look at that last piece.  CentOS 6's support just ended; what 
have the last nine years and three months of actual C6 support looked 
like?  I supported several C6 machines, and there were distinct 
challenges early on, at least for the first four years or so.  Since 
then, on the server, it's been very stable, but really old; key pieces 
of infrastructure software we use slowly became unusable on C6 due to 
the old versions of specific packages, and either a third-party repo 
with newer packages or a newer CentOS was needed.


Third-party repos have improved over the years, but some of the earlier 
C6 machines I installed had packages from Linuxtech, Dag, ATrpms, 
City-Fan (one particular DVD burner that just had to have the non-wodim 
cdrtools for some reason; yes, I know all the warnings about that repo), 
and others.  Having EPEL and Dag both package a few things that I 
needed, but package them differently, introduced me to package pinning 
and repo priorities I don't miss those days.  Seriously stable in 
the core repos means very little when you need much less stable 
third-party repos to get actual work done. That's also why Fedora isn't 
really an option, just too much package churn; been there, done that, a 
few years ago.


So I've started re-evaluating just why I use CentOS anyway; the answer 
really boils down to the fact that I started out with Red Hat Linux in 
1997 (I live in North Carolina, and I've always liked supporting local 
companies) and I just really don't want to change; it feels like I've 
wasted so much effort if I change now (that was the reason I stuck with 
it through the Fedora-RHEL split years ago, too, and went with a RHEL 
rebuild, first WBEL then CentOS).  But the reality is not nearly so 
stark; a vast majority of the information and skills I've picked up in 
these years are portable to other distributions; so it's not wasted 
effort.  Well, other than RPM packaging skills; those are a bit less 
portable.  Whenever I've built from source I've tried to either build my 
own RPM for it or rebuild the Fedora RPM for it, and so I have a local 
repo of those packages, making reinstall much easier.  So it becomes a 
tossup: small change to another rebuild now, possibility of major change 
later, or bite the bullet and go ahead and get the major change over 
with and only have small changes later.


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 13.12.2020 03:50, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
> On 12/12/20 4:43 PM, Leon Fauster via CentOS wrote:
>> Am 12.12.20 um 04:11 schrieb Yves Bellefeuille:
>>> "John R. Dennison"  wrote:
>>>
    Yes, far be it from people to worry about putting food on their
    children's table during a pandemic.
 >>
>> What about the small businesses that in this times suffer very much,
>> being forced to pay licenses will kill them ... I have a client that
>> moved from IBMCloud/RedHat to AWS/CentOS to survive this times.
>> (BTW: I suggest initially to use RHEL!) What do imagine who will be
>> killed when they receive the message that they should plan some budgets
>> for new licenses ...
> 
> Hi.
> Springdale Linux, RHEL clone already exists. Rocky Linux clone is in
> preparation, and CloudLinux plans to publish RHEL clone also.
> And notice that CentOS Linux 7 will be supported until EOL in 2024 and
> there will still be support for CentOS Linux 8 for next 12 months,
> enough to chose your exit strategy smartly and without emotions.

Which brings further thoughts. I was creating replacements for CentOS 6 
based systems, obviously beginning with CentOS 8.

CentOS 7 looks less clumsy than CentOS 8, but it only receives 
maintenance updates now. Still 4 years ahead look better than one year 
with CentOS 8.

My only concern ATM is whether RH can change its CentOS 7 maintenance 
plans as well, all of a sudden.

(if I change Linux distribution later to another RHEL clone, it most 
probably would mean complete re-install anyway)

"Choose now, Neo!"

-- 
Sincerely,

Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[John R. Dennison]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 01:40:58AM +0100, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
> They only do not have DVD ISO, but they have "network" CD ISO for 8.1,
> and they have boot.iso for 8.3 for install over internet.

Ahh.  Good to know.  Thanks to both you and Leon Fauster for correcting
me on this.




John
-- 
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing
exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the
well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

-- Herman Melville (1819-1891), novelist and poet


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Ljubomir Ljubojevic]

They only do not have DVD ISO, but they have "network" CD ISO for 8.1,
and they have boot.iso for 8.3 for install over internet.

On 12/12/20 9:55 PM, John R. Dennison wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 09:50:07PM +0100, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>>
>> Hi.
>> Springdale Linux, RHEL clone already exists. Rocky Linux clone is in
>> preparation, and CloudLinux plans to publish RHEL clone also.
>> And notice that CentOS Linux 7 will be supported until EOL in 2024 and
>> there will still be support for CentOS Linux 8 for next 12 months,
>> enough to chose your exit strategy smartly and without emotions.
> 
> Springdale does not at present have an EL8 release to the best of my
> knowledge.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   John
> 
> 
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-- 
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Simon Avery]

On Sat, 12 Dec 2020 at 23:55, edward via CentOS  wrote:

appears facebook is running centos stream and also helping developing
> centos.


