[CentOS-devel] CentOS 7 and release numbering

[Chris St. Pierre]

It's amazing how quickly people trot out conspiracy theories when the stuff
they're getting for free might be free but slightly different.

I haven't weighed in on this thread-o'-doom yet, and I was hoping not to,
but it has simply jumped the fucking shark.  If you're really that
concerned about our new Red Hat overlords, I'd like to make two suggestions:

1.  Fedora is coming up on its 21st release, which, at one every six months
(roughly), comes out to over a decade of free, community Linux.  During
that entire time Fedora has been in bed, to a substantial degree, with Red
Hat.  (Note that I use the non-legal metaphor "in bed" instead of risking
some petty bullshit semantic quibble over whether they're "led by" or
"owned by" or whatever.  They're sleeping together, okay?)  And during that
entire time, great bearded prophets of doom have emerged from the desert to
proclaim that Fedora N-1 was surely the last free and open Fedora because
the crushing hand of Genghis Red Hat is squeezing everything good out of
it.  I'd wager a beer (and this is a serious offer) that every single
Fedora release after Fedora Core 1 has had at least one such Chicken
Little.  Take a browse through their various mailing lists.

Luckily, CentOS will have its Sandy Hook deniers right from its first
release after knocking boots with Red Hat.

Maybe Red Hat is just completely fucking incompetent at corporate takeovers
of community projects.  Maybe they aren't even trying to take over Fedora
or CentOS.  Maybe they already have and we're all living in The Matrix
brought to you by Red Hat and we don't even know it.  Draw your own
conclusions.

2.  Absolutely nothing is stopping anyone -- including experienced
rebuilders like the SL folks -- from building their own OMG MOAR OPEN
rebuild.  Nothing.  In fact, git.centos.org makes it *easier*, because we
have changelogs and historical sources and shit like that, not just a bunch
of SRPMs that represent the current state of the repo.  If RH really wanted
to undermine community rebuilds and prevent them from challenging their
market supremacy, they sure as hell would.  For instance, I bet a clever
lawyer could make a compelling case that RH only needs to release the
sources, not the specfiles.  And they don't have to release their source
modifications at all for many of the more permissive FOSS licenses.  They
could royally fuck everyone who runs a free clone if that was their schtick.

Again, draw your own conclusions.  Maybe RH is just incompetent.

Then again, maybe we've got a zillion-post thread with an SNR that's
indistinguishable from zero because:

1.  CentOS is now *more* open than ever, and rather than just making this
change they're soliciting community involvement.  Which is good.  (And they
seem to be listening to the need to reflect the RH minor version in the
CentOS release version, too.)

2.  Some people can't cope with change.  When I was in .edu we used to tell
this joke:

Q: How many professors does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: *CHANGE*?!?!?

Oh noes, RH decided to change the way they give away mountains of work that
they're not required to!

Oh noes, several the CentOS core devs (who had employers before -- you know
that, right?  and those employers surely expected value from their
investment then -- you know that, too, right?) now work for RH!

Oh noes, there's occasionally a point of disagreement between people who
use CentOS for a living and those who build it for a living!  (Maybe
they're two very different constituencies with different goals?  Nah,
that's absurd!)

3.  Any sufficiently large community is bound to have a few of the kind of
screw-loose types who think the moon landing happened on a Hollywood sound
stage.  I mean, the CentOS folks have gone to great lengths at several
points to belabor the fact that they really don't have a very special
relationship with RHEL.  (That's RHEL, not RH.)  They pull their sources
from git.centos.org one leg at a time, just like the rest of us, for
instance.  That certainly doesn't bespeak much of a vast Red conspiracy to
overthrow the world.  But I guess belief in this conspiracy already hinges
upon the absolute incompetence of most of the players.

Ultimately, we as community members have three options.  I'll spare you
another numbered list, because they're short: We can just flow like seaweed
in the tide and take whatever comes our way, which is pretty unlikely given
that most us are antisocial nerds; we can continue to contribute
*productively* and try to guide CentOS in the direction we want it to go,
while recognizing the limitations of any volunteer-run product that depends
on the good graces of a public corporation for its raw material; or we can
take our ball and go home in a huff to rage against the machine while
running Slackware or whatever.

So for the love of all that is holy, and particularly out of respect for
the time it takes to hit delete on all of the shitty replies to this
terrible thread, please let's can the bullshit conspiracy theories and
personal attacks and screaming and crying and throwing our rattle across
the room.

Note, if you must, that I do not have a redhat.com email address, nor have
I ever.  I'm just a dude who deleted a lot of profanity from this email
before sending it, I promise.  I've spoken my piece, and do not intend to
dignify this horrible thread with any further replies (or readings), so
now's your chance to call me all sorts of horrible names without the risk
that I might see it.



On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic <centos at plnet.rs>
wrote:

> On 06/22/2014 05:53 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> > On 06/21/2014 01:31 PM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
> >> On 06/21/2014 06:56 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> >>>> Just to emphasize, people want COMPATIBILITY with RHEL, that is why we
> >>>> use it. If there will be no PERCEIVED compatibility, people will start
> >>>> waling away from CentOS. As simple as that.
> >>> And the CentOS goal is full functional compatibility.
> >>>
> >>> We do now have and will continue to have that.
> >>>
> >>> Changing a number in the name does not impact that at all ... it just
> >>> means we are trying to better describe what CentOS is.
> >>>
> >> That IS the point over board and users are arguing about. Just like
> >> "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", so is the "truth" what something
> >> is or isn't. All of users are trying to PRESERVE what was established.
> >> We do not think CentOS should be redefined just because of minority that
> >> uses apps that are meant for certain point-in-time.
> >>
> >> So if you choose to keep with this PR nightmare, be ready to have
> >> diminishing membership, instead of increasing it. That is at least what
> >> vast majority of us, majority of community, on this list think. If you
> >> were to conduct referendum on this issue, I think 99% of CentOS users
> >> would vote against.
> >>
> >> And then, to the all that follow this, it would look like selected few,
> >> now on the payroll of company that has vested interest in future of
> >> CentOS distro/project will go against will of vast majority of projects
> >> community, and play in the hand of that same company and it's profits.
> >>
> >> While we are at it, why is Red Hat owner of "centos.org" domain name?
> >> And why is the Red Hat owner of CentOS trademark? "The CentOS Project is
> >> a community project. The CentOS Project leadership has transferred the
> >> CentOS trademark to Red Hat for protection and stewardship. The CentOS
> >> Governing Board will be responsible for policing use of the mark."
> >>
> >> Who voted on it? Larger Community hasn't.
> >>
> >> In fact, up to this point I thought CentOS is just joining forces with
> >> Red Hat. But text of the announcement says "The new initiative is going
> >> to be overseen by the new CentOS Governing Board." So this is actually
> >> NEW project that will claim CentOS name, but will not continue as
> >> CentOS, but in fat will be OpenRHEL. Only when I put together 2 and 2,
> >> Boards intention to remove OpenRHEL from CentOS that existed until
> >> January did I understood that my arbitrary story about what might happen
> >> is actually right.
> >>
> >> Whois on centos.org:
> >>
> >> Registrant Contact Information:
> >>       Name: Red Hat, Inc.
> >>       Organization: Red Hat, Inc.
> >>       Address 1: 100 East Davie Street
> >>       City: Raleigh
> >>       State: NC
> >>       Zip: 27601
> >>       Country: US
> >>       Phone: +1.9197543700
> >>       Fax: +1.9197543704
> >>       Email: Email Masking Image at redhat.com
> >>
> >> Administrative Contact Information:
> >>       Name: Domain Admin
