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

Sun Dec 27 11:47:06 UTC 2020
Ljubomir Ljubojevic <centos at plnet.rs>

On 12/27/20 1:18 AM, Mike McGrath wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Dec 26, 2020 at 6:03 PM Ljubomir Ljubojevic <centos at plnet.rs
> <mailto:centos at plnet.rs>> wrote:
> 
>     On 12/26/20 11:48 PM, Mike McGrath wrote:
>     > 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.
> 
>     Considering Red Hat bought entire CentOS project in total secret, or
>     should we say bribed CentOS dev group with jobs, you do not get to say
>     "why should we continue to build it" without admitting that Red Hat's
>     goal was to kill it all along but needed to control the clone building
>     process first. How was it said? Embrace, Engulf, Extinguish?
>     Either say both or neither.
> 
> 
>  I wasn't involved in the beginning and am not privy to those
> discussions so I won't comment on them.  I will say that many of the
> paid CentOS engineers are the most vocal community advocates on my
> team.  Saying they were bribed is pretty bad form, especially if you
> actually know any of them.  They gave you and others years of stability
> and often in challenging situations.
> 

I have wrote here before that both back then and now I do *not* have any
problems with them taking those jobs. Good for them, they were
recognized and advanced in life. And they *did* earn that with their
work on CentOS. They worked on the project without any visible personal
gain for years while we enjoyed fruits of their work. So any
gain/reward/payment they got out of it is not in question, I (and I
suspect vast majority of users) do not hold them against it.

But lets be honest and blunt. Red Hat wanted control over CentOS project
(for whatever reason you want to choose to believe in) and they
approached CentOS Board and in *secret* conducted crucial negotiations
about the future of community project and in return they got *personal
gains* out of the deal, out of giving their consent to relinquish the
control over the supposedly community project.
Here, you define the word that describes this phenomena. What will it be
I wonder.

And veto over any Board decision Red Hat does not like and threat of
loosing the great job they have in the process is the definition of the
word "mobbing" I believe. All they can do to support the project was to
plead with Red Hat executives and maybe threaten with PR disaster by
leaving the Red Hat and/or leaking how to clone RHEL to the public. They
did not have, and do not have any other power over the CentOS project,
just to resign and help others.

In hindsight, because I think even they were persuaded by Red Hat
representatives, my personal opinion is that CentOS Board made a bad
decision when they agreed to join Red Hat in a sense that they lost
their own freedom of expression, their hands are tide and they are not
free to publicly voice any of their grievances or opposition.

Again, it they are fine with it, who am I to judge them? But I know I
personally could not do it, I did walk away from good jobs when I was
harassed without cause, and I would have done it again. I even sent my
WISP users to competitors when their demands were unreasonable or they
were verbally abusive (while I was operating small WISP). But that is me.


>         -Mike
> 
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-- 
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant