But as a business, since you're not providing Red Hat with profit (none of our communities are), what are you providing that would result in continued sponsorship of a downstream rebuild?
Installation count share?
Without CenOS Linux you'll look at 1% of Linux servers running RHEL (I'm sure you have a more precise number, and I'm sure it will be as embarrassing...).
In a world without CentOS Linux why should I pay for RH courses? Why should I renew my RHCE? Why should educators choose such a rare distribution to teach Linux? At this point why not go with Ubuntu? Debian? Why teach yum/dnf when most servers will use apt?
You say us (the community) isn't providing you (Red Hat) with profit. Well, who do you think installed CentOS Linux and recommended RHEL to our pointy haired bosses that wanted support contracts?
Maybe you sold 1 RHEL subscription for any 100 CentOS we installed.
Well, now you're going to sell exactly 0 RHEL subscriptions for any of the 100 Ubuntu or Debian boxes I'm going to set up with my clients.
Before you say "Stream", the single most killer argument against Stream is that you have broken any trust when you moved the EOL of CentOS Linux 8 from 2029 to 2021.
Now Red Hat employees jump through hoops to tell us how great that'll be. What guerantees that in two year's time you're not going to kill Stream because "it didn't provide anything to RH"?
Somebody already mentioned "fool me once..."...
I'm still angry and I still cannot believe you appear to be oblivious to the huge blunder you made with this incredible EOL shortening. You've basically killed the CentOS brand in one single move.
Bye, Chris.