On Fri, Nov 04, 2016 at 10:05:39AM -0400, Mark Haney wrote:
I'm with Matthew Phelps on this. If CentOS is built with the exact same sources as RHEL, why not keep the numbering scheme the same? That would make life easier for people like me who build CentOS RPMs from tarballs/SRPMS that run on RHEL and having to look up version numbers is just idiotic. I mean, that's a Microsoft pet peeve of mine.
I don't have a horse in this particular race¹, but it is worth noting that there has *always* been a difference between CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux here, as CentOS does not continue the ".y" streams after a new one is out, but RHEL does. That is, you can't install "CentOS 7.1", install current updates, and still have CentOS 7.1. With RHEL, this is something you can buy:
https://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/rhel/LIFECYCLE_EUS_Datasheet_22_DEC.pdf
This *is* an important distinction. I don't know if changing the versioning is the best way to make it more clear, but I *do* think making it more clear is betst for everyone.
1. although I do work for Red Hat, of the things I care about, this is not particularly high on the list