On 28.01.2021 23:14, Neal Gompa wrote: >>> I firmly believe that low-cost self-support options would be a good >>> value for Red Hat to offer to the market, especially for a lot of >>> those startups that eventually grow past the 16 server limit. I hope >>> that's on the docket based on the comment at the top of the RHEL blog >>> post that this is the first of many new programs. >> I hope so too, because if they do nothing, then many CentOS users will >> simply leave for Oracle Linux. I just don't see any other way out now. > I'm optimistic. I know the folks at Red Hat are doing their best, > and I have faith in them. Yes, you are right, the folks at Red Hat are doing their best, but Red Hat is not independent, now it is an IBM subsidiary. So, as I understand, all decisions about killing CentOS were made not by Red Hat, but by the top managers of IBM. IBM acquired Red Hat for 34 billion USD, and now they just wants to return money. Killing the CentOS achieves several goals: 1. Most of CentOS users are transferred to beta testers for the next minor version of RHEL (CentOS Stream), which makes it possible to improve the quality of minor releases of RHEL, which can bring additional profit for IBM in the long term. 2. A smaller part of the CentOS users are transferred to the paid version of RHEL, which brings additional profit for IBM in the short term. 3. For those users for whom neither option (1) nor option (2) is suitable, the RHEL no-cost option was offered with a limit of 16 instances. Over time, some of them will go to the users of paid version of RHEL, also increasing the profit of IBM. Killing the CentOS - "Nothing personal, it's just business". -- Best regards, Gena