[CentOS-devel] CentOS 7 and release numbering

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