[CentOS-devel] Balancing the needs around the RHEL platform

On 12/28/20 5:14 AM, Laurențiu Păncescu wrote:
> This started with RHEL 6, and the likely motivation was to hinder 
> Oracle Enterprise Linux, not to save build time.


That was speculation at the time of the change, and no evidence has ever 
supported it.  Most specifically: It does save build time, and it hasn't 
hindered Oracle EL.  There was never any reason to think that it would.  
Even if the OEL kernel maintainers wanted specifically to start with the 
RHEL kernel and add their own features, it's no more difficult to do so 
with a tarball than it is with a tarball and thousands of patch files.  
Either way, they will need to apply their patches to the end result and 
rebase periodically on that.

It was a poorly supported argument in 2011, and it's a poorly supported 
argument today.