 A small but important point of order on that statement, based on the
article you link;

"an operating system they derive from CentOS Stream. "

So Stream is the starting point which Facebook then does "facebook things"
to and forms their own in-house distro. They're not running Stream.
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[edward via CentOS]

hi,

appears facebook is running centos stream and also helping developing 
centos.   not sure if the following article has already been seen:

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innovative-future-enterprise-linux

On 12/12/2020 :43 AM, Leon Fauster via CentOS wrote:

Am 12.12.20 um 04:11 schrieb Yves Bellefeuille:

"John R. Dennison"  wrote:


  Yes, far be it from people to worry about putting food on their
  children's table during a pandemic.


Oh, please. Nobody suggested this has anything to do with the
pandemic; nobody even mentioned the pandemic, except you.



While we are on pandemic, a complete different point here now.
( its already being said, but it occupies us still mentally )

What about the small businesses that in this times suffer very much,
being forced to pay licenses will kill them ... I have a client that 
moved from IBMCloud/RedHat to AWS/CentOS to survive this times.
(BTW: I suggest initially to use RHEL!) What do imagine who will be 
killed when they receive the message that they should plan some 
budgets for new licenses ...


--
Leon


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Leon Fauster via CentOS]

Am 12.12.20 um 21:55 schrieb John R. Dennison:

On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 09:50:07PM +0100, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:


Hi.
Springdale Linux, RHEL clone already exists. Rocky Linux clone is in
preparation, and CloudLinux plans to publish RHEL clone also.
And notice that CentOS Linux 7 will be supported until EOL in 2024 and
there will still be support for CentOS Linux 8 for next 12 months,
enough to chose your exit strategy smartly and without emotions.


Springdale does not at present have an EL8 release to the best of my
knowledge. 


I was also confused at the beginning taking a look at it but they have a 
current EL8.3 branch - a tested migration path look like this:



curl -O 
"https://springdale.math.ias.edu/data/puias/7/x86_64/os/RPM-GPG-KEY-puias;


rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-puias

curl -O 
"https://springdale.math.ias.edu/data/puias/8/x86_64/os/BaseOS/Packages/springdale-release-8.3-0.42.el8.x86_64.rpm;


curl -O 
"https://springdale.math.ias.edu/data/puias/8/x86_64/os/BaseOS/Packages/springdale-appstream-8-0.sdl8.2.noarch.rpm;


curl -O 
"https://springdale.math.ias.edu/data/puias/8/x86_64/os/BaseOS/Packages/springdale-core-8-0.sdl8.2.noarch.rpm;


rpm -K springdale-* |grep "digests signatures OK"

rpm --nodeps -ev centos-linux-release-8.3-1.2011.el8.noarch 
centos-linux-repos-8-2.el8.noarch


yum --releasever 8 localinstall spring*

yum clean all

yum distrosync

reboot

--
Leon

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[John R. Dennison]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 09:50:07PM +0100, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
> 
> Hi.
> Springdale Linux, RHEL clone already exists. Rocky Linux clone is in
> preparation, and CloudLinux plans to publish RHEL clone also.
> And notice that CentOS Linux 7 will be supported until EOL in 2024 and
> there will still be support for CentOS Linux 8 for next 12 months,
> enough to chose your exit strategy smartly and without emotions.

Springdale does not at present have an EL8 release to the best of my
knowledge.





John

-- 
There are men -- now in power in this country -- who do not respect
dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of
America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet
voice and a business suit.

John V. Lindsay (1921-2000), US politician, Congressman, Mayor of New York City


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Ljubomir Ljubojevic]

On 12/12/20 4:43 PM, Leon Fauster via CentOS wrote:
> Am 12.12.20 um 04:11 schrieb Yves Bellefeuille:
>> "John R. Dennison"  wrote:
>>
>>>   Yes, far be it from people to worry about putting food on their
>>>   children's table during a pandemic.
>>
>> Oh, please. Nobody suggested this has anything to do with the
>> pandemic; nobody even mentioned the pandemic, except you.
>>
> 
> While we are on pandemic, a complete different point here now.
> ( its already being said, but it occupies us still mentally )
> 
> What about the small businesses that in this times suffer very much,
> being forced to pay licenses will kill them ... I have a client that
> moved from IBMCloud/RedHat to AWS/CentOS to survive this times.
> (BTW: I suggest initially to use RHEL!) What do imagine who will be
> killed when they receive the message that they should plan some budgets
> for new licenses ...

Hi.
Springdale Linux, RHEL clone already exists. Rocky Linux clone is in
preparation, and CloudLinux plans to publish RHEL clone also.
And notice that CentOS Linux 7 will be supported until EOL in 2024 and
there will still be support for CentOS Linux 8 for next 12 months,
enough to chose your exit strategy smartly and without emotions.

> 
> -- 
> Leon
> 
> 
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-- 
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Lamar Owen]

On 12/11/20 9:51 PM, Yves Bellefeuille wrote:

I'm most disappointed with the silence from Karanbir and friends.
Obviously their Red Hat salary is more important to them than keeping
CentOS the way it was. :-(
This boggles the mind.  OF COURSE their salary should realistically be 
more important to them than keeping CentOS the way it was; how strong of 
a disagreement with your employer is your salary worth?


However, reading between the lines, with Red Hat's internal developers 
directly working with CentOS Stream beginning 1Q 2021, and CentOS 7 
ending support in 2024, I have to wonder a little what the long-term 
employment of those building CentOS looks like, specifically post-CentOS 
7 EOL.  Of course, it's not really any of my business, to be honest, but 
the CentOS developers are all very bright and highly skilled, so they 
are very employable, whether at Red Hat or elsewhere.


Given what's already been posted to the lists, it seems to me that the 
CentOS Board was able to obtain some concessions; I will likely never 
know what those were, nor is it really any of my business what they 
were, but I thank the CentOS Board for doing what they could.


And I thank all those who have built and continue to build CentOS; I've 
had a relatively small exposure to what building and distributing 
packages is like, a few years back (well, 1999 to 2004), and 
user-entitlement-syndrome is part of the reason I won't do that any more 
(my wife's health was the primary reason I stopped, though; priorities 
are priorities!).

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Leon Fauster via CentOS]

Am 12.12.20 um 10:52 schrieb Simon Matter:

I'm most disappointed with the silence from Karanbir and friends.
Obviously their Red Hat salary is more important to them than keeping
CentOS the way it was. :-(


I'm sure they will speak out once they are in position to do so. That's
obviously not now and nobody should blame them for it. They deserve
better!



+1 - some of them have personal blogs ...

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Leon Fauster via CentOS]

Am 12.12.20 um 04:11 schrieb Yves Bellefeuille:

"John R. Dennison"  wrote:


  Yes, far be it from people to worry about putting food on their
  children's table during a pandemic.


Oh, please. Nobody suggested this has anything to do with the
pandemic; nobody even mentioned the pandemic, except you.



While we are on pandemic, a complete different point here now.
( its already being said, but it occupies us still mentally )

What about the small businesses that in this times suffer very much,
being forced to pay licenses will kill them ... I have a client that 
moved from IBMCloud/RedHat to AWS/CentOS to survive this times.
(BTW: I suggest initially to use RHEL!) What do imagine who will be 
killed when they receive the message that they should plan some budgets 
for new licenses ...


--
Leon


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Simon Matter]

> I'm most disappointed with the silence from Karanbir and friends.
> Obviously their Red Hat salary is more important to them than keeping
> CentOS the way it was. :-(

I'm sure they will speak out once they are in position to do so. That's
obviously not now and nobody should blame them for it. They deserve
better!

Simon

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[John R. Dennison]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 10:11:36PM -0500, Yves Bellefeuille wrote:
> 
> Oh, please. Nobody suggested this has anything to do with the
> pandemic; nobody even mentioned the pandemic, except you.

"Red Hat salary more important"

This implies you expect them to put their jobs on the line to protect
some set of ideals.  Even if it were not for the pandemic it's folly to
expect people to commit career suicide over what's a done deal.







John
-- 
For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet,
   Thanksgiving


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Yves Bellefeuille]

"John R. Dennison"  wrote:

>  Yes, far be it from people to worry about putting food on their
>  children's table during a pandemic.

Oh, please. Nobody suggested this has anything to do with the
pandemic; nobody even mentioned the pandemic, except you.

-- 
Yves Bellefeuille



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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[John R. Dennison]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 09:51:05PM -0500, Yves Bellefeuille wrote:
> I'm most disappointed with the silence from Karanbir and friends. 
> Obviously their Red Hat salary is more important to them than keeping 
> CentOS the way it was. :-(

Yes, far be it from people to worry about putting food on their
children's table during a pandemic.

Your mistake, along with that of many, is thinking the Board had a
choice in any of this.  So what, exactly, do you expect Singh or others
to say?  What, if anything, could they say that would make you feel
better about this?




John
-- 
<@rattle> I am fully confident that the cisco feature train is maintained by a
  schizophrenic sadist.


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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Yves Bellefeuille]

I'm most disappointed with the silence from Karanbir and friends. 
Obviously their Red Hat salary is more important to them than keeping 
CentOS the way it was. :-(

-- 
Yves Bellefeuille 
GPG key 837A6134 at http://members.storm.ca/~yan/pgp.asc
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Nikolaos Milas]

On 9/12/2020 3:19 μ.μ., Nikolaos Milas wrote:

I still hope that you will not disappoint CentOS admins and users so 
badly and that you will continue to support CentOS 8 (and CentOS 7) in 
its current/expected form. 


A petition has started, to request IBM/Redhat to continue CentOS 8 as 
initially announced/promised.


Those who agree, are urged to sign:

   
https://www.change.org/p/centos-governing-board-do-not-destroy-centos-by-using-it-as-a-rhel-upstream

Cheers,
Nick

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Nikolaos Milas]

On 8/12/2020 6:58 μ.μ., Satish Patel wrote:


What is going on here https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/

CentOS 8's future is not looking bright. Recently deployed CentOS8 on
my production workload and now hearing this. What do other folks think
about this?


I will totally agree with the following comments on the above blog article:

"Matt Phelps says (December 8, 2020 at 4:12 pm):
This is a breach of trust from the already published timeline of CentOS 
8 where the EOL was May 2029.

One year's notice for such a massive change is unacceptable.
Move this approach to CentOS 9."

and:

"fahrradflucht says (December 8, 2020 at 5:37 pm):
This! People already started deploying CentOS 8 with the expectation of 
10 years of updates.
- Even a migration to RHEL 8 would imply completely reprovisioning the 
systems which is a big ask for systems deployed in the field."


You people at IBM/RedHat are betraying and crucifying your own users and 
community, right after we have started numerous CentOS 8 systems in 
production, after months or even years of planning, investing in 
know-how and testing.


This is really irritating.

If you do not recall this policy, not only you will cause huge problems 
to thousands of administrators out there; you will suffer their wrath.


Unless you recall this policy and provide CentOS 8 as promised until the 
end of its life-cycle, you are proving imposters by luring thousands to 
using a product which you planned to effectively abolish.


I still hope that you will not disappoint CentOS admins and users so 
badly and that you will continue to support CentOS 8 (and CentOS 7) in 
its current/expected form.


Nick

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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 12:44:36PM -0600, Robert G. (Doc) Savage via CentOS 
wrote:
> > CentOS 8's future is not looking bright. Recently deployed CentOS8 on my
> > production workload and now hearing this. What do other folks think
> > about this?
> Speaking only for myself, I am ready to give up on CentOS (and Red Hat)
> entirely. Fedora meets all my clients' needs with none of the chaos.

I definitely appreciate the vote of confidence in Fedora! You're not alone
in using Fedora in a lot of serious ways.

However, I really encourage everyone to give this a chance. This is
(post-Fedora) RHEL development opening up in a new way, and CentOS is
central to it. That's a good place to be!


-- 
Matthew Miller

Fedora Project Leader
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[R C]

On 12/8/20 11:44 AM, Robert G. (Doc) Savage via CentOS wrote:

On Tue, 2020-12-08 at 11:58 -0500, Satish Patel wrote:

Folks,

What is going on here
https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/

CentOS 8's future is not looking bright. Recently deployed CentOS8 on
my production workload and now hearing this. What do other folks
think
about this?

Speaking only for myself, I am ready to give up on CentOS (and Red Hat)
entirely. Fedora meets all my clients' needs with none of the chaos.

I shall miss the stability of past CentOS releases, much as I did those
of Scientific Linux.


same here,  I used Centos because it is 'that close' to redhat, and that 
what I use at work/HPC, but easy to install etc in home environments 
while practically having the same thing. I guess I need to tell my 
employer I need the same thing now.






--Doc Savage
     Fairview Heights, IL
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Re: [CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Robert G. (Doc) Savage via CentOS]

On Tue, 2020-12-08 at 11:58 -0500, Satish Patel wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> What is going on here
> https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/
> 
> CentOS 8's future is not looking bright. Recently deployed CentOS8 on
> my production workload and now hearing this. What do other folks
> think
> about this?

Speaking only for myself, I am ready to give up on CentOS (and Red Hat)
entirely. Fedora meets all my clients' needs with none of the chaos.

I shall miss the stability of past CentOS releases, much as I did those
of Scientific Linux.

--Doc Savage
    Fairview Heights, IL
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[CentOS] CentOS 8 future

[Satish Patel]

Folks,

What is going on here https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/

CentOS 8's future is not looking bright. Recently deployed CentOS8 on
my production workload and now hearing this. What do other folks think
about this?
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