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

> On Dec 15, 2020, at 3:50 PM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> You may not like it, but the CentOS community didn't evolve in any way with the industry.  When I think about the talent on this list, and in IRC, I can't help but wonder what went wrong.  For whatever reason, CentOS never grew beyond a community of users

Whose fault is that? And, to be honest, I never recall such an expectation ever being vocalized during my tenure @ RedHat (FTR: I was one of the people inside OSAS who drove the CentOS "acquisition" along w/ Carl Trieloff).

The whole intent back then was "as long as there is going to be this huge community of 'free-loading' users out there, they might as well be under the RHEL/Fedora umbrella, rather than Canonical or elsewhere." I guess somewhere along the line that changed. The issue isn't that the situation changed but rather that up until very recently, promises were still being made and then RedHat backed out of those promises.

> 
> And sure, we could have turned CentOS back over to some non-Red Hat foundation.  But the fact is contrary to popular belief, we actually like the engineers that work on CentOS, we like many of the users who have cultivated relationships with Red Hat over the years.

That would still be possible spinning CentOS out to its own foundation.

>   We intend on going forward with a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship there.

At this point, it is likely in RedHat's best interest to be crystal clear by their expectations on what constitutes a "mutually beneficial relationship" in their eyes. Cause back in 2014, having CentOS under RedHat but continuing business as usual was seen as a "mutually beneficial relationship". So what happens if today's mutually beneficial relationship is not tomorrows?