This is an *UNOFFICIAL* non-binding vote to help provide an assessment of the state of the CentOS community and provoke further discussion.
On November 11th (7 weeks ago), the CentOS governance board voted to reduce the life span of CentOS 8 from 10 years to 2 years.
One board member, Karsten Wade, this is part of Red Hat effort to close the openness gap. He also explained that there is an elephant of which the community has only been shown parts with a flashlight.
The CentOS governance page describe the governing board as being like a greenhouse.
Why is the greenhouse so darken that it can hide an elephant such that over the last 7 weeks it has never been fully shown in the brightness of day?
Part of the problem is the governance board is packed with people that are not active members of the CentOS community and have made no effort to explain the board's actions to the community.
Please vote on each of the following items with +1 (in favor), 0 (sustain), -1 (reject). If you vote to reject an item, please explain why.
Should Brian Exelbierd be asked to resign from the CentOS governance board?
Should Mike McLean be asked to resign from the CentOS governance board?
Should Carl Trieloff be asked to resign from the CentOS governance board?
Should Rich Bowen be asked to resign from the CentOS governance board?
Is obfuscating the CentOS kernel patches consistent with Red Hat attempting to close the openness gap?
Are you likely to ever assist with Stream if the CentOS 8 End of Life is December 31, 2021?
Would you be more likely to help with Stream if the CentOS 8 End of Life was set to June 30, 2024?
Please keep in mind this vote is *UNOFFICIAL* and only for the purpose of promoting discussion.
Template for responding:
BE resign: [+1|0|-1] [-1 reason] MM resign: [+1|0|-1] [-1 reason] CT resign: [+1|0|-1] [-1 reason] RB resign: [+1|0|-1] [-1 reason] Obfuscation = Openness: [+1|0|-1] [-1 reason] EOL 2021: [+1|0|-1] [-1 reason] EOL 2024: [+1|0|-1] [-1 reason]
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.
I consider myself a member of the CentOS community by several definitions (I've been on this list since 2005, and have been engaged in various ways in the past fifteen years, and I've had CentOS Linux systems running in various states of production over that time) and certainly not by others (I've never worked directly on CentOS). Of course, now I work for Red Hat, but even if I didn't, I wouldn't feel at all comfortable voting in any way on the things you have proposed, particularly with the presuming-the-antecedent argument behind your calls for various resignations. (Which, also, are incredibly disrespectful to folks who have worked VERY HARD for CentOS.)
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.
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@.
An unoffical vote here to publicly ask people to resign is one step too much.
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.
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.
CentOS-devel mailing list CentOS-devel@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel
On Friday, January 1, 2021 7:37 PM, Julien Pivotto roidelapluie@inuits.eu wrote:
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.
On Sat, Jan 2, 2021 at 12:10 AM redbaronbrowser via CentOS-devel centos-devel@centos.org wrote:
Is centos-questions also a mailman mailing list? Where do I find archives of the questions already asked and answered?
centos-questions is the opposite of "open" / "shining a flashlight on the Elephant". It's a private forum that the "community" has no access to contribute to or evaluate the responses to other users. The centos-questions discussion forum represents a vendor relationship, not a community relationship. centos-questions allows the narrative to be controlled by isolating the users from each other, and then presenting a Red Hat perspective of the world in response to individual questions from individual users. There are no "checks and balances" in this system.
Statements like "these are not sales people" ("these are not the droids you are looking for") are pretty clear evidence that the optics of it, and the conflict of interest it represents, is recognized by those making the statements. What difference does it make if they are sales people or not? It's still a closed forum with a vendor. If I am talking to a vendor, I generally invite the sales person into the room, because I want them to be a part of the solution as well. The problem was never that they might be sales people. The problem is that it's not a open / community forum. (But, what if it *is* a "community" forum... more on this below...)
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?
