[CentOS-devel] CentOS 7 and release numbering

[Jim Perrin]

On 06/09/2014 03:12 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:

> 
> I am main admin of the CentOS Facebook group. In about two weeks we will 
> have 10.000 members. There are only 3 of us to properly respond, and we 
> are on the frontline of newbie wave, those that never ever used IRC, 
> forums or mailing lists. We have trouble just to explain that they need 
> to upgrade to latest. Imagine the chaos that would come from date 
> versioning. I think my ultimate response would be to just stop 
> administering that group, period. Even now every 5-10 days I have to 
> reiterate all basic steps even thou it is pinned in first post. People 
> just do not read or learn anything they can get away with. They are 
> lazy, and as it was previously said, every even small complication will 
> repulse them away from CentOS.
> 


For uninformed or new users, you're doing great work with that group.
For lazy users who refuse to read or learn... I have very strong, and
very negative opinions of those sorts of people. They leave disaster in
their wake no matter what distro they run.


> AS for the "definition" of change, It was made simple by devel guys. 
> There can not be no changes, beside most necessary, that distance CentOS 
> from RHEL. What RHEL publishes CentOS must also publish, with only as 
> minimal as possible changes. CentOS distro is not allowed to carry any 
> 3rd party repo files because RHEL does not have them, and CentOS project 
> strives to be binary compatible with RHEL.

We're not talking about significant (or really even trivial) code
changes here. We have no intention of breaking compatibility with 3rd
party repos or software tied to a specific version with this. This is
simply planning to avoid painting ourselves into a corner.

As an aside here, some of the sig work is specifically in response to
what the community (and RH) is doing. Ami development, docker
containers, xen etc all came about because of community/user demand.
These days it simply isn't enough to just rebuild as we did in the past.


> And then suddenly, after CentOS Project members get payed by Red Hat 
> CentOS project starts looking like Fedora respins, braking with RHEL 
> numeration, CentOS distro becomes experimental platform for software Red 
> Hat wants to push for better market share via respins, and we are left 
> explaining to every single newbie why that had to be done.


We were working on Xen4CentOS before any discussions with RH. RH
providing (some of) us with a paycheck has simply meant we have more
time to focus on the distribution instead of having late-night
coffee-fueled work sessions after the family's gone to bed.


> If SiG's are going to be so problematic, then they can devise their own 
> versioning scheme, because if they are going to create such difference 
> from core CentOS distro then just call them CentOS-like distro's and be 
> done with it. They are either CentOS with 3rd party repositories or will 
> be just using SOME CentOS-produced packages for better use of available 
> resources. Period.
> 
> 

I want to see CentOS grow in usage and become much more widely adopted.
That can't happen by ONLY doing the same things we've done for the last
decade.



-- 
Jim Perrin
The CentOS Project | http://www.centos.org
twitter: @BitIntegrity | GPG Key: FA09AD77