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

On 23.12.2020 08:14, Mike McGrath wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 6:32 PM John Crisp <jcrisp at safeandsoundit.co.uk 
> <mailto:jcrisp at safeandsoundit.co.uk>> wrote:
> 
>     On Mon, 21 Dec 2020 11:29:52 -0600
>     Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com <mailto:mmcgrath at redhat.com>> wrote:
> 
>      > On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 11:06 AM John Crisp
>      > <jcrisp at safeandsoundit.co.uk
>     <mailto:jcrisp at safeandsoundit.co.uk>> wrote:
>      >
>      > > On Fri, 18 Dec 2020 13:03:47 -0600
>      > > Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com <mailto:mmcgrath at redhat.com>>
>     wrote:
> [...snip...]
 >
> 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.

Oh, thank you so much, I didn't hope it could be forgivable. Now that we 
can actually be absolved, it's so much simpler to breathe.

Translating your last statements into English: you (those outside of RH) 
have not that information, you won't have that information, thus you may 
not come to any conclusions.

Again, this is extremely simple. The fundamental flaw of CentOS Linux 
was it didn't bring profits directly. On the contrary, the majority of 
sysadmins were using CentOS instead of RHEL, since CentOS was stable 
enough, was quite simple to maintain - and unless any specific 
requirements were rpesent, didn't require paying expensive bills from 
RH. That simple.

The missed lot of details doesn't change the above simple assumption. 
CentOS Linux was too good an alternative for majority of systems, thus 
that "Carthago delenda est". That simple. No need to permeate an aura of 
mystery.

What's really funny is the constant flow of BMWs (bovine metabolic 
wastes) from RH, trying to "prove" that CentOS Stream is a drop-on 
replacement for CentOS Linux (which it isn't) and that it fits 95% of 
CentOS Linux use cases (which it doesn't).

Happy New Year!

-- 
Sincerely,

Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)