<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 1:41 PM Trevor Hemsley <<a href="mailto:trevor.hemsley@ntlworld.com">trevor.hemsley@ntlworld.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<div>On 15/12/2020 17:59, Mike McGrath
wrote:<br>
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<div>I'd also just add that while I find Johnny's
characterization of what happened accurate, Ljubomir took a
couple of leaps that I don't think existed. Red Hat decided
not to continue paying actual money for what was actively
harming us and no longer providing the value that it once
did. No one, not even the board, could force Red Hat to
continue paying for this project which was just not working
for us. I'm not going to say that the announcement was the
board's idea or even that they were happy about it. I think
the previous course and speed of CentOS was well
understood. But that no longer worked for Red Hat who is
paying for people, servers, swag, etc. The list goes on.</div>
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<br>
Thank you for this clarification although it was fairly apparent to
everyone what the driver was behind this change.<br>
<br>
I'd like to thank Red Hat for supporting the CentOS Project from
2014 to 2020. You did a good thing by stepping in to save the
project from disintegration back in 2014. Thanks for that, CentOS
would probably have survived without you but you did the right thing
and stepped up when you were needed.<br>
<br>
However...<br>
<br>
While Red Hat may *legally* own the CentOS Project, I do not believe
you are *morally* entitled to do what you have done. CentOS is not
just about the project and the contributors to it. It's more than
that. It has millions of users, so many that no-one really knows how
many there are. Lots of those users may be large corporations
"freeloading" as Red Hat probably see it but others, those are small
users running single machines or just a few. Those users are *your*
future.<br>
<br>
You (Red Hat) made a lot of promises both in 2014 and as late as
last year when Chris Wright said something along the lines of
classic CentOS Linux is not going anywhere. It's all very well to
say that things change, well of course they do, but when they do,
you have an obligation to live up to your promises and the recent
actions were in no way doing that.<br>
<br>
I believe the correct action for Red Hat to have taken would have
been to say "we have decided that we no longer wish to fund the
CentOS Project as it no longer aligns with our business purposes.
So, in order not to let down the millions of users of CentOS Linux,
we have decided to set up a foundation and donate the trade marks
and domain names (that we acquired for almost nothing)". <br>
<br>
With a decent legal founding, you could have made it takeover proof
so that none of your competitors could acquire it. You could have
done this and asked a number of the larger companies that have
CentOS as part of their portfolio to sponsor the foundation - the
Googles/AWS/OVH/cpanel's of this world could easily have stepped up
and funded a FTE or 2 by donating to the foundation and you could
have transferred some or all of the existing people who work on
CentOS to that foundation and let *them* run it. Those hosting
companies spin up new CentOS instances all the time and a cent or
two donation on each instance would most likely fund most of what's
required. And the people who are now scrambling around attempting to
set up new hardware and build environments, they could be supporting
the CentOS Linux Foundation instead.<br>
<br>
The fact that you decided to take CentOS Linux out the back and
shoot it in the head is a betrayal of your company's promises over
the last 6 or 7 years. It's exactly what everyone was afraid of when
Red Hat took over CentOS in 2014 and despite numerous questions, you
all said "no no, it's safe with us". Some of us remember those days
and arguing with people about whether it was a good thing or not and
a lot of us said "Trust Red Hat, see what they do, look at their
actions not their words". Well we did.<br>
<br>
You should rename CentOS Stream to Red Hat Stream Linux (RHSL) and
remove CentOS from the Red Hat family altogether. Donate the trade
marks and logos and domain names and the tooling needed to produce
CentOS Linux. Set up a foundation. Get the big players who offer
CentOS to users to help fund the foundation. Ask the employees who
work on CentOS on a daily basis if they'd like to stay with Red Hat
or transfer to the new foundation. Find some way in which users can
contribute to the foundation and ensure its future.<br>
<br>
It's not too late to do the right thing. Red Hat can still back off
this betrayal of the community that use CentOS Linux and set CentOS
Linux free.<br>
<br>
You can say that you think people are coming round to this. I do not
agree. I have read all of the feedback on IRC, all of the feedback
on the CentOS forums, all the feedback on the mailing lists. This is
*not* a popular change. It's tarnishing and poisoning Red Hat's
reputation and until it's addressed it will continue to do so. You
can help to fix this before Red Hat becomes tarred with the same
brush as that other big company with the big red logo and the not so
great reputation. This is NOT just a $$$ decision, it has other
ramifications and right now, Red Hat are the bad guys and will
remain so until this is addressed. <br>
<br>
You can hope it'll go away but it won't. Red Hat will always be the
company that broke its promises and killed CentOS Linux.<br>
<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'm in this weird position where I'm regularly hearing from people that thought that Red Hat made some sort of "We'll never change and CentOS Linux will be around forever" announcement. I'd suggest everyone go back and re-read the original press release (I was not involved with the original agreement) - <a href="https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-and-centos-join-forces">https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-and-centos-join-forces</a></div><div><br></div><div>You can nitpick at words, or take a quote out of context. But don't be naive and pretend we had some grand plan for all of this from the beginning. Just like anyone, Red Hat changes and makes decisions based on the best information we have at the time. CentOS Linux made sense in 2014, it doesn't make sense in 2020.</div><div><br></div><div>You may not like it, but the CentOS community didn't evolve in any way with the industry. When I think about the talent on this list, and in IRC, I can't help but wonder what went wrong. For whatever reason, CentOS never grew beyond a community of users. And I know there are community members out there who are actively contributing time on QE as you did Trevor. You are a very small minority on this project and I hope we can win you over in CentOS Stream. As for the rest of you, where were you?</div><div><br></div><div>And sure, we could have turned CentOS back over to some non-Red Hat foundation. But the fact is contrary to popular belief, we actually like the engineers that work on CentOS, we like many of the users who have cultivated relationships with Red Hat over the years. We intend on going forward with a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship there. If that's not you, and you're ready to leave - I think that's unfortunate but I understand.</div><div><br></div><div> -Mike</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
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Trevor Hemsley<br>
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