Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Japheth Cleaver]

On 12/17/2020 9:29 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:

On 12/13/20 3:25 PM, Dave Stevens wrote:
On Sun, 13 Dec 2020 21:05:42 +0100 Rainer Duffner 
 wrote:
It’s also not often the case that you can split this kind of work 
into a thousand work-packages and have everybody just work 1/2 hour 
a day on it. 

not like Debian for instance
No, not at all like Debian.  Debian doesn't have to try to match the 
unattainable goal of 100% binary compatibility with an upstream 
source.  I've seen a small part of this first-hand, and deducing the 
build order to gain binary compatibility is the one thing that can 
single-thread the build process quicker than anything else.  RHEL 
doesn't even have the same need; an RHEL rebuild that didn't have the 
goal to be bug-compatible near the 100% level doesn't, either, and can 
be built by a lot of people.


Try it yourself: go back to CentOS 5.5 and attempt to rebuild the 
released sources for 5.6 and get a binary compatible build.  I've done 
it myself for IA64; it was a pain.


All of the upstream distributions, Debian, Fedora, etc, have a lot of 
latitude that CentOS never has enjoyed. 


Given that rebuilds /had/ been taking longer and longer lengths of time, 
it was clearly hop(e)xpected that bringing CentOS into the RedHat fold 
in an official partnership in 2014 would allow for direct access to the 
RHEL engineers and a path toward making the CentOS Project's rebuilds 
easier. Indeed, although it's been six years, moving to integrating 
EL/ELN/CS and RHEL in some way in the pipeline is precisely what had 
been desired... BUT, defining the problem out of existence while also 
defining "CentOS Linux" out of existence helps absolutely no one (on the 
outside, at least). And cutting the support period for 8 in half is so 
disruptive as to outweigh the progress in other areas.


-jc

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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Lamar Owen]

On 12/14/20 10:52 AM, Phelps, Matthew wrote:

...
The main issue against using Fedora in production environments is the 
short lifecycle. Forcing an upgrade, and all the associated testing, 
auditing, etc. of the base version every year or so is not tenable for 
most organizations.


Indeed.  Fedora kernels also have no KABI stability for third-party 
drivers; every kernel update carries the potential for breakage.


At least you're not trying to track and run Rawhide.
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Lamar Owen]

On 12/13/20 3:25 PM, Dave Stevens wrote:
On Sun, 13 Dec 2020 21:05:42 +0100 Rainer Duffner 
 wrote:
It’s also not often the case that you can split this kind of work 
into a thousand work-packages and have everybody just work 1/2 hour a 
day on it. 

not like Debian for instance
No, not at all like Debian.  Debian doesn't have to try to match the 
unattainable goal of 100% binary compatibility with an upstream source.  
I've seen a small part of this first-hand, and deducing the build order 
to gain binary compatibility is the one thing that can single-thread the 
build process quicker than anything else.  RHEL doesn't even have the 
same need; an RHEL rebuild that didn't have the goal to be 
bug-compatible near the 100% level doesn't, either, and can be built by 
a lot of people.


Try it yourself: go back to CentOS 5.5 and attempt to rebuild the 
released sources for 5.6 and get a binary compatible build.  I've done 
it myself for IA64; it was a pain.


All of the upstream distributions, Debian, Fedora, etc, have a lot of 
latitude that CentOS never has enjoyed.


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Skylar Thompson]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 05:25:16PM -0800, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> ... snip ...
> Today, CentOS is a release stage after Stage 5 described above.  The CentOS
> maintainers begin work on a minor release after that release is available to
> RHEL consumers, and the process of rebuilding those packages is often very
> time consuming.  CentOS maintainers have to reverse-engineer the exact order
> in which packages are built, with the exact set of installed and available
> packages in the build environment in order to ensure that the resulting
> package actually uses the same interfaces that RHEL???s packages do.  All
> packages require that ordering and build environment matching, but most
> packages are published in small sets and ordering is much easier to identify
> than it is when they are published in a large batch.
> 
> As a result, security updates can???t be published for CentOS while the
> maintainers are rebuilding the minor release, because the build dependencies
> aren???t available yet.  Those windows occur every six months, and are
> typically a month or more in length. [2]
> 
> Today, CentOS users accept the risk that for roughly two months out of the
> year, their systems may have known vulnerabilities with no patch to
> remediate the problem.  Personally, I think that???s a huge risk that needs
> to be weighed against the costs of RHEL licenses whenever CentOS is used in
> production.
> 
> The good news is that CentOS Stream looks like it won't have that problem.
> CentOS Stream updates still won???t be prepared early, while vulnerability
> details are embargoed, but there aren???t any windows in which CentOS Stream
> can???t immediately begin work on preparing updates once the embargo ends.
> That means that CentOS Stream will be as secure as CentOS is today in
> between minor updates, and significantly more secure than CentOS is today
> while its maintainers prepare minor releases.

While I agree with your entire post, Gordon, this specific point I think is
the most critical. In our environment, we already need to look to the
Continuous Release repos to get critical security updates during this
embargo period. I'm betting Stream will be no less well vetted than the CR
repos, and likely will be better. In any case, the burden for tracking down
the updates will be much less with Stream: we'll just get the packages
through our normal channels, rather than going on a hunt through CVEs and
Bugzilla, then temporarily enabling the CR repos for just the period of
time when we need to get the updates before disabling them again.

> ... snip ...

-- 
-- Skylar Thompson (skyl...@u.washington.edu)
-- Genome Sciences Department (UW Medicine), System Administrator
-- Foege Building S046, (206)-685-7354
-- Pronouns: He/Him/His
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Anthony K]

On 13/12/20 7:15 pm, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:

Le 11/12/2020 à 02:25, Gordon Messmer a écrit :

Personally, I think that changing focus on CentOS Stream is going to make
CentOS (and maybe even RHEL) better in the same way and for the same reasons
that Fedora is a better distribution than Red Hat Linux was.

Using Fedora on production servers is like climbing without a rope.


I like that analogy - Free Solo *[0]* - here I come.

*[0]* - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Solo
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Anthony K]

On 14/12/20 6:56 am, Gordon Messmer wrote:

On 12/13/20 2:45 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:

When people are happy with something they do not voice their content on
the mailing list, mailing list is only to voice your discontent. You
heard about "silent majority", right? Ever though why it is called that?



So, the majority of users are silent, because they're happy? Cool.

Not because they are happy, but rather because they've most likely moved 
on.  The best protest is carried by moving feet.


I ditched CEntOS for Uuntu back in 2016 and haven't looked back. I only 
have one last machine still running CEntOS - the firewall. When that 
EOL's, mine will be a 100% Ubuntu shop.  But, not knowing what would 
happen to Canonical in the future, I've also started toying with Arch 
and FreeBSD...


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Phelps, Matthew]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:37 AM Scott Robbins  wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 08:00:24AM -0700, James Szinger wrote:
> > >
> > > Using Fedora on production servers is like climbing without a rope.
> > >
> > > It's possible. I've even seen some folks do it.
> >
> > Since the release of CentOS 8, I have been moving my stuff over to
> > Fedora.  The combination of modularity and missing -devel packages
> > make developing and building software on EL8 impractical.  As a
> > result, EL8 is poor choice for deploying custom software.
> >
> While I don't use Fedora as a production server, I will say that ever since
> Adam Williamson joined them, the QA has been quite good. I used to worry
> about an update breaking things. Now I use it as my go to Linux on laptops,
> and have successfully upgraded, using their instructions for CLI updates,
> with no problems.
>
> I do use openbox and dwm (which I install from source) rather than Gnome,
> which  might have something to do with my painless updates.
>
> Not to say it's a good server OS (though not saying it isn't, I don't have
> enough knowledge of it in that situation to say), but it's not the always
> on the edge of breaking that it used to be.
>
> --
> Scott Robbins
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> ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
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>
>
The main issue against using Fedora in production environments is the short
lifecycle. Forcing an upgrade, and all the associated testing, auditing,
etc. of the base version every year or so is not tenable for most
organizations.

-- 

*Matt Phelps*

*Information Technology Specialist, Systems Administrator*

(Computation Facility, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)

Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian


60 Garden Street | MS 39 | Cambridge, MA 02138
email: mphe...@cfa.harvard.edu


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Scott Robbins]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 08:00:24AM -0700, James Szinger wrote:
> > 
> > Using Fedora on production servers is like climbing without a rope.
> > 
> > It's possible. I've even seen some folks do it.
> 
> Since the release of CentOS 8, I have been moving my stuff over to
> Fedora.  The combination of modularity and missing -devel packages
> make developing and building software on EL8 impractical.  As a
> result, EL8 is poor choice for deploying custom software.
> 
While I don't use Fedora as a production server, I will say that ever since
Adam Williamson joined them, the QA has been quite good. I used to worry
about an update breaking things. Now I use it as my go to Linux on laptops,
and have successfully upgraded, using their instructions for CLI updates,
with no problems. 

I do use openbox and dwm (which I install from source) rather than Gnome,
which  might have something to do with my painless updates.

Not to say it's a good server OS (though not saying it isn't, I don't have
enough knowledge of it in that situation to say), but it's not the always
on the edge of breaking that it used to be.

-- 
Scott Robbins
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[James Szinger]

On Sun, 13 Dec 2020 09:15:52 +0100
Nicolas Kovacs  wrote:

> Le 11/12/2020 à 02:25, Gordon Messmer a écrit :
> > Personally, I think that changing focus on CentOS Stream is going
> > to make CentOS (and maybe even RHEL) better in the same way and for
> > the same reasons that Fedora is a better distribution than Red Hat
> > Linux was.  
> 
> Using Fedora on production servers is like climbing without a rope.
> 
> It's possible. I've even seen some folks do it.

Since the release of CentOS 8, I have been moving my stuff over to
Fedora.  The combination of modularity and missing -devel packages
make developing and building software on EL8 impractical.  As a
result, EL8 is poor choice for deploying custom software.

Fedora has other advantages.

1. More changes.  Bugs are likely to be addressed sooner and I find
addressing small changes one at a time is more manageable than many
big changes all at once.  Having a good test suite helps.  Our
sysadmin at work spent most of 2020 doing the upgrade from CentOS 6 to
8.  I like to think there were better uses of his time.

2. More software.  Fedora packages much more software than CentOS.
Even adding in EPEL leaves a big gap and EPEL is Fedora, not RHEL.  I
spend less time building dependencies and more time adding value.

3. Easy licensing.  Fedora may be used anywhere for anything.  We have
a RHEL license at work, but I don’t use it because I do not want the
headache of tracking where and how it is deployed.  I’ve wasted too
many days fighting licensing and compliance issues to want to ever do
it again.  It is huge advantage for Free Software.

Your needs may differ, but it is not an insane choice, so please stop
insulting us.

Jim

P.S. It seems to me that compared to Fedora, Stream has the
disadvantages of RHEL but not the advantages.  It’s not clear to me
how Stream will be an improvement.
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Scott Robbins]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 11:11:58PM +0200, Nikolaos Milas wrote:
> On 13/12/2020 9:44 μ.μ., Simon Avery wrote:
> 
> > There are 4,606 people on their Slack right now
> 
> ...which, by the way, is being acquired by SalesForce!
> 
> Find a successor of Slack! 

OT excuse to rant, because I get so mad at this.

Remember when slack first came out, and said, Oh, we're gonna be compatible
with your irc stuff.  At that point, you could use it with irssi and
weechat. Then they changed it, you could still sorta use it with irssi, but
it was cumbersome. Thank goodness, someone made a plugin to work for
weechat which still works at the moment, though, as they've done something
to tokens, it's harder than it used to be, and no doubt, they'll eventually
eliminate it so that you have to use the slow, high resource, web app. 

Talk about embrace, engulf, extinguish, they are a role model for it.

OK, sorry. But, I feel so much better now.

-- 
Scott Robbins
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Jack Bailey via CentOS]

I'm just trying to determine whether you were making the argument you 
intended to, because you are literally suggesting that the majority is 
silent, and the people who are silent are the ones that are happy with 
something.


Silence doesn't confer anything. People can be displeased, cautiously 
optimistic, and silent, all at the same time.


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/13/20 1:32 PM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:

On 12/13/20 8:56 PM, Gordon Messmer wrote:

On 12/13/20 2:45 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:

When people are happy with something they do not voice their content on
the mailing list, mailing list is only to voice your discontent. You
heard about "silent majority", right? Ever though why it is called that?

So, the majority of users are silent, because they're happy? Cool.

HAHAHAHAHA, what a wonderful imaginary world you live in:-D



I'm just trying to determine whether you were making the argument you 
intended to, because you are literally suggesting that the majority is 
silent, and the people who are silent are the ones that are happy with 
something.


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[John R. Dennison]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 10:06:50PM +, Simon Avery wrote:
>
> Can't say I'm really appreciating the trolling in this list.

It's to be expected.  What I find surprising is the shilling for RH and
this decision that I am seeing.  Oh well, such is life.


-- 
Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.

-- Matsu Basho (1644-1694), Japanese poet, from "Words by a Brushwood Gate"


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Simon Avery]

On Sun, 13 Dec 2020 at 19:56, Gordon Messmer 
wrote:

> So, the majority of users are silent, because they're happy? Cool.
>

Can't say I'm really appreciating the trolling in this list.
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Ljubomir Ljubojevic]

On 12/13/20 8:56 PM, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 12/13/20 2:45 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>> When people are happy with something they do not voice their content on
>> the mailing list, mailing list is only to voice your discontent. You
>> heard about "silent majority", right? Ever though why it is called that?
> 
> 
> So, the majority of users are silent, because they're happy? Cool.

HAHAHAHAHA, what a wonderful imaginary world you live in :-D
530 negative commends on the blog, 7.800 signed the petition, 100+
negative mails on the CentOS mailing list, and at least 200 negative
comments only in CentOS Facebook group, not counting comments in other
20-30 groups.

So yeah, lets go with only 5 complainers :-D

So long, there is nothing more to be said on this topic, except that I
will be soon leaving Facebook group admin team.


> 
> 
>> Point is that RH DID slow down build of clones due to this change
>>
> 
> Your memory is still rusty.  Early accusations were that this would
> impact developers (such as Oracle) who were adding additional patches to
> the kernel, or other maintenance.  It never impacted "clones" like
> CentOS at all.
> 
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Serbia, Europe

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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Orion Poplawski]

On 12/13/20 1:25 PM, Dave Stevens wrote:

On Sun, 13 Dec 2020 21:05:42 +0100
Rainer Duffner  wrote:


It’s also not often the case that you can split this kind of work
into a thousand work-packages and have everybody just work 1/2 hour a
day on it.


not like Debian for instance

d


The workflow is very different.  For a primary distribution, updates to 
different packages happen at different times.  Contributors can do that 
work when they have the time.


For a rebuild, work must happen as fast as possible after RHEL has 
released an update.  Much harder for volunteers to contribute to.


There are other support roles that volunteers can hopefully do, but the 
core mission doesn't really align well with that.


--
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Manager of NWRA Technical Systems  720-772-5637
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Nikolaos Milas]

On 13/12/2020 9:44 μ.μ., Simon Avery wrote:


There are 4,606 people on their Slack right now


...which, by the way, is being acquired by SalesForce!

Find a successor of Slack! 

Nick

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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Dave Stevens]

On Sun, 13 Dec 2020 21:05:42 +0100
Rainer Duffner  wrote:

> It’s also not often the case that you can split this kind of work
> into a thousand work-packages and have everybody just work 1/2 hour a
> day on it.

not like Debian for instance

d
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Rainer Duffner]

> Am 13.12.2020 um 20:44 schrieb Simon Avery :
> 
>> 
>>> And there's *a lot* more than five of us.
>> 
>> Here is number six.
>> 
> 
> Just one of those groups energised from this decision is Rocky Linux. There
> are 4,606 people on their Slack right now, which did not even exist a week
> ago.



IIRC, one of the reasons cited that CentOS „merged“ with RedHat back then was 
that a lot of people were using CentOS, but there wasn’t enough money generated 
to pay the developers.

A lot of them were basically working for free.

That is never sustainable. At least not for a long time.

It’s also not often the case that you can split this kind of work into a 
thousand work-packages and have everybody just work 1/2 hour a day on it.



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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[John R. Dennison]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 11:56:05AM -0800, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> 
> Your memory is still rusty.  Early accusations were that this would impact
> developers (such as Oracle) who were adding additional patches to the
> kernel, or other maintenance.  It never impacted "clones" like CentOS at
> all.

And you're incorrect; CentOS publishes a centosplus kernel that was
impacted to some extent by the kernel tarball changes I believe.

There are no absolutes in life, saying "never impacted" is almost surely
untrue for at least one group of people.





John
-- 
"I'm sorry but our engineers do not have phones."
As stated by a Network Solutions Customer Service representative when asked to
be put through to an engineer.


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/13/20 2:45 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:

When people are happy with something they do not voice their content on
the mailing list, mailing list is only to voice your discontent. You
heard about "silent majority", right? Ever though why it is called that?



So, the majority of users are silent, because they're happy? Cool.



Point is that RH DID slow down build of clones due to this change



Your memory is still rusty.  Early accusations were that this would 
impact developers (such as Oracle) who were adding additional patches to 
the kernel, or other maintenance.  It never impacted "clones" like 
CentOS at all.


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Simon Avery]

>
> > And there's *a lot* more than five of us.
>
> Here is number six.
>

Just one of those groups energised from this decision is Rocky Linux. There
are 4,606 people on their Slack right now, which did not even exist a week
ago.

 Yeah, it's more than five.
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Marc Balmer via CentOS]

> Am 13.12.2020 um 19:53 schrieb Phelps, Matthew :
> 
> On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 11:48 PM Gordon Messmer 
> wrote:
> 
>>> On 12/11/20 9:56 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>>> And I will repeat that millions of CentOS users found free clone of RHEL
>>> trustworthy enough to use it for production, even without "official
>>> endorsement".
>> 
>> 
>> Exactly.  That's why it's so weird that those people, today, think that
>> CentOS Stream won't be usable, based on their interpretation of the
>> official statements from Red Hat.  Red Hat's statements weren't taken
>> into consideration before, but now they're a sign of doom?
>> 
>> 
>>> If they ... even allowed ANYONE ELSE that was not employed by Red Hat in
>>> 2014 to even come close to learning the secrets of rebuild, no backlash
>>> would have happened
>> 
>> 
>> I'm going to stop you there, because the CentOS maintainers kept that
>> process out of public visibility long before Red Hat was ever involved.
>> If you think users should know more about the process, then you are
>> pointing fingers at the *wrong* people.
>> 
>> I don't want this to become a flame war.  So rather than pointing
>> fingers, let's focus on the fact that CentOS Stream promises to be
>> developed in the open, resolving the problem that you're describing.
>> 
>> Red Hat is fixing the thing you're complaining about.
>> 
>> Red Hat is giving us the thing that has been requested more often, by
>> more people, than any other change in CentOS, and the result is that the
>> press is full of stories about users being angry, because five people on
>> the mailing lists sent a lot of messages.  (About half of the traffic in
>> the threads on centos and centos-devel comes from five people, and
>> various people replying to them.)
>> 
>> 
> As one of those "five people" I assure you, this is not just a few angry
> voices. If you, or anyone at Red Hat believe this is the case, you are very
> sadly mistaken.
> 
> Here is the problem: When IBM took over Red Hat, and hence CentOS, these
> words were posted on the CentOS Blog:
> 
> 
> "What does this mean for Red Hat’s contributions to the CentOS project?
> 
> In short, nothing.
> 
> Red Hat always has and will continue to be a champion for open source and
> projects like CentOS. IBM is committed to Red Hat’s independence and role
> in open source software communities so that we can continue this work
> without interruption or changes.
> 
> Our mission, governance, and objectives remain the same. We will continue
> to execute the existing project roadmap."
> 
> 
> 
> This was *last year*. (CF
> https://blog.centos.org/2019/07/ibm-red-hat-and-centos/) Note the last
> sentence. The roadmap then had CentOS 8 supported through May 2029.
> 
> The simple fact is Red Hat reneged on a promise that hordes of us believed
> and made a lot of plans on. It is now going to be very expensive, and
> stress inducing to have to completely rethink everything we have done, and
> are doing.
> 
> You damn right we are angry.
> 
> 
> And there's *a lot* more than five of us.

Here is number six.

> 
> 
> 
>>> But no, as soon as Oracle started rebuilding RHEL source code Red Hat
>>> first made things difficult for everyone to create kernels (source code
>>> was not srpms anymore but tar?)
>> 
>> 
>> You're misinformed.  Kernels are still built from SRPM, but the archive
>> used is no longer an upstream release with a series of patches.
>> 
>> The reason for the change is not insidious.  It's unfortunate that the
>> pristine source + patches can't be maintained, I agree, but speaking as
>> a developer: maintaining hundreds of patches that touch intersecting
>> files and rebasing them all when earlier patches are updated is an
>> incredibly difficult and time consuming task.  And, if I remember
>> correctly, applying all of those patches took almost as long as building
>> the kernel.  If it takes that long to just prepare the source code,
>> that's a major hit to productivity when a developer needs to work on the
>> code or build the SRPM to validate changes.
>> 
>> And, ultimately, there's very little value in shipping those patches
>> when the vast majority of them are already in the current version of the
>> upstream kernel, and they're merely backported to the older release that
>> Red Hat supports.  It's an entirely different story when distributions
>> are shipping patches that they don't push upstream, but that's not
>> generally what you see with the kernel package.
>> 
>> 
>> ___
>> CentOS mailing list
>> CentOS@centos.org
>> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> *Matt Phelps*
> 
> *Information Technology Specialist, Systems Administrator*
> 
> (Computation Facility, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)
> 
> Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
> 
> 
> 60 Garden Street | MS 39 | Cambridge, MA 02138
> email: mphe...@cfa.harvard.edu
> 
> 
> cfa.harvard.edu | Facebook 

Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Phelps, Matthew]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 11:48 PM Gordon Messmer 
wrote:

> On 12/11/20 9:56 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
> > And I will repeat that millions of CentOS users found free clone of RHEL
> > trustworthy enough to use it for production, even without "official
> > endorsement".
>
>
> Exactly.  That's why it's so weird that those people, today, think that
> CentOS Stream won't be usable, based on their interpretation of the
> official statements from Red Hat.  Red Hat's statements weren't taken
> into consideration before, but now they're a sign of doom?
>
>
> > If they ... even allowed ANYONE ELSE that was not employed by Red Hat in
> > 2014 to even come close to learning the secrets of rebuild, no backlash
> > would have happened
>
>
> I'm going to stop you there, because the CentOS maintainers kept that
> process out of public visibility long before Red Hat was ever involved.
> If you think users should know more about the process, then you are
> pointing fingers at the *wrong* people.
>
> I don't want this to become a flame war.  So rather than pointing
> fingers, let's focus on the fact that CentOS Stream promises to be
> developed in the open, resolving the problem that you're describing.
>
> Red Hat is fixing the thing you're complaining about.
>
> Red Hat is giving us the thing that has been requested more often, by
> more people, than any other change in CentOS, and the result is that the
> press is full of stories about users being angry, because five people on
> the mailing lists sent a lot of messages.  (About half of the traffic in
> the threads on centos and centos-devel comes from five people, and
> various people replying to them.)
>
>
As one of those "five people" I assure you, this is not just a few angry
voices. If you, or anyone at Red Hat believe this is the case, you are very
sadly mistaken.

Here is the problem: When IBM took over Red Hat, and hence CentOS, these
words were posted on the CentOS Blog:


"What does this mean for Red Hat’s contributions to the CentOS project?

In short, nothing.

Red Hat always has and will continue to be a champion for open source and
projects like CentOS. IBM is committed to Red Hat’s independence and role
in open source software communities so that we can continue this work
without interruption or changes.

Our mission, governance, and objectives remain the same. We will continue
to execute the existing project roadmap."



This was *last year*. (CF
https://blog.centos.org/2019/07/ibm-red-hat-and-centos/) Note the last
sentence. The roadmap then had CentOS 8 supported through May 2029.

The simple fact is Red Hat reneged on a promise that hordes of us believed
and made a lot of plans on. It is now going to be very expensive, and
stress inducing to have to completely rethink everything we have done, and
are doing.

You damn right we are angry.


And there's *a lot* more than five of us.



> > But no, as soon as Oracle started rebuilding RHEL source code Red Hat
> > first made things difficult for everyone to create kernels (source code
> > was not srpms anymore but tar?)
>
>
> You're misinformed.  Kernels are still built from SRPM, but the archive
> used is no longer an upstream release with a series of patches.
>
> The reason for the change is not insidious.  It's unfortunate that the
> pristine source + patches can't be maintained, I agree, but speaking as
> a developer: maintaining hundreds of patches that touch intersecting
> files and rebasing them all when earlier patches are updated is an
> incredibly difficult and time consuming task.  And, if I remember
> correctly, applying all of those patches took almost as long as building
> the kernel.  If it takes that long to just prepare the source code,
> that's a major hit to productivity when a developer needs to work on the
> code or build the SRPM to validate changes.
>
> And, ultimately, there's very little value in shipping those patches
> when the vast majority of them are already in the current version of the
> upstream kernel, and they're merely backported to the older release that
> Red Hat supports.  It's an entirely different story when distributions
> are shipping patches that they don't push upstream, but that's not
> generally what you see with the kernel package.
>
>
> ___
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> CentOS@centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>


-- 

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*Information Technology Specialist, Systems Administrator*

(Computation Facility, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)

Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian


60 Garden Street | MS 39 | Cambridge, MA 02138
email: mphe...@cfa.harvard.edu


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Ljubomir Ljubojevic]

On 12/13/20 5:48 AM, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 12/11/20 9:56 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>> And I will repeat that millions of CentOS users found free clone of RHEL
>> trustworthy enough to use it for production, even without "official
>> endorsement".
> 
> 
> Exactly.  That's why it's so weird that those people, today, think that
> CentOS Stream won't be usable, based on their interpretation of the
> official statements from Red Hat.  Red Hat's statements weren't taken
> into consideration before, but now they're a sign of doom?

Do not turn this upside down. Many obviously smarter then me saw this
coming. Us more gullible believed when corporation told us nothing will
change, while they took control of entire project. Death by thousand
cuts is always more preferable by corporations, less bad PR.
And they are not sign of doom but death, but of only this particular
clone, others will take it's mantle. The reason I an agitated is I
believed and with all my hearth supported this project, and now is owned
by heartless profit-driven corporation

> 
> 
>> If they ... even allowed ANYONE ELSE that was not employed by Red Hat in
>> 2014 to even come close to learning the secrets of rebuild, no backlash
>> would have happened
> 
> 
> I'm going to stop you there, because the CentOS maintainers kept that
> process out of public visibility long before Red Hat was ever involved. 
> If you think users should know more about the process, then you are
> pointing fingers at the *wrong* people.
> 
> I don't want this to become a flame war.  So rather than pointing
> fingers, let's focus on the fact that CentOS Stream promises to be
> developed in the open, resolving the problem that you're describing.
> 
> Red Hat is fixing the thing you're complaining about.
Don't be silly. They wanted to control the process, and to prevent
anyone else from cutting into their process.
You should read their manifesto for stream, only RH employees will be
able to change that code, others will only be able to report bugs/issues
and to sit and watch what RH does with them.
Only real difference with stream is for those few hundred developers
that are developing software that runs on RHEL so their code can be
deployed as soon as new point release is launched.

And even that RH does more for it's own gain, so that (opensurce?)
projects/software important to RH can be deployed without delay, lest
users ditch RH and go elsewhere.


> 
> Red Hat is giving us the thing that has been requested more often, by
> more people, than any other change in CentOS, and the result is that the
> press is full of stories about users being angry, because five people on
> the mailing lists sent a lot of messages.  (About half of the traffic in
> the threads on centos and centos-devel comes from five people, and
> various people replying to them.)

When people are happy with something they do not voice their content on
the mailing list, mailing list is only to voice your discontent. You
heard about "silent majority", right? Ever though why it is called that?


> 
> 
>> But no, as soon as Oracle started rebuilding RHEL source code Red Hat
>> first made things difficult for everyone to create kernels (source code
>> was not srpms anymore but tar?)
> 
> 
> You're misinformed.  Kernels are still built from SRPM, but the archive
> used is no longer an upstream release with a series of patches.

Not misinformed, I was part of that discussion 9 years ago, but my
memory was little rusty, but I was part of that discussion and It did
not bother be to track down one of the comments about kernel tarballs
being published as monolith code vs trackable patches, to make problems
for builders of RHEL clones:

"There is the kernel tarball issue. That's understandable, but real.
Red Hat is publishing their kernels as tarballs, rather than as the
vanilla tarball with a list of ordered patches against it. This makes
layering in, or out, specific patches much more awkward. Was Oracle
being any better about this? Does anyone have actual pointers to their
SRPM's?"
(https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2011-March/063442.html)

> 
> The reason for the change is not insidious.  It's unfortunate that the
> pristine source + patches can't be maintained, I agree, but speaking as
> a developer: maintaining hundreds of patches that touch intersecting
> files and rebasing them all when earlier patches are updated is an
> incredibly difficult and time consuming task.  And, if I remember
> correctly, applying all of those patches took almost as long as building
> the kernel.  If it takes that long to just prepare the source code,
> that's a major hit to productivity when a developer needs to work on the
> code or build the SRPM to validate changes.
> 
> And, ultimately, there's very little value in shipping those patches
> when the vast majority of them are already in the current version of the
> upstream kernel, and they're merely backported to the older release that
> Red Hat 

Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Nikolaos Milas]

On 13/12/2020 6:48 π.μ., Gordon Messmer wrote:

Red Hat is giving us the thing that has been requested more often, by 
more people, than any other change in CentOS, and the result is that 
the press is full of stories about users being angry, because five 
people on the mailing lists sent a lot of messages.  (About half of 
the traffic in the threads on centos and centos-devel comes from five 
people, and various people replying to them.)


Not really. I am afraid you are missing the point. Also see: 7500 
sysadmins and growing are already explicitly rejecting the change.



...but speaking as a developer...


That's the problem: you are speaking as a developer, not as a sysadmin. 
CentOS is clearly for sysadmins, not for developers.


