[CentOS-devel] Vote of Confidence

On Sat, Jan 2, 2021 at 9:03 PM Mauricio Tavares <raubvogel at gmail.com> wrote:
>       Centos is RedHat's property, full stop. Even in the post 2014
> centos bylaws, RedHat can do whatever it damn pleases with centos,
> including but not limited to cheerfully ignoring the centos steering
> committee. I would not be surprised if it has the option to replace
> the entire committee,

Yes, they can. Including the option of fracturing the EL community and
dis-enfranchising even long-term Red Hat supporters. They can totally
do all of this. And, if they admitted to this openly, they might even
deserve kudos for being so bold. :-)

It is the charade of it all that is the most frustrating. For example,
saying that it is "upstream" so this will facilitate contribution, but
then admitting that actually Red Hat is still the upstream, and Red
Hat will make all the decisions on what content and direction is
allowed. At least Fedora has some ability to choose a different path,
like BTRFS as one example. Will CentOS Stream community members be
permitted to add BTRFS back into CentOS Stream? Or will Red Hat
prevent such a thing?

> Stop thinking of centos as a community project and start seeing it as
> RedHat's IP and everything -- licensing, the new relationship with
> RHES -- will make sense.

Yes, exactly. And this is why the response should be in this exact
context. This includes shining a light on what has just happened, and
making sure that the correct business decisions are made as a response
to this event. Red Hat is a business, and deserves the exact same
scrutiny and public review as the community would give to Oracle or
Microsoft.

> The Cheese has moved: follow the cheese or find a new one. Each choice
> has repercussions.

Yes. :-)

-- 
Mark Mielke <mark.mielke at gmail.com>