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

On 12/26/2020 2:48 PM, Mike McGrath wrote:
>
> On Sat, Dec 26, 2020 at 4:12 PM Chris Mair <chris at 1006.org 
> <mailto:chris at 1006.org>> wrote:
>
>     Before you say "Stream", the single most killer argument against
>     Stream
>     is that you have broken any trust when you moved the EOL of CentOS
>     Linux 8
>     from 2029 to 2021.
>
>
> I think we lost a lot of trust due to a pretty serious mix-up 
> about the EOL date announcement, but I don't think it has erased all 
> the good Red Hat has done and continues to do.

This is not a "mix-up!" This is not an "oops, my bad!" Most large-scale 
users of CentOS operate in orgs that require some level of post-mortem 
analysis on major fiascos like this. If Red Hat wants to start trying to 
rebuild ANY goodwill, Step 0 would be releasing a clear and transparent 
post-mortem of what exactly happened here and why. The reasons behind 
this have changed, public statements and leaked statements and 
implications have contradicted one another, and there's clear evidence 
of internal concern.

Perhaps instead of digging the hole even further over the holidays, Red 
Hat can start responding in a healthier way than it is now.


>
>     Now Red Hat employees jump through hoops to tell us how great
>     that'll be. What
>     guerantees that in two year's time you're not going to kill Stream
>     because "it didn't
>     provide anything to RH"?
>
>
> Nothing, we and all companies kill products all the time.  I don't 
> recall this level of outrage over mugshot. We're taking a big risk 
> with Stream and if it doesn't work out, we'll make changes there too 
> as we should.  It makes no sense to continue doing something that 
> isn't working out.

Who exactly is the "we" you're referring to? You can't have your cake 
and eat it too when it comes to RedHat coming at the CentOS Board and 
threatening an override if a decision does not go the way it wants, 
knowing full well that this would have far-ranging effects on all 
downstream users.


>     Somebody already mentioned "fool me once..."...
>
>     I'm still angry and I still cannot believe you appear to be
>     oblivious to the huge
>     blunder you made with this incredible EOL shortening. You've
>     basically killed the
>     CentOS brand in one single move.
>
>
> We're not oblivious to it.  If this were any other organization or 
> relationship, we'd help make amends by giving you your money back.  
> That's just not an option here.  And you can say we killed it all you 
> want, what we've done is significantly change it.  You may not 
> recognize it anymore but there are many people on this list who we 
> talked to before the announcement and that we've seen now who are 
> actually interested in coming on this journey with us. Thats good.
>
Lots of people would be interested in CentOS Stream (myself included). 
You have killed CentOS Linux (the distribution). You're equivocating 
here between the two sets of bits, just like you're equivocating between 
Red Hat and the CentOS Project above.


> I suspect the very trust that you all were putting in Red Hat to 
> continue to produce CentOS Linux as though it were actually a 10-year 
> enterprise-grade distribution for production was part of the problem 
> here.  To further demonstrate that problem, many of the replies I've 
> seen look as though people did their risk assessments with "we're 
> relying on Red Hat for our OS" instead of "We're relying on a 
> community for our OS."  I'd imagine some of you are having very 
> awkward conversations with your management chain about this.  No one 
> using Fedora or WildFly thinks that way.

Yes. "I can't believe that a VP at Red Hat, of all places, is being such 
an a** on the centos-devel list! // Me neither!" is indeed a "very 
awkward conversation" to have with one's management chain. Many of us 
are quite curious about what "very awkward conversations" are happening 
over there.

Let me make this very clear: NO ONE out there who's responsible for more 
than two dozen installs of CentOS is unaware that it's a rebuild of the 
upstream product. No one is threatening to sue Red Hat Inc over this, 
because you haven't broken our contract; you've only broken our trust. 
Our risk assessment was that Red Hat would behave like responsible 
adults and the long-time leaders in the OSS community (we believed) they 
were, not poison its community and apparently try to salt the earth to boot.


Please stop stepping on rakes. It's making this bad situation worse.

-jc

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