[CentOS-devel] CentOS 7 and release numbering

On 06/22/2014 11:53 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> 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.
I for one applaud the very positive changes toward more openness.

Now, as far as I am concerned, the release number is relatively 
unimportant.  I've never tried to align any particular RHEL release to a 
CentOS release, especially after I've seen a bit of the other side of 
dealing with this through doing my own rebuild for IA64 of C5.  But if I 
were to have a preference, it would be to specifically make the release 
number different, to highlight the, well, difference.  CentOS != RHEL at 
some arbitrarily chosen abstraction level (no matter where you draw the 
line at '100% compatible' there's always a gadlfy or three out there 
that will say 'but you didn't build it this way, or that way, or it 
differs by three bytes, or the buildtime is different or .....')  Yes, 
this is a change in perception, but not a change in reality.  It is more 
in line with SL with their 'rolling' repository, which concept I find 
very attractive.

(For those in the peanut gallery, I am not on the CentOS board, do not 
have a centos.org or redhat.com e-mail, and never have had.) I've not 
liked the whole idea of 'point releases' for some time now, since people 
will artificially stay there (and I know the reasons why: partly due to 
historical breakages when going to a new point release, and partly due 
to vendors who are a bit antiquated in their support policies; I've even 
posted on how those are reasons people use to stay at a point release 
before (grep the archives, it's there)).

I'd prefer it to not be a 'point release' for another reason.  In some 
folks' minds, 6.2>5.10 when that is definitely not the case.

However, I'm absolutely positively sure I don't like the Ubuntu-ish date 
format, but that's primarily because it would be Ubuntu-ish. I'd prefer 
just a basic build number: CentOS 7 build 756, for instance (no decimal 
points!).  I'm sure that there would be at least one person chime in and 
try to map a build number to an RHEL point release, but that would be 
their own business.  Of course, a date format makes it much clearer how 
that 6.2!>5.10, and that would be a good thing, and a straight build 
number won't help that particular case.

And I know lots of people will disagree with me; that's fine, disagree 
all you want.  Replies in disagreement to /dev/null, please, as more 
than likely your point has already been stated elsewhere in the thread. :-)