Hi, folks,
following up from the discussion over the last two weeks about the CentOS 8 EOL announcement, and specific details of that plan, I wanted to share with you this DRAFT announcement, for commentary.
It's worth noting that certain aspects of this draft are not negotiable. Specifically:
* We will not ship further updates after the EOL date * We will not automatically migrate CentOS Linux 8 users to CentOS Stream 8
However, other suggestions, clarifications, and edits are welcome, with the goal of removing any ambiguity or misunderstanding that might occur from a poorly worded message.
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DRAFT BEGINS: CentOS 8 EOL messaging
CentOS Linux 8 will reach End Of Life (EOL) on December 31st, 2021. Here’s what that means.
In line with the EOL of previous releases, we will NOT be automatically migrating anyone to the next version (which is CentOS Stream 8 in this case).
We will be shipping a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5 once it is released, even if that means that this is released slightly after the EOL date.
The release of a RHEL point release is often accompanied, immediately afterwards, by a set of zero-day updates. We will be providing this content as part of the final CentOS Linux 8 release. There will, however, be no more updates to the CentOS Linux 8 content after that time.
Additionally, with this deadline falling during a time when many of our team, as well as many of our users, will be out of the office, we intend to bend the usual EOL process by keeping this content available until January 31st.
At that time, or in the event of a serious security bug in this time window (Defined as anything with a VCSS v3 score of 9 or greater), this content will be removed from our mirrors, and moved to vault.centos.org where it will be archived permanently, since we will not be able to provide updates to the content after the EOL date.
DRAFT ENDS
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We are considering shipping a dnf plugin that gives informational messages about the CL8 EOL, and explain the process for moving to CS8, for users who are not yet aware of the change. There is some concern around this plan due to anecdotal evidence that some people automate the capture and parsing of dnf output, and this might break that. Comments welcome on this topic, but of course if you’re reading this, you’re already aware of the EOL, making this a challenging issue to get feedback on.
We welcome your comments on this proposal, and intend to publish this more widely after a reasonable comment period.
Thanks!