[CentOS-devel] Is it possible to merge elrepo.org contribute to centos main repository?

[Alexander Arlt]

On 02/26/2014 11:26 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 4:02 PM, Alexander Arlt <centos at track5.de> wrote:
> 
>> So, you turned the cow into a bird. And you did this just because you
>> want to have a single distribution. That's fine. It kinda feels weird,
>> but if it's the way you want it, it's fine. But don't you think it would
>> have been easier - and probably less nerve-wracking - to just use a more
>> birdish-type of material?
> 
> Much of the point of free software is the fact that once something has
> been done once, any number of copies of it 'just work' for no extra
> cost.   So, the missing piece here is just a reasonable way for
> someone else to duplicate the setup.

Again, there is the assumption that there is a reasonable way for
duplicating this setup. RHEL and CentOS have a very clear focus on what
they want to achieve.

>> Yes, basically you have built a repository for your special needs. And
>> in my understanding this was - and is - the way the game was meant to be
>> played by Red Hat.
> 
> Red Hat just doesn't go there at all.  If they don't distribute it, it
> is your problem.

That is not entirely true, but is very close to it. Again, RHEL is a
product focusing on their customers. If they would have a growing demand
for desktop applications, I guess they would do something about it.

>> Ain't that all the point about an enterprise distribution: that you have
>> the support, the certifications, all the big-dollar-bling-bling?
> 
> No, that's really only relevant after something goes wrong.  The point
> of it is the effort that goes into avoiding/fixing the things that go
> wrong.  And the more people that run exactly the same code and report
> their bugs, sometimes with fixes, the better that turns out.

Not in my world. CentOS is accepted as a full blown RHEL-alternative by
nearly everyone doing audits. You will be able to achieve SOX-compliance
with almost any auditor I have met so far by using CentOS. Enterprise
nowadays is far more than just having a hotline to call when things go
wrong. And - at least in my opinion - CentOS is the only community
driven Linux today fulfilling enterprise requirements without big time
hassle.

>> If
>> you're messing around with all the upstream-provided stuff,
>> elrepo-kernels and so on, you're already breaking the main (and most
>> expensive) part of the enterprise thingy. And wasn't CentOS all about
>> getting the enterprise-grade distribution cloned has close as possible?
> 
> Adding additional applications doesn't hurt the base.   It is just
> better testing for it.

It depends on the application. You will have the effort of backporting
patches if you are not able to bring current versions of several
libraries to the game. Or you will have to update core libraries.

>>> I can still install CentOS 5.x on older hardware and it will work like a
>>> charm, with support and bugfixes. It will not be EOL in 1-2 years, EOL
>>> policy covers full life-span of average PC hardware. After 10 years even
>>> poor people in Africa or India will get another PC, used one, that can
>>> run on CentOS 6.x until end of it's EOL, and on, and on, and on.
>>
>> Forgive me but the life-span of RHEL or CentOS is not based on the
>> lifetime of average PC hardware. I do have several machines and
>> installations of RHEL 4 and we will have full support of hardware and
>> software till Feb, 28th 2015. Probably longer. That's the E in RHEL and
>> the ent in CentOS. Maybe I got that wrong and we now get back on the
>> Entertainment the E and the ent was meant to mean from the beginning.
> 
> I assume the 4 is a typo there.  RHEL 4's EOL was 2-29-2012,  But
> that's all kind of irrelevant to what we should be preparing for after
> a new install of CentOS 7 and what to expect from it.

No, RHEL 4 has Extended Life Phase till 2015. And will probably be even
longer supported - at least that's what we're all hoping for. And that
is not irrelevant, because - basically - that's what enterprise is
about. Getting long term support and that's maybe 10+ years.

Actually - maybe this will amuse someone on the list - we migrated quite
a lot of machines in 2011 from CentOS 4 to RHEL 4 - just for getting the
ELP-support and the guarantee that we will receive further critical
security updates. And we were not alone out there... I know quite a lot
of people that would offer the maintainers of CentOS nameless joy if
they'd go for the ELP...