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

Mon Jan 4 16:51:03 UTC 2021
Rich Bowen <rbowen at redhat.com>


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.

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.

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.