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

On Monday, January 4, 2021 8:17 AM, Rich Bowen rbowen at redhat.com wrote:

I think I need to revisit this response at this point.

>     It's important to note that, yes, the Red Hat Liaison has (more
>     accurately: can have in certain circumstances) a louder voice than most
>     other participants. This is something that needs to be stated clearly
>     and kept in mind, however much it may annoy some folks. Red Hat is
>     paying the bills and so has a louder voice.

Some of the people paying the bills are the ones paying an additional $1,200 per Red Hat OpenStack hypervisor per year to get licenses to run RHEL guests.

Do they get a louder voice for paying the bills?

Or is the "elephant" that Red Hat now endorses three other public clouds of which *NONE* are running Red Hat OpenStack as the method people should get their free RHEL licenses?

After buying a product from Red Hat stated to be for providing public and hybrid clouds, is Red Hat providing them a fair way to compete?  Or is Red Hat gaming the system to undermine their own customers--the same ones that have already paid the bills?

I understand Red Hat may have additional announcements.  But the damage is already done.  The message is clear that Red Hat endorses three major clouds and those that run Red Hat OpenStack aren't worth endorsing.

Did the people paying the bills really get a louder voice?

>     So, yeah, we (and, here, I would point largely to Karsten) have been
>     actively working and discussing governance issues for the past 2 years.
>     Should we have been more open about this? Sure, I think the answer to
>     that question is always yes. Indeed, I tend to annoy people with my
>     pushes for transparency around everything, but, of course, it's a
>     balance in a project, like CentOS, where it's largely controlled by a
>     single company. This, in turn, is why I see Stream as such a positive
>     step - it gives the reins, at least a little more, to you, the community.

What is the criteria for success for giving the reins that was discussed at the November 11th meeting?

How was it determine that criteria for success would be achieved by December 31, 2021?

>     That said, I understand and empathize with the frustration and anger
>     from the community around this change. But what I have been saying
>     consistently since that change is that, as annoyed and frustrated as we
>     all are, it is critical that we acknowledge that the change has
>     happened, and figure out What's Next. I hope that everyone who wants to
>     stay around to help figure that out is able to do this without blaming
>     individual board members, calling for resignations, and other unhelpful
>     personal attacks.

I never was attempting to make personal attacks.  I am trying to figure out how we got to this point.  Is there people that had a conflict of interest in deciding December 31, 2021 is a deadline by which Stream will reasonably replace CentOS 8?

Let me put this another way.  Mark Shuttleworth has given interviews stating his product has never missed a release date.  There is several bugs in Lauchpad that indicate major issues with the installer and other primary components were never addressed (including in LTS releases).  Bugs that can be confirmed to still exist when the product never missed it's release date.  Is there ever a point in which it stops being a personal attack to say someone that takes pride in that situation is toxic to the brand and the results?

To be clear, I am not saying anyone on the board is identical to that  person.  I am saying what Stream is has been misrepresented as part of claiming the board decision mades sense.  And seems to be preceeding with no criteria for success when esablishing the date of completion.

Consider the following:
"Does this mean that CentOS Stream is the RHEL BETA test platform now?
A: No. CentOS Stream will be getting fixes and features ahead of RHEL. Generally speaking we expect CentOS Stream to have fewer bugs and more runtime features as it moves forward in time but always giving direct indication of what is going into a RHEL release"

Does that indicate people should expect bugs that would fail established Fedora release criteria to be part of Stream?

Or Karsten Wade's labeling of an blog post on testing with "Stream can cover 95% (or so) of current user workloads" -- does that frame Stream in a way that people should expect bugs in which a Fedora Go / No-Go meeting would push off the release?

We are 17% from November 11th to December 31, 2021.  Have we made at least 17% progress toward the success criteria the governance board has for Stream?

You indicated you want this process to be open and transparent--help me make sense of what we have been told to expect from Stream and the results we are seeing today.