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

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 6:32 PM John Crisp <jcrisp at safeandsoundit.co.uk>
wrote:

> On Mon, 21 Dec 2020 11:29:52 -0600
> Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 11:06 AM John Crisp
> > <jcrisp at safeandsoundit.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, 18 Dec 2020 13:03:47 -0600
> > > Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Red Hat isn't aiming for total global domination
>
> > > That is what any company aims for, even if they don't achieve it.
> > > It is the simple objective, and outcome, of capitalism. Beat the
> > > rest.
> > >
> > > So this is about growing/expanding market share, which then equates
> > > to profit. Why wouldn't you?
> > >
> > > If you argue anything else you really are quite simply gaslighting.
> > >
> > >
>
> > You have grossly oversimplified a complicated situation and completely
> > ignored corporate responsibility which is something Red Hat takes very
> > seriously.
>
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> This is called gaslighting.
>
> As a good friend of mine said many moons ago. "Life is simple. It is
> people that make it complicated."
>
> And for good reason. It is easy to hide amongst corporate complexity and
> a wall of long arguments over minutiae. Take a simple idea and
> complicate it.
>
> Business really IS simple. Buy or create something, add value, and sell
> for more money than it cost you = profit.
>
> How to increase that may be complex. But the base formula is not.
>
> Of course, you can add morals & all that jazz. But none of it gets away
> from the fact that companies need profit, and shareholders need
> dividends, and the simplest way to increase profit is to either cut
> your highest costs - usually jobs - and send them somewhere cheaper, or
> increase market share, aka 'domination'.
>
> Corporate responsibility? Yeah, I understand that. We like to be
> huggy too. But with no profit it doesn't mean a thing. You are out of
> business.
>
> But of course, you know all this.
>
> My point was/is please stop the platitudes and excuses and just say
> it like it is. Stop trying to pretend it is really complicated, and
> we couldn't possibly understand your feelings, when in fact it is
> fundamentally really simple.
>
> > > It really is quite offensive and you are aren't winning any hearts
> > > and minds right now.
> > >
> >
> > I'll admit something about Mark's reply didn't bring out the best in
> > me. However, I'll take every opportunity to dote on the team and on
> > Red Hat, they've done some amazing things that we have all benefited
>
> Indeed. Seeing more and more frustrated RH people desperately try to
> defend the indefensible. I almost feel sorry for many there who
> probably feel quite betrayed, and those like you having to do the rounds
> on lists like this getting their ears bent trying to placate people with
> businesses that have just been destroyed over night (luckily I'm not
> one) by telling them what a great company RedHat is. Gaslighting.
>
> >   There is a lot more to Red Hat than the dollars and cents
> > you're trying to distill us down into.
> >
>
> There may well be, but I'm afraid when you do distil it down, no matter
> which way you try and cut it, the bottom line is always money.
>
> If it wasn't for money, CentOS as we know it would not be being cut.
>
> No, I don't doubt for a moment that you are all lovely people to meet
> down the bar (and I have met one or two). But this is a decision
> based on $$$ presumably trying to convert a cost into revenue and
> extinguishing the 'free loaders'.
>
> Probably rammed home when the new RedHat owners asked about how you
> were going to increase revenue. They aren't known for beating about the
> bush with 'loss making' business. I'd guess a marketing and
> beancounter assessment of how many CentOS users converted to RH didn't
> fair well.
>
> So this was a quick way to shave a few million in costs overnight,
> potentially gain a load of new subscribers, and get more testing by the
> rest. And your morals went to hell in a handcart.
>
> It is really that simple. Please don't try and pretend it is otherwise.
>
> Have a safe Xmas & New Year.
>

And herein lies the problem.  I'm doing my best to answer questions.  You
are angry and have directed your anger at me, all of which is completely
understandable.  I could do without the namecalling but if you can't help
yourself, I get it.  I'm here doing my best to make sure people understand
what is going on.  And you're right, one of the many factors that went into
this decision was business health and yes, as you point out, revenue is
tied to business health.  The problem is you've made several uninformed
claims about Red Hat's business.  For one, infrastructure revenues, as were
publicly reported up through last year, have remained basically the same
for years at Red Hat.  That's public knowledge and is available in our form
10k, feel free to go read it from last year and previous years.  I don't
know who the anonymous "ex Red Hat exec" was quoted earlier but I don't
think the entire paid Linux OS market is worth $10 billion.  That just
doesn't pass the sniff test though I guess that's for some analyst
somewhere to figure out.

If Red Hat's new "owners" as you put it want to increase revenue, they
wouldn't be doing that with RHEL, they'd be doing it with one of the
emerging technologies that were growing at somewhere around triple the rate
of our infrastructure revenue (Like an OpenShift or OpenStack).  Again,
there's no secret here, this was all available information up until about a
year ago and not much has actually changed in the last year in the Linux OS
market.  Why would you invest a dollar into a bank account that could give
10% return, when another bank account would give you 30 or 40% return?

So, of course, this is where it gets complicated.  Many, many factors went
into this decision across many people in Red Hat and on the board.  I think
you honestly believe we had some meeting inside Red Hat and the agenda was
"How to make more money by killing CentOS."  Instead, we had several
discussions both inside Red Hat, outside Red Hat, etc on what to do about
CentOS over at least a couple of years that I was involved.  It's been
clear to us for a while that this model was pretty unhealthy.  We all had
our own wants out of this and I suspect no one got everything they wanted.

Many people on this list are looking to find a way forward here - to
understand what is going on and provide suggestions where they see it might
help.  It is forgivable that you and others would jump to conclusions that
equate to IBM, or greed, or revenue because you don't have all the
information we do.  But just know that when you again try to boil this all
down to just a revenue discussion, you're missing a lot of detail that
actually went into this.

            -Mike
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