[CentOS] Moving to CentOS 8 Stream

Wed Dec 9 22:16:35 UTC 2020
Alan Mead <amead2 at alanmead.org>

On 12/9/2020 1:43 PM, david wrote:
> CentOS Fans:
>
> I've spent hours yesterday and today reading the messages about the
> Centos 8 Stream, and expect to do it for the next few days also.  I
> would recommend that anyone contemplating some action, such as
> switching to a different distribution, advising your management to
> change, or similar, postpone that action for a while.  Let the dust
> settle, let the policy makers evaluate the comments, and watch for
> clarifications and/or modifications of the plan.
>
> For lack of a better date, I suggest waiting until the first business
> day of 2021 (Monday 04 January) before taking any significant actions.
>
> Personally, I've already invested some of my time incorporating CentOS
> 8.  I've also been working with Ubuntu since that seems to be the only
> way forward with Raspberry Pi and Apple/Intel machines, but I'll keep
> my CentOS 7/8 machines stable for this month at least.
>
> David

Agreed, time will tell. I, personally, think the technical quality of
streams is likely to be very high.

But I think that's the least concern. What we can decide today (without
putting much thought into it) is that we cannot rely upon CentOS to be
any particular thing. It's a brand and decisions will be made for us
about that brand by the people paying for the work, which is their
absolute right. But the "optics" of this look pretty bad. We've seen
distros perish, but they generally waste away from lack of interest.
Clearly, this isn't the case for CentOS.

I'm horrified by the people (none from CentOS, AFAICT) saying "CentOS
doesn't owe you [CentOS user] anything!" That's like saying my friend
doesn't owe me anything... Of course he doesn't, but it would be awfully
unfriendly of him to inform me that, going forward, I'm going to be
invoiced for our chats. If CentOS announced that it was too costly and
they needed donations, I'm sure people would be less distressed if
CentOS eventually died. This change seems far more mercenary. CentOS
doesn't "owe" me anything, but I don't "owe" the brand anything either
and I do have a strong preference for distros that seem free and
governed freely.

I really cannot get too excited that the CentOS brand will be even more
central to RHEL. I expect the new CentOS will be super-duper, but CentOS
as we knew it is being killed, and I'm sorry to see it go.

Someone has a petition to get CentOS to reconsider... What would it
matter if they do? Probably just in the velocity of people switching to
Oracle/Debian/Ubuntu/Windows/ETC? and in how fast some people switch to
streams or RHEL.

-Alan


-- 

Alan D. Mead, Ph.D.
President, Talent Algorithms Inc.

science + technology = better workers

http://www.alanmead.org

The irony of this ... is that the Internet is
both almost-infinitely expandable, while at the
same time constrained within its own pre-defined
box. And if that makes no sense to you, just
reflect on the existence of Facebook. We have
the vastness of the internet and yet billions
of people decided to spend most of them time
within a horribly designed, fake-news emporium
of a website that sucks every possible piece of
personal information out of you so it can sell it
to others. And they see nothing wrong with that.

-- Kieren McCarthy, commenting on why we are not 
                    all using IPv6