(Sorry for the top post)
I don't think CentOS (or any other clone/rebuild) was ever a Bazaar, it can not be if the goal is to be a good clone/rebuild.
Since the very beginning the control was in a handful of people, very tight, and I remember one crisis when the founder didn't want (was unable/unavailable) to release control of dns domain, sign keys and few other main components that now you complain RedHat don't want to release
I don't like CentOS to evolve to Stream, I agree there is a need of a cheap RHEL's quality distribution, and I think all the arguments given so far at the end (in the very bottom) it is about cost (money), from the people complaining about the end because we are losing a very good distro that was free/gratis, from RedHat it is about moving the money to a direction that might provide better benefits for the company.
If RedHat would offer its RHEL with a minimum price (20? 50? 100?) for self support and then charge for a ticket a good amount of money ( like 200? 500?), that might work for a lot of people who are complaining now, I think we all understand that everyone need to have an income to feed its needs, even the small shops that are trying to save in (software) costs as much as possible.
Bottom line, I don't think we ever had a community built OS in CentOS, we had people of the community assisting in testing and QA, but not even that was open to the public. I might be wrong but I think even before 2014 we had builders that were not (much) active in mailing list or IRC, and that is OK, each person have different strengths.
Thanks
Roger
-------- Original message --------
From: redbaronbrowser via CentOS-devel <centos-devel@centos.org>
Date: 2021-01-02 12:10 a.m. (GMT-05:00)
To: "The CentOS developers mailing list." <centos-devel@centos.org>
Subject: Re: [CentOS-devel] Vote of Confidence
> On 01 Jan 18:19, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jan 1, 2021 at 6:13 PM Matthew Miller mattdm@mattdm.org wrote:
> >
> > > I don't think this is constructive. Active members of this mailing list are
> > > not a good sample of the CentOS community, no matter how you define it, and
> > > I can't see what an "unofficial" vote can possibly do to promote discussion
> > > in a positive way.
> >
> > Agreed. The people who showed up and did the work, or are doing the
> > work, get to make the call of what they work on next.
> > If you want to do something useful, build a labeled snapshot structure
> > for internal or even public CentOS mirror use to provide the stable
> > point releases yourself.
>
> I do agree. Please read the material provided by red hat at try to
> better understand. Make your voice heard at centos-questions@.
Is centos-questions also a mailman mailing list? Where do I find archives of the questions already asked and answered?
> An unoffical vote here to publicly ask people to resign is one step too
> much.
Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I am not asking they resign from Red Hat. I am asking that they resign from the governance board to make room for active community members to take the seats.
The description of a meritocracy based governance model is available here:
https://www.centos.org/about/governance/appendix-glossary/
Where is the merit in them holding the seats? What work have they done towards CentOS being a downstream clone of RHEL?
It has been 7 weeks since the vote for CentOS to abandon it's 10 year commitment down to 2 years. They have not been active members of any CentOS mailing list before that point and have not attempted to rectify that in the last 7 weeks. At the very least an introduction and more information about their participation would be nice.
> If CentOS really means that much to you, it seems there will be
> alternatives, like rocky linux, to meet your needs. You might better go
> there and provide them some help.
This repeatly sounds like Red Hat beating a drum demanding the community be the ones to resign from CentOS.
You know what, asking active participates of the CentOS community to resign is a bit much.
> I think I might simply unsub from this mailing list because
> everything has been said about stream and people keep pushing. You
> should have enough material to make your own choices.
>
> Let's just work together to make stream great - working together is what
> open source is about.
This sounds like a call to the community. That is putting the cart in front of the horse. Can we first get how cutting CentOS 8's life cycle to only 2 years is showing commitment to supporting Stream for 5 years? Or can we get how Stream's obfuscated kernel patches is consistent with Red Hat closing the openness gap? Or can we get any infomration at all from the four governance members that can't even introduce themselves on centos-devel?
Open Source is a two way street. It is a licensing model for putting everyone on equal footing. Working together is a result of having that two way street.
Before 2014 we had a two way street. If the key members of CentOS decided it was time to work on something else, CentOS could be forked into a CentOS-NG or CentOS++ (or both). Red Hat took that two way street away and now has leveraged trademarks to redefine fundmental definitions of what CentOS is. They accomplished this by ignoring the core value of meritocracy by packing the governance board with those without merit and a lack of respect for the community.
What we have now is a cathederal model. Let's work together to re-establish the bizaar. That is what open source is all about.
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