[CentOS-devel] CentOS 7 and release numbering

[Ned Slider]

On 21/06/14 02:37, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 06/20/2014 04:50 PM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> 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.
>
> You are EXACTLY right ... it will not change anything about the distro
> at all .. EXCEPT be a better description of what CentOS is.  A point in
> time rebuild of the major branch.  It has the "major" and it has the
> "point in time".  It perfectly describes exactly what CentOS is.
>
>> 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.

So here we have the essence of the issue, clearly described.

It may be "a better description of what CentOS is" but it's also is a 
step further removed from RHEL. It's making a change that isn't a direct 
consequence of legal or trademark issues.

So there is no technical issue to solve or overcome, in the core distro. 
It's a rebranding exercise to overcome a perception people may or may 
not have about point releases.

As many others have said, I believe such a change does more damage than 
good for all the reasons previously mentioned numerous times.

Johnny - it's not that anyone doesn't trust you (or KB), it's more that 
everyone knows once you start chipping away at the edges of the 
cornerstone of the project, it's no longer a cornerstone. And we all 
know from personal experience that it's easy to have principles as an 
individual, but sometimes it's not so easy when you are employed by an 
employer
whose goals are in conflict with your own goals as you highlight below. 
Please don't take this as an affront to your own personal standards, 
it's not intended to be - I'm just trying to express what everyone is 
feeling.

>
> If you are asking if Red Hat would rather have people buy RHEL for every
> server out there instead of using CentOS, sure they would.  Do they want
> to convert CentOS installs to RHEL .. absolutely.  This should not be a
> surprise. They also want to convert any other Linux out there to RHEL.
> And the CentOS team wants to convert all installs to CentOS.  I bet the
> Ubuntu team wants to convert all Linux installs to Ubuntu as well .. at
> least I hope they do.  It would be rather silly to shoot for 2nd or 3rd
> place.
>