I'm amused because the problem you and I have, is that we are trying to enforce what we *believed* to be the definition of words like "merit" and "community". However, these words have been redefined. Since 2014, "merit" means participating in CentOS the way Red Hat defines acceptable methods of participation, and one form of participation that was clearly not acceptable as a valid contribution (= merit) was "users":
""" Mike McGrath, Red Hat's VP of Linux Engineering, let the cat out of the bag in an interview with Christine Hall in ITPro Today. "I would say the big one for us was that CentOS itself was not actually providing that much usefulness to Red Hat. Most of the communities we set up, Fedora, for example, do have a lot of bidirectional community involvement. Unfortunately, CentOS was never like that. It was always a community of users, so that contribution model was mostly one way." """
Since 2014, "community" is the community of developers that Red Hat was building, by hiring them, and providing them resources, not the "community" of users. As Mike McGraph helpfully clarified for us, "a community of users, so that contribution model was mostly one way" meaning that users essentially do not contribute.
"community" may include officially approved SIG participants, but it's not clear to me that Red Hat consulted with all of the SIG participants before proceeding with their plan either. And downstream "SIG" that were never officially approved or recognized, also don't count as contributors (= merit).
So, by the Red Hat definition - the board members have merit. They contribute as Red Hat has asked them to. Red Hat is paying for the community to exist, remember (or, so this narrative claims), so Red Hat gets to decide what community contribution looks like. They are doing exactly the job Red Hat wants them to be doing. They may even be GREAT at this job.
This is what an acquisition looks like. We are just too naive to accept it still.
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.
As per above - "active participant in mailing list", isn't an approved definition of merit. It's just one that you and I presume should be true, but clearly isn't. If our view was the correct one, they would have been removed from the board years ago. You can't ask for a vote of non-confidence in them just because they didn't participate in the mailing list. Red Hat has full confidence in them, and appreciates their service as they are currently providing it. Who are you to say otherwise? What is your Red Hat recognized role that would allow your opinion to matter? :-)
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 the "community" was asked to resign in 2014, when Red Hat came in and said "you are a failing community, we will now take over your community and replace your members with our own, run the way we want". Taking over the "CentOS" brand, and making it a Red Hat property, was an essential step in this process, as it turns out, it prevents "CentOS" from operating outside of Red Hat controls. Enter, "Rocky".
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?
Personally, I never joined a "stream" community. It could be worthwhile, but it's an entirely new thing that only *looks* like the previous thing. This makes it an open question as to who will join this new community. Clearly, the paid Red Hat staff will join. Also, several upstream maintainers of components that need to integrate with EL will join. But, will the EL user community join? I think depends upon requirements, and generally the answer will be no, they will not join.
The community as we know it already moved to other places like Rocky. And, it's a pretty great community by all appearances. It is what CentOS should have become in 2014, but put on hold for 6 years, until forced to unite by a vendor that claimed "CentOS" for their own purposes.
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.
We still have a two-way street. Just, "CentOS" has been re-purposed, and is no longer available as a name for the original project known as "CentOS". If we just s/CentOS/Rocky/g everywhere, we can get past this unfortunate bit of history without too many casualties.
I was angry a few weeks ago. Now, I'm just amused. Red Hat acquired CentOS, but didn't like it. So, they cancelled it but adopted the brand as their own since they liked the brand, and they liked the developers, so they are keeping the developers. They are just assigning them to RHEL stabilization work as their new roles. It's a pretty audacious plan. We'll see how it plays out in real life.
On Saturday, January 2, 2021 2:35 AM, Mark Mielke mark.mielke@gmail.com wrote:
Personally, I never joined a "stream" community. It could be worthwhile, but it's an entirely new thing that only looks like the previous thing. This makes it an open question as to who will join this new community. Clearly, the paid Red Hat staff will join. Also, several upstream maintainers of components that need to integrate with EL will join. But, will the EL user community join? I think depends upon requirements, and generally the answer will be no, they will not join.
The community as we know it already moved to other places like Rocky. And, it's a pretty great community by all appearances. It is what CentOS should have become in 2014, but put on hold for 6 years, until forced to unite by a vendor that claimed "CentOS" for their own purposes.
I think this is the point at which we differ.
I want Stream to mean something. I want to believe they are willing to work with the community such that community involvement would mean something. I would never use Stream as a replacement for CentOS 8 but I would run it and submit bug reports if Red Hat still valued the community.
If KS got on the mailing list and said he wants to retire from doing a downstream clone of Red Hat. Then continued on to say out of the 13,000+ employees of Red Hat, they are all too busy to also do it. But if the community wants to step forward to do a CentOS 8 SIG to keep it going, it is up to the community to do so. The hand-off to a SIG will take place at the end of 2021 or CentOS 8 will go end of life. If that is what happened then I would understand that.
Instead, they kept ignoring requests from the community to allow them to get involved. They gave non-community members preferential picks for being on the governance board just for being Red Hat employees. They waited an entire month after voting to announce anything publicly. And they indicated that since they trademarked CentOS, it doesn't matter who in the community is willing to do the work they will make sure nothing can legally be called CentOS 8 in 2022.
You don't stab someone in the back and then say immediately say that is in the past and ask what would they like to do with their life in the future. That makes no sense.
The most ironic thing is the claims that IBM somehow had something to do with this. I got to talk to members of the AIX team about why they selected to put the "L" in "AIX 5L." I was told that IBM recognized that the fragmentation of UNIX had hurt AIX adoption and they wanted to change things to fix that.
I believe the AIX team would cringe at Red Hat's behavior. Red Hat is willfully fragmenting the CentOS community.
On 02 Jan 10:06, redbaronbrowser via CentOS-devel wrote:
On Saturday, January 2, 2021 2:35 AM, Mark Mielke mark.mielke@gmail.com wrote:
Personally, I never joined a "stream" community. It could be worthwhile, but it's an entirely new thing that only looks like the previous thing. This makes it an open question as to who will join this new community. Clearly, the paid Red Hat staff will join. Also, several upstream maintainers of components that need to integrate with EL will join. But, will the EL user community join? I think depends upon requirements, and generally the answer will be no, they will not join.
The community as we know it already moved to other places like Rocky. And, it's a pretty great community by all appearances. It is what CentOS should have become in 2014, but put on hold for 6 years, until forced to unite by a vendor that claimed "CentOS" for their own purposes.
I think this is the point at which we differ.
Community in CentOS has always different from the rest of the Open Source world.
Sorry, but the community in CentOS could not bring ideas to the table, because the point of CentOS was to have a rebuild of RHEL and not differ.
That has changes with the SIGs, which provide additional content, and will change further with stream, where the base OS will be more reachable to the community as well.
So please be very careful when you use the word community.
On Sat., Jan. 2, 2021, 8:07 a.m. Julien Pivotto, roidelapluie@inuits.eu wrote:
because the point of CentOS was to have a rebuild of RHEL and not differ.
Correct.
(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 releaseI 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. ThanksRoger -------- 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 Friday, January 1, 2021 7:37 PM, Julien Pivotto roidelapluie@inuits.eu wrote:> 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._______________________________________________CentOS-devel mailing listCentOS-devel@centos.orghttps://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel
On 02.01.2021 12:09, redbaronbrowser via CentOS-devel wrote:
On Friday, January 1, 2021 7:37 PM, Julien Pivotto
roidelapluie@inuits.eu wrote:
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?
Unlikely. When you mail at that address, you get automated response from centos-questions-bounces@redhat.com; since holidays are still in effect, responses from human beings are still being waited for (in my case, since December 20-th).
The auto-response sample follows.
==== automated response below Thanks for reaching out regarding CentOS! We understand that this announcement may be prompting you to start thinking about the future. We recognize there are many different use cases and that each case has unique requirements. We’re working hard to ensure we meet the needs of as many users as possible.
Working with the CentOS Project Governing Board, we are tailoring programs to meet the needs of various user groups. In the first half of 2021, we will introduce low- or no-cost programs for a variety of use cases, including options for open source projects and communities, partner ecosystems, and an expansion of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer subscription use cases to better serve the needs of systems administrators and partner developers.
With a full year before builds of CentOS Linux end, you can rest assured that we will provide multiple programs designed to meet user needs in ample time for adoption before the end of 2021. You will receive additional communications from us shortly with more specific information on programs and options. In the meantime, you can review the blog post and FAQ for more information.
Blog Post: http://redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innovative-future-enterpris...
FAQ: http://redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates ==== automated response above
[...]
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?
Something tells me RH will update Stream-related plans within next following months; I won't be surprised if wee see the timeframes redefined several more times.
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.
I don't think RH is interested in a bazaar any more. JMNSHO.
-
Julien Pivotto -
Konstantin Boyandin -
Mark Mielke -
Matthew Miller -
Nico Kadel-Garcia -
orkcu -
redbaronbrowser