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

On Friday, January 22, 2021 9:53 AM, Brian (bex) Exelbierd <bexelbie at redhat.com> wrote:

> If someone has a cloud that doesn't support cloud access, have them talk to us at
> CentOS-questions at redhat.com. We can figure out what the challenges
> are and see if we can get them into the program.

I will look into that.


> On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 12:16 PM redbaronbrowser via CentOS-devel
> centos-devel at centos.org wrote:
>
> > 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?
>
> Because CentOS Stream doesn't have releases, there is no ritual of
> go/no-go meetings or release criteria, per se.

I wasn't expecting a ritual of go/no-go meetings.  Based on the information given, I was expecting the testing for established criteria would have been automated.

> Instead we have acceptance testing built from the same tests used
> on RHEL releases to establish that the code isn't WIP or otherwise an
> experiment.

I will agree with you that Stream is not alpha grade software.

> There will always be bugs, that is the nature of software. We are saying
> that bugs in CentOS Stream will be the result of actual bugs, not
> because someone pushed something half-baked that we knew was broken.

When gnome-initial-setup fails, that is not an obscure bug that slipped past beta testing into production.  That is the type of bug that is in a beta-grade product to be caught by the beta testers.  And unlike the other bugs I have found, this one has already been confirmed by someone else on the mailing list.

If you want to claim people using CentOS as a desktop should take advantage of the 16 RHEL license offer, I will accept that claim.

What I am not willing to accept is that the FAQ is being honest about the state that Stream is in.  You are only explaining distinctions between alpha-grade and beta-grade.  You are not giving evidence this bug should be exhibited in something Red Hat attachs it's credibility to being non-beta production grade software.  This by Red Hat standards should be considered *BETA*.

Just fix the FAQ to reflect the reality this bug highlights.  Once Red Hat is willing to be honest with us, I will be willing to file bugs for the other regressions that exist in Stream.