Hello Rich, Thanks for the CentOS team for all the work that has been done in the past years, the dojo's, and the SIGs. It's an amazing journey and there are many people who deserve a big applause to what CentOS was to this day. CentOS/RHEL is (was) my first choice when advising a distribution to customers, but one-year notice is not a lot, and that is a game changer in the trust I have in Red Hat. In the future, I guess I will be a lot more careful about this. This change has a big impact, and it is hard to understand why suddently CentOS 8, which we were expecting to last as long as RHEL 8, is now cut to 5 years. CentOS 6 is gone after 9 years. CentOS 7 is already 6. CentOS 8 is 2 years, which is the time customers generally wait to update their fleet. I guess a significant amount of users have switched to 8 recently, and now they know they have one year to migrate. CentOS stream is nice, great. There is a usecase for it. Sysadmins workstations, vendors, CI tools, can benefit from it. In the last 7 years, I have been very disappointed to see the distance between RHEL and CentOS. The CentOS team battling to find the correct build order, to redo all the Red Hat pipelines in the open, without getting to speak to the RHEL team, all of this was causing a lot of unnecessary slowness and frustration, both in the community and with some team members I was able to talk to. In its current form, maintaining CentOS linux looked like a waste of time, given that the tooling needed to be re-done from scratch each time. However, I did not see stream as the future of CentOS Linux. What I was looking for is RHEL to become the new CentOS. That the Red Hat pipelines would be more open and be able to directly produce a CentOS version. I guess we won't see that happen. For the rest, whatever is said, as long as Red Hat is not willing to drop RHEL, it means that there is a reason for RHEL to exist. Therefore I think there is a reason for CentOS Linux to exist. ( Regarding security, I remember the time when we got heartbleed, CentOS did release a workaround before upstream: https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-April/020248.html I feel like this was the good thing to do, and that in the current course, it is guaranteed not to happen anymore. Note that it was to the best of my knowledge the only time this happened. ) Thanks, On 08 Dec 09:06, Rich Bowen wrote: > The future of the CentOS Project is CentOS Stream, and over the next year > we’ll be shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise > Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which tracks just ahead of a current RHEL > release. CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end at the end of > 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as the upstream > (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. > > Meanwhile, we understand many of you are deeply invested in CentOS Linux 7, > and we’ll continue to produce that version through the remainder of the RHEL > 7 life cycle. > https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/#Life_Cycle_Dates > > CentOS Stream will also be the centerpiece of a major shift in collaboration > among the CentOS Special Interest Groups (SIGs). This ensures SIGs are > developing and testing against what becomes the next version of RHEL. This > also provides SIGs a clear single goal, rather than having to build and test > for two releases. It gives the CentOS contributor community a great deal of > influence in the future of RHEL. And it removes confusion around what > “CentOS” means in the Linux distribution ecosystem. > > When CentOS Linux 8 (the rebuild of RHEL8) ends, your best option will be to > migrate to CentOS Stream 8, which is a small delta from CentOS Linux 8, and > has regular updates like traditional CentOS Linux releases. If you are using > CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment, and are concerned that CentOS > Stream will not meet your needs, we encourage you to contact Red Hat about > options. > > We have an FAQ - https://centos.org/distro-faq/ - to help with your > information and planning needs, as you figure out how this shift of project > focus might affect you. > > [See also: Red Hat's perspective on this. https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innovative-future-enterprise-linux] > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS-devel mailing list > CentOS-devel at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel -- Julien Pivotto -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 228 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/attachments/20201208/e1e26ee9/attachment-0005.sig>