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

On 12/18/2020 11:18 AM, Mark Mielke wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 2:04 PM Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
>> Just know that I mean it when I say, for those of you that are moving on.  We wish you luck, we understand, and we'll see you around.
> I don't think you do understand. And that is the true tragedy here.
>

It's clear from other emails that there is a massive amount of internal 
RedHat debate about this decision still going on. I sincerely hope a 
decision-maker can try to fix this situation before a point-of-no-return 
is reached. This scorched earth approach from a RedHat rep is absurd 
considering the relative size of the EL-derivatives vs paid support 
contracts in install footprint. Nobody wants to have to explain to a 
RedHat Vice President the realities of a F/OSS ecosystem when RedHat is 
the company that virtually codified the industry's best-practices on how 
to do it.

More explicitly: Nobody wants an EL war; nobody wants to fork. Nobody 
wants more of a headache than we've already all had this year for 
reasons unrelated to Linux. But those things can happen, and it 
certainly wouldn't take $34B to do it.

This could have been "just" a question about a business decision -- one 
that would've been entirely (if painfully) understandable had it been a 
direct result of the IBM purchase. It could have been "just" a question 
of how much stability enabling yum-cron and CR/Stream in prod. actually 
removes.  Instead, this is turning into a four-alarm fire about whether 
RedHat the company has the self-awareness that we all assumed it did 
about the trust, deference, and good will it has received from others.

-jc