[CentOS-devel] Before You Get Mad About The CentOS Stream Change, Think About…

On 15/12/2020 19:39, Trevor Hemsley via CentOS-devel wrote:
> On 15/12/2020 17:59, Mike McGrath wrote:
>>
>> I'd also just add that while I find Johnny's characterization of what 
>> happened accurate, Ljubomir took a couple of leaps that I don't think 
>> existed.  Red Hat decided not to continue paying actual money for what 
>> was actively harming us and no longer providing the value that it once 
>> did.  No one, not even the board, could force Red Hat to continue 
>> paying for this project which was just not working for us.  I'm not 
>> going to say that the announcement was the board's idea or even that 
>> they were happy about it.  I think the previous course and speed of 
>> CentOS was well understood.  But that no longer worked for Red Hat who 
>> is paying for people, servers, swag, etc.  The list goes on.
> 
> Thank you for this clarification although it was fairly apparent to 
> everyone what the driver was behind this change.
> 
> I'd like to thank Red Hat for supporting the CentOS Project from 2014 to 
> 2020. You did a good thing by stepping in to save the project from 
> disintegration back in 2014. Thanks for that, CentOS would probably have 
> survived without you but you did the right thing and stepped up when you 
> were needed.
> 
> However...
> 
> While Red Hat may *legally* own the CentOS Project, I do not believe you 
> are *morally* entitled to do what you have done. CentOS is not just 
> about the project and the contributors to it. It's more than that. It 
> has millions of users, so many that no-one really knows how many there 
> are. Lots of those users may be large corporations "freeloading" as Red 
> Hat probably see it but others, those are small users running single 
> machines or just a few. Those users are *your* future.
> 
> You (Red Hat) made a  lot of promises both in 2014 and as late as last 
> year when Chris Wright said something along the lines of classic CentOS 
> Linux is not going anywhere. It's all very well to say that things 
> change, well of course they do, but when they do, you have an obligation 
> to live up to your promises and the recent actions were in no way doing 
> that.
> 
> I believe the correct action for Red Hat to have taken would have been 
> to say "we have decided that we no longer wish to fund the CentOS 
> Project as it no longer aligns with our business purposes. So, in order 
> not to let down the millions of users of CentOS Linux, we have decided 
> to set up a foundation and donate the trade marks and domain names (that 
> we acquired for almost nothing)".
> 
> With a decent legal founding, you could have made it takeover proof so 
> that none of your competitors could acquire it. You could have done this 
> and asked a number of the larger companies that have CentOS as part of 
> their portfolio to sponsor the foundation - the Googles/AWS/OVH/cpanel's 
> of this world could easily have stepped up and funded a FTE or 2 by 
> donating to the foundation and you could have transferred some or all of 
> the existing people who work on CentOS to that foundation and let *them* 
> run it. Those hosting companies spin up new CentOS instances all the 
> time and a cent or two donation on each instance would most likely fund 
> most of what's required. And the people who are now scrambling around 
> attempting to set up new hardware and build environments, they could be 
> supporting the CentOS Linux Foundation instead.
> 
> The fact that you decided to take CentOS Linux out the back and shoot it 
> in the head is a betrayal of your company's promises over the last 6 or 
> 7 years. It's exactly what everyone was afraid of when Red Hat took over 
> CentOS in 2014 and despite numerous questions, you all said "no no, it's 
> safe with us". Some of us remember those days and arguing with people 
> about whether it was a good thing or not and a lot of us said "Trust Red 
> Hat, see what they do, look at their actions not their words". Well we did.
> 
> You should rename CentOS Stream to Red Hat Stream Linux (RHSL) and 
> remove CentOS from the Red Hat family altogether. Donate the trade marks 
> and logos and domain names and the tooling needed to produce CentOS 
> Linux. Set up a foundation. Get the big players who offer CentOS to 
> users to help fund the foundation. Ask the employees who work on CentOS 
> on a daily basis if they'd like to stay with Red Hat or transfer to the 
> new foundation. Find some way in which users can contribute to the 
> foundation and ensure its future.
> 
> It's not too late to do the right thing. Red Hat can still back off this 
> betrayal of the community that use CentOS Linux and set CentOS Linux free.
> 
> You can say that you think people are coming round to this. I do not 
> agree. I have read all of the feedback on IRC, all of the feedback on 
> the CentOS forums, all the feedback on the mailing lists. This is *not* 
> a popular change. It's tarnishing and poisoning Red Hat's reputation and 
> until it's addressed it will continue to do so. You can help to fix this 
> before Red Hat becomes tarred with the same brush as that other big 
> company with the big red logo and the not so great reputation. This is 
> NOT just a $$$ decision, it has other ramifications and right now, Red 
> Hat are the bad guys and will remain so until this is addressed.
> 
> You can hope it'll go away but it won't. Red Hat will always be the 
> company that broke its promises and killed CentOS Linux.
> 
> 
> Trevor Hemsley
> 
> 

Well said Trevor.

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