> >>       Organization: Red Hat, Inc.
> >>       Address 1: 1801 Varsity Drive
> >>       City: Raleigh
> >>       State: NC
> >>       Zip: 27606
> >>       Country: US
> >>       Phone: +1.9197543700
> >>       Fax: +1.9197543704
> >>       Email: Email Masking Image at redhat.com
> >>
> >> Technical Contact Information:
> >>       Name: Domain Admin
> >>       Organization: Red Hat, Inc.
> >>       Address 1: 100 East Davie Street
> >>       City: Raleigh
> >>       State: NC
> >>       Zip: 27601
> >>       Country: US
> >>       Phone: +1.9197543700
> >>       Fax: +1.9197543704
> >>       Email: Email Masking Image at redhat.com
> >>
> >>
> >> In light of this new revelation, if you go on with the change, count me
> >> out of any further contributing. I will continue to use it, but will
> >> welcome any attempt to restore old CentOS even under some other name.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > What revelation ... Red Hat is now paying for the domain registration.
> > We (the Project) don't have any money, we never have.  Stuff costs
> > money.  We either get someone to sponsor our domain registrations,
> > servers we build on, servers we mirror on ... or we pay for it out of
> > our own pockets.  That is the way it has been since the beginning.  Not
> > only have I spent the time I mentioned before in this thread, I have
> > personally spent several thousand dollars of my own money over the last
> > 10 years to purchase hardware or go to conferences to promote CentOS,
> > etc.  Karanbir has spent even more time and money than I have.  All this
> > stuff you get for free has cost me dearly over the years in both time
> > and money.  At one point it almost coast me my marriage.
> >
> > We have opened up the entire process for the 7 distro to the community.
> > We have the git repo completely open for public consumption at
> > git.centos.org.
> >
> > Every build log, built RPM, built SRPM (for those who would rather use
> > those) is available here:
> >
> > http://buildlogs.centos.org/
> >
> > You can look at the packages in our build root for every build, see the
> > result of every test that the RPM did while it built, etc.  We have
> > never been more open or forthcoming.
> >
> > Not only that, but every mock config used is published here for the
> build:
> >
> > https://git.centos.org/summary/sig-core!bld-seven.git
> >
> > Every script we are using to do things with the git tree is here:
> >
> > https://git.centos.org/summary/centos-git-common.git
> >
> > We could not possibly be more open ... you have never been able to see
> > so much about the distro before or how compatible it is or is not.
> >
> > There is nothing to hide here, absolutely everything is out in the
> > open.  No one else in the EL space is even close to this level of
> > openness.  That doesn't even include the discussions on the lists.
> >
> > Then we did all the QA completely open, the branding search was
> > completely open.
> >
> > The process we use to build has not changed ... but now you can
> > absolutely see every part of it.
> >
> > How we build docker images ... open, right here:
> >
> > https://git.centos.org/summary/sig-cloud-instance!build-instance.git
> >
> > How do we do our comps.xml or live media, open and right here:
> >
> > https://git.centos.org/project/sig-core
> >
> > We are being completely open with everything and as such we think we
> > should also be completely open about things like binary compatibility
> > and the name.  Giving something the exact same name implies certain
> > things, not all of which are true.  Saying something is binary (or bit
> > for bit) compatible also implies certain things.
> >
> > All we are trying to do here is be completely honest and complete open
> > about the distro as a whole and the process to get it as a whole.  So
> > now everything is open, you can see everything about it all, and a
> > number after the decimal point in the name and/or the difference in the
> > word Binary and Functional is enough to make you mistrust something that
> > you have been using for free for ten years?
> >
> >
>
>
> There are too many thing going on simultaneously. This text bellow I
> wrote on-the-go, developing the story as I wrote.
>
> 1. I have a problem where I am not sure where I stand on who owns this
> project. Is it of the entire community, or just of the people on the
> board? I was definitely out of these talks, and since I was not
> consulted (just like other 99,9% of users) that means CentOS Project was
> not mine, I do not own even the tiny peace of it. Since several of you
> guys poured your hart and soul into this project it kinda is OK, but
> that fact robes me of my own "ownership", even 0.00000001% of it. I was
> just helping out you guys from Board/core devs.
>
> As I said, it is OK, you earned it, but that entails other things.
>
> Inner circle, the board, true owners of the project decided to abandon
> the project and start a new one, CentOS 2.0, totally not consulting
> anyone from the rest of Community. There was no vote, no one even warned
> us something like this is possible.
>
> All that happened is that you decided, worked on it for few? months and
> then announced that old cloning project is over, and that you will be
> using CentOS project trademark for a CentOS 2.0, while abandoning CentOS
> 1.0.
>
>
> In CentOS 2.0 Red Hat has a lot of influence. They are your employers,
> they own the trademark (if they didn't they would just donated money for
> you to register domains under your CentOS), they are giving most of the
> hardware, there are moving THEIR source base directly to git.centos.org.
>
> Red Hat is going to work developing their basically for-profit projects
> via their subsidiary CentOS Project. Part of that process is that they
> want to create a greater mental distance between RHEL and CentOS, so
> people stop identifying those two as same thing, paid-for and unpaid-for
> versions. I know CentOS was kind of necessary evil, bringing them new
> customers and producing expert admins, enlarging user base, but at the
> same time you were cutting in their profit. When economy was good, it
> was fine balance. But in few last years Oracle and SL cut in,
> subscriptions started to drop and investors started to ask for more
> profits.
>
> Since trick with making 6.0 build complicated hurt both CentOS and
> turned out to be PR nightmare for friendly neighborhood Red Hat, they
> needed better approach. They need open source behind RHEL, but they need
> more mental distance so that using free-distro is available, but also
> further away from CentOS = free RHEL. So they gave you everything you
> needed/wanted, improving CentOS Project in the process, but there "few
> legal problems that need ironing out". I do not know how that idea was
> introduced, changing minor number to date of release, but I do know that
> effect is JUST what Red Hat needs for increased profits in the future.
> Not in new 1-2 years maybe, but when perception of CentOS != RHEL takes
> hold, more managers will choose to buy RHEL instead of keeping CentOS
> servers.
>
> We users of old CentOS 1.0 liked our independence from Red Hat, were
> more the Fedora, we were independent. At least until problems with 6.0
> were solved by secret help from Red Hat. Maybe this idea is
> preposterous, but at the time 6.0 building was problematic, at least few
> of users suspected Red Hat gave away some of the secrets to help stalled
> CentOS to reach "100% binary compatibility" goal. In hind perspective,
> this also looks like plausible scenario. It is all in mailing list
> archive of that period, questions how you guys managed to solve some of
> the problems, and you refused to give out secret sauce. No one was
> offended, we all were happy things picked up. But this troublesome build
> might indicated also problems with future builds, so that also might
> affected your decision to accept Red Hat's offer. Red Hat would get
> control over the build process, it would be recognized as leader, but
> would also solve them the their biggest process, having almost 100%
> clone for free.
>
> Now there is CentOS 2.0, brand new, drawing on old brand name, and you
> are waiting for storm to blow over to implement point-in-time date as
> planed. Since all of the board members of CentOS 2.0 are in agreement to
> proceed as planed, only thing that MIGHT avert you is loud revolt of the
> users. And since this was brought only on CentOS-devel mailing list,
> there will not be much more people revolting. We will just woke up in
> brand new world where another Company won over Community, the 99%.
>
> So I will try to prevent this voicing my concerns. I do not think I will
> achieve anything, but at least I will know I did my best.
>
>
>
> --
> Ljubomir Ljubojevic
> (Love is in the Air)
> PL Computers
> Serbia, Europe
>
> StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS-devel mailing list
> CentOS-devel at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel
>



-- 
Chris St. Pierre
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