[CentOS] CentOS Stream from bottom works, what is this?

Thu Dec 10 17:57:46 UTC 2020
Japheth Cleaver <cleaver at terabithia.org>

On 12/10/2020 9:08 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 11:50:00AM -0500, me at tdiehl.org wrote:
>> So if I understand this correctly, centos8 + will basically be a rolling
>> release and we will never know what we are really running. Is this
>> correct?
> No, this is not the case. There will be continuous updates, but all of these
> updates are ones that are planned to go into a RHEL minor release, with all
> of the normal things that will imply. As Brendan said, .y stream development
> is really not all that exciting.

"[W]e’ll be shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which tracks just/ahead/of a 
current RHEL release. CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end 
at the end of 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as 
the upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.... It 
gives the CentOS contributor community a great deal of influence in the 
future of RHEL."


Someone (or several someones) at RedHat is/are very confused.

As I wrote elsewhere, CentOS Whatever cannot be both upstream and 
downstream of RHEL and serve both roles adequately. If CentOS Stream 
remains just a CR/Early Access for updates that have passed all 
decision-making and QA processes and are well on their way to the 
upcoming RHEL point release, then there's no real input that can be had 
here, and there also appears to be no change from what CentOS Stream has 
been for this entire EL8 cycle.

If so, then the "great deal of influence" and "development/upstream 
branch" is meaningless drivel and the death of CentOS Linux (the 
rebuild) needs to be considered on its own merits as a distinct act by 
RedHat without distraction.

A true "Enterprise Upstream" distinct from Fedora, where the community 
has a snowball's chance at preventing laptop-focused Fedora-isms from 
destabilizing the core, is a niche begging to be filled. But that's not 
what's being presented to us, and telling SIGs to poke around on Stream 
instead of Linux does nothing for the vast majority of use cases 
external to RedHat.

If the decision-makers (not the CentOS board, clearly) are being 
presented these responses then they should realize that the community 
expects a real post-mortem and explanation here.

-jc