On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 9:41 AM Nicolas Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr> wrote: > > Le 14/12/2020 à 15:25, James Pearson a écrit : > > As others have said, it misses the _really_ important bit about the > > traditional CentOS model which is to follow the RHEL ~10 year life cycle > > I totally agree with you. > > But when you disagree with someone (e.g. the CentOS team), it's good at least > to hear the person out. > If you have followed the other threads in the subject, there is one called "[CentOS] https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/" where centos and redhat are talking with the users, developers (like the bloke who does epel), and supporters about the changes. I would say that means people are discussing that in the list. If you missed that, please look for it in the mail archive. > Back at the university here in Montpellier, we had a funny exercise in one of > the courses. Every one of us had to pick a subject where he or she had a strong > position. I remember I chose nuclear energy, which I think is a bad choice. And > in the exercise, I had to *defend* nuclear energy against its opponents. > > And I published the link to the article because it's a fine text and nicely > argumented. > I usually try to avoid reading anything on medium.com because of its paywall and how it controls what users get to see; I can provide a link to what a group who left it wrote if you want. But, for the sake of hearing you out, I opened the doc in a browser in incognito mode. In it the author states 'CentOS will no longer be old, crusty, and barely alive, trailing RHEL by months at times.' First, the word choice in that sentence, which prevails the article, is anything but nicely argumented as you put it. Second, Centos stream will have some patches before RHES but the security patches will be done *after* RHES. In my book that sounds like it checks the "trailing RHEL by months at times" box where it counts. So, his pretty drawing is very innaccurate. Further down the author tells us that "IBM did not do this. The CentOS governing board, some of which work for Red Hat, did this." Thanks to the "[CentOS] https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/" thread it became known that redhat told the centos steering committee that centos was changing and they -- centos committee -- had the option to vote to approve those changes -- unanimously -- while redhat reserved the right to overrule the entire voting. To understand the significance of this, we need to remember what the "C" in CentOS stand for: community. The author also states "This was not done intentionally. It is also water under the bridge." I would like to focus on the last sentence. That sounds very final and implies the "C" in Centos matters little (refer to my previous comment on the decision process). Then the author goes on and says 'If you are someone who is thinking, “CentOS is now just the RHEL beta,” please ask yourself, did you use to consider RHEL to be the CentOS beta? If not, you shouldn’t be thinking that now about CentOS.' Like in other parts of this "nicely argumented article" the author is very condescending, implying anyone who does not agree with his point is a nitwit. In fact, his "The way software makes it in is the same. It just hits CentOS first instead of RHEL first" statement is misleading because of the security patches case I pointed earlier. Another of the author's points is that "[...] if RHEL is the gold standard of stability (which many would suggest it is) then why would CentOS Stream, a distro effectively taking its place in the line-up, be less stable?" That clashes with what Chris Wright, the Red Hat CTO stated "To be exact, CentOS Stream is an upstream development platform for ecosystem developers. It will be updated several times a day. This is not a production operating system." (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20201212012342/https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/transforming-development-experience-within-centos) Further down the author argues 'It’s no secret that CentOS competes with RHEL. I’ve personally heard CTOs tell Red Hat salespeople, “why should I buy RHEL when I can use CentOS for free?” I die inside when I hear that. It is a fair and good question, but asking it tends to fire up a salesperson and gives them direct financial reasons to hate on CentOS.' If that is the case, that shows Red Hat salespeople need some training; there is a RH partner who commented out recently in the list that his company has no issues helping groups with not enough budget to use centos, understanding its limitations, and upselling those who need the commercial version because of the support (last time I used the RHES support it was quite good). > Cheers, > > Niki > > -- > Microlinux - Solutions informatiques durables > 7, place de l'église - 30730 Montpezat > Site : https://www.microlinux.fr > Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr > Mail : info at microlinux.fr > Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32 > Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12 > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos