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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/8/2020 10:20 AM, Rich Bowen
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:f233dba7-383c-beac-a49a-4032a5727752@redhat.com">On
12/8/20 10:15 AM, Dan Seguin wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Yeah, the "free" help just grinded to a
halt.
<br>
<br>
Rich, you being the messenger, send it upwards to (IBM)?
<br>
<br>
Your missive is going to make a lot of people go elsewhere.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
FWIW. IBM has not been part of this conversation. Red Hat is an
independent entity. (Yes, I'm sure that resulted in eyerolls, but
it also happens to be true.)
<br>
<br>
And, yes, not only is feedback here being relayed to management at
Red Hat, most of them are also here reading it the same time that
I am.
<br>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>The "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" tagline might be best
here. It's clear what the broader EL community had wanted for
quite some time was a way to <i>actively</i> contribute back into
the development of Enterprise Linux. CentOS, SL, and others were
downstream, and rightfully so for their design goals. CentOS
Stream (this new incarnation, at least) seems to be intended as a
way to allow direct feedback straight from the community without
having to battle through the intermediary of the Fedora Project,
which ... has its priorities elsewhere.</p>
<p>From that perspective, this announcement is a positive step.
However coupling it with the early EOL of CentOS Linux 8 is
extremely troubling. The build mechanisms are in place, the
expectations were in place. IBM's purchase of RedHat was supposed
to mean the ability to do things in a <i>more professional</i>
manner rather than a less professional one -- and that's exactly
what this feels like: something unbecoming of what we'd expect
from the leadership of either company.</p>
<p>Many folks out there delayed their transition away from EL6 due
to the instability of some of the changes in EL7 (not mentioning
any system*cough*d reasons) and were just now performing forklifts
up to EL8 with that support expiring. We were just wrapping our
heads around the operational headaches of Modularity, and weird
new locations for Devel packages. And now we're forced onto this
new treadmill that we didn't want and have to place a lot of
effort into re-evaluating.</p>
<p>RedHat should know better than to pull the rug out from under
others like this. This is not about saving a few dollars here and
there, and it's not about resource allocation explicitly. If
things needed to be re-justified, there's a larger discussion
around consolidating Fedora, RedHat, and CentOS build processes
together than would likely have been more fruitful. This is about
removing a community expectation and forcing users away from
stability, knowing that the primary blockers toward the community
getting what it wants is the startup costs and trust factor around
a new rebuild. IOW, there's no real reason for CentOS Linux not to
continue to the end of RHEL8's support, with this new process
being used as a fork for EL9 and beyond's development. THAT would
be appreciated.<br>
</p>
<p>Instead, RedHat embraced CentOS under its umbrella, extended it
beyond its original design goal of a binary-compatible rebuild,
and has now extinguished the Linux rebuild starting next year. <br>
</p>
<p>Sounds like another company we all know and love.</p>
<p>-jc<br>
</p>
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