[CentOS] Any update on 5.6 / 6?

[Morten P.D. Stevens]

2011/2/16 David Sommerseth <dazo at users.sourceforge.net>:
>
> That Red Hat keeps their work schedule private is not directly comparable
> to a CentOS community effort, how I see it.
>
> Red Hat is also a big financial organisation, which CentOS is not.  In that
> context, Red Hat is much more responsible for stock holders, informing the
> stock market on economical issues.  And market speculations needs to be
> controlled much more differently.  It will be market speculations, like it
> or not, no matter what, all which most often are related to product
> releases.  In addition, Red Hat also are responsible for customer and
> partner agreements, certification training, etc, etc.
>
> It's a big machinery, which is tightly connected to the Open Source work
> Red Hat does.  And revealing some of the Open Source process might reveal
> other things indirectly, which makes the market speculate more wildly.
>
> CentOS does not need to be responsible for a board of stock holders (or
> what the proper term is), partners, (paying) customers, training
> organisations, etc, etc.  In such regard, CentOS is quite more lucky - it
> can focus primarily on the Open Source part.
>
> Red Hat does also much more than just pulling the pieces together to form
> the RHEL distribution.  These pieces are improved continuously to make them
> work well in the big distribution perspective, as well making sure it is
> tested on a vast variety of certified hardware [1].
>
> CentOS basically takes the core result of all those processes and the
> labour Red Hat has put into RHEL, strips out/replaces the trademarks with
> CentOS replacements, recompiles everything and have a release ready.
>
> Hence, the CentOS process should, in theory at least, be a lot easier than
> the RHEL process - the majority of the hard work is already done when
> Red Hat delivers an installable RHEL distribution.  Given that CentOS can
> focus primarily on the Open Source part, it should also be able to be more
> transparent on its process.

Hi David,

You're absolutely right.

The best example is Scientific Linux. There are schedules and an open development process.

What is the reason for the closed development process in CentOS?

Best regards,

Morten