[CentOS-devel] CentOS 7 and release numbering

[Ljubomir Ljubojevic]

On 06/20/2014 10:16 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 2:52 PM, Nathanael D. Noblet <nathanael at gnat.ca> wrote:
>>
>> So this is the clearest explanation - not sure why it wasn't clearer to
>> me earlier. I mean I got the basic idea, once RHEL moves on to a newer
>> point release updates to their previous point releases costs money and
>> is not available for CentOS to rebuild and maintain an identical tree.
>
> When a service exists that 'costs money', it implies that there are
> situations that require customers to pay for it. Which would be some
> application/configuration where doing the next point update will cause
> known breakage or at least requires some lengthy testing before
> proceeding.
>
>> Here's my simplistic suggestion, don't maintain those older trees.
>
> They don't now.  At the point releases, all of the old intermediate
> updates go to the vault so the mirror sites don't have to store them
> and updates only go all the way to current.   But, if you had to
> reconstruct a back-rev system that had some, but not current updates
> (and given the situations where current updates cause breakages, there
> can be reasons to want to do that) it is very difficult.   Say you
> wanted to re-create a 6.3 CentOS with updates up to just before 6.4
> was released you'd probably have to look at the timestamp on every
> package in the vault and download/install  each package in the
> relevant timeframe.
>

But, as far as I could understand, changing 7.0 to 7.20140620 (or what 
ever date) and changing NOTHING ELSE?, as it was suggested, it would not 
change a thing. It was clearly said that there will not be any 
intermittent releases in between 7.0 and 7.1 for example, so this change 
should only be a PR stunt, and all that comes to mind is that Red Hat 
would like to brake a bond between RHEL and CentOS and convert it into 
another staging area, "learn how to work with CentOS and then you can 
switch to RHEL", and to, in doing so, reduce the number of companies who 
will dare to use CentOS instead of RHEL.

I also can not get from impression that CentOS is becoming just a 
carcass, a shell for Red Hat projects. Source rpm's will not be 
published by Red Hat anymore, CentOS git will become a source of Open 
Source projects that will use similar but NOT the same rpms (binary 
compatibility?), something like SuSE and OpenSuSE, members of SL 
transferred to CentOS project, and SL guys are discussing if they will 
start just rebuilding CentOS packages (from git), so it all looks like 
Red Hat found a format to distance from releasing source rpms that can 
hurt their business by clever creation of uneasiness within users that 
use both RHEL and CentOS, braking in the process the unofficial support 
of major software distributors that SO FAR identified RHEL and CentOS as 
the same thing. And change of direct link between RHEL and CentOS would 
be a last nail to the coffin.

I AM really trying, but I can not understand what CentOS board wants to 
do other then this PR breakage.


I will, of course, hold off my final judgment allowing I could be wrong.


-- 
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant