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

On Monday, January 4, 2021 10:51 AM, Rich Bowen <rbowen at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 12/24/20 4:59 PM, redbaronbrowser via CentOS-devel wrote:
>
> > I believe what makes something CentOS is the governance.
> > Red Hat's behavior makes it clear they believe what make something CentOS is who owns the trademark. That they can lie about the governance rules to get whatever they want.
> > This militant attitude on the part of Red Hat and the fraudulent governance board deserves an equally militant response.
> > Time fix the openness gap for the kernel SRPM for real instead of blindly following Karsten Wade's empty posturing in the name of openness.
>
> I'm hesitant to dignify these comments with a response, but after some
> thought, here we go.
>
> First: I presume your comment about "fraudulent governance" refers to
> Bex's appointment as Red Hat Liaison? I'm not sure, since
> https://www.centos.org/about/governance/board-responsibilities/#red-hat-liaison-responsibilities
> defines the process by which a Liaison may be replaced/rotated, and
> that's the process that was used. If you're talking about something
> else, I would like to hear more.

You are jumping way back in the thread at this point.

The announcement that CentOS would join Red Hat is available here:
https://forums.centos.org/viewtopic.php?t=44407

It included assurances as to what would not change.

One of the statements is:
"The Red Hat Enterprise Linux to CentOS firewall will also remain.
Members and contributors to the CentOS efforts are still isolated from
the RHEL Groups inside Red Hat, with the only interface being srpm /
source path tracking, no sooner than is considered released. In
summary: we retain an upstream."

The "firewall" between CentOS and the RHEL team had gotten referenced several times since then.

So, having a member of the RHEL team sitting on the governance board to switch CentOS from a downstream to an upstream seem to fit exactly what we were told would not happen.

Another Red Hat employee got involved in the thread and pointed out that RH is just like every other enterprise and documents just silently expire.  So, I am learning to understand Red Hat is an enterprise like "every other" and there is no long term commitments or core values.

> I am the first to admit (actually, Karsten has been saying for a while)
> that the CentOS Governance documents are lacking. There is no central
> "constitution", but, rather, a handful of web pages and blog posts which
> define how CentOS Governance works.
>
> This is largely due to two things:
>
> One: CentOS has not ever been a contributor community, in the
> traditional "Four Opens" sense. And so there was little need to document
> How It Works.
>
> Two: CentOS has always been a "do-ocracy" - folks just got down to the
> business of doing the work, rather than talking about it.

Sure, but how do I get down to the business of doing the work with kpatch with a vendor that obfuscates all the patches?

The excuse given over and over was the "firewall."  CentOS and RHEL are two different things and one doesn't influence the policies of the other.  Hence, we just had to accept RHEL's policy is the obfuscate and CentOS is firewalled from doing anything about it.

Yet the firewall can be dismissed at Red Hat's convenience.  Stream's kernel still has all it's patches obfuscated.  But a member of RHEL can interact with CentOS beyond the publicly stated interfaces.  If we are no longer retaining an upstream but rather becoming the upstream, why is my request to get access to the individual kernel patches still silently rejected?

I honestly do not understand if closing the "openness gap" is just some sort of marketting jargon or something Red Hat really is serious about.  But looking at the state of Stream's kernel srpm as it stands today, it feels like marketting jargon.

> The move to Stream increases the urgency to more clearly, publicly,
> transparently document how CentOS governance works, and how to get
> involved in that process. This is a major task of mine in the coming
> months, and I welcome participation from anyone who has knowledge of
> effective (open source) governance.
>
> Second: I take great exception to your ad hominem attacks on Karsten,
> and, elsewhere on this list, Bex. It's clear that you don't know either
> of these people, and have little or no insight into their motives or
> character.
>
> The fact that some of us are the face of these decisions means that we
> get to take some of that flak. That's fair and expected. But your
> personal attacks are unwarranted, and I would ask that you stop. Yeah, I
> know that I'm responding to a week-old post, and that the conversation
> have become considerably more productive since then. But this needs to
> be called out.

Ok.