On 13/12/2020 10:22 π.μ., Nicolas Kovacs wrote:

For the last 16 years, the explicit scope of the CentOS project has 
been to

rebuild RHEL "bug by bug". No more no less. A fact that has been stressed
repeatedly by the maintainers on this list. So admins all over the world
trusted this.

Words do have a meaning. 


+1

And what is worse: RH are pushing their users to their competitors 
(read: OL).


RH are pulling their own eyes out... It's a shame.

And all that because they decided to stop supporting a quite extensive 
worldwide amount of orgs and sysadmins who need a safe and dependable 
production OS that does not cost a fortune, although many of those at 
some point in time might become RH support customers!


Now RH earned discontent and distrust from a large part of their FOSS 
community.


Such a sad end for CentOS... (In fact it is an end indeed.)

OL, Rocky Linux (when fully established) and other such projects 
(mentioned in various threads) will gain large parts of this extensive 
group. Some many end up in using CentOS Stream, but the core part of 
this vibrant community will probably lost by RH and the good old CentOS 
group (now in RH). Time will show.


That's a pity, because a large and conscious part of this community 
indeed has some affinity to Karanbir et al, greatly respecting their 
history and efforts...


RH (& CentOS) still has some small window of opportunity to announce 
full support of CentOS 8 to its EOL.


Cheers,
Nick

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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Nicolas Kovacs]

Le 11/12/2020 à 18:25, Gordon Messmer a écrit :
> I'll repeat what I said earlier, CentOS has never offered the things people 
> are
> complaining about losing.  They've never asked for your trust and confidence.

For the last 16 years, the explicit scope of the CentOS project has been to
rebuild RHEL "bug by bug". No more no less. A fact that has been stressed
repeatedly by the maintainers on this list. So admins all over the world
trusted this.

Words do have a meaning.

-- 
Microlinux - Solutions informatiques durables
7, place de l'église - 30730 Montpezat
Site : https://www.microlinux.fr
Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr
Mail : i...@microlinux.fr
Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32
Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Nicolas Kovacs]

Le 11/12/2020 à 02:25, Gordon Messmer a écrit :
> Personally, I think that changing focus on CentOS Stream is going to make
> CentOS (and maybe even RHEL) better in the same way and for the same reasons
> that Fedora is a better distribution than Red Hat Linux was.

Using Fedora on production servers is like climbing without a rope.

It's possible. I've even seen some folks do it.

:o)

Cheers from a climber

-- 
Microlinux - Solutions informatiques durables
7, place de l'église - 30730 Montpezat
Site : https://www.microlinux.fr
Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr
Mail : i...@microlinux.fr
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Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 13.12.2020 11:48, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 12/11/20 9:56 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>> And I will repeat that millions of CentOS users found free clone of RHEL
>> trustworthy enough to use it for production, even without "official
>> endorsement".
> 
> 
> Exactly.  That's why it's so weird that those people, today, think that 
> CentOS Stream won't be usable, based on their interpretation of the 
> official statements from Red Hat.  Red Hat's statements weren't taken 
> into consideration before, but now they're a sign of doom?

Who exactly said "doom"?

CentOS Stream won't match corresponding stable RHEL version, that's all. 
While CentOS was matching it, it was stable enough to use it safely on 
production.

Now that it becomes constant beta, it might be considered less stable, 
all the compatibility arguments have been uttered many a time.

Doom or no doom, everyone decides for oneself.

The primary problem is breach of trust. All the other consequences are 
mostly technical.

-- 
Sincerely,

Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/11/20 9:56 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:

And I will repeat that millions of CentOS users found free clone of RHEL
trustworthy enough to use it for production, even without "official
endorsement".



Exactly.  That's why it's so weird that those people, today, think that 
CentOS Stream won't be usable, based on their interpretation of the 
official statements from Red Hat.  Red Hat's statements weren't taken 
into consideration before, but now they're a sign of doom?




If they ... even allowed ANYONE ELSE that was not employed by Red Hat in
2014 to even come close to learning the secrets of rebuild, no backlash
would have happened



I'm going to stop you there, because the CentOS maintainers kept that 
process out of public visibility long before Red Hat was ever involved.  
If you think users should know more about the process, then you are 
pointing fingers at the *wrong* people.


I don't want this to become a flame war.  So rather than pointing 
fingers, let's focus on the fact that CentOS Stream promises to be 
developed in the open, resolving the problem that you're describing.


Red Hat is fixing the thing you're complaining about.

Red Hat is giving us the thing that has been requested more often, by 
more people, than any other change in CentOS, and the result is that the 
press is full of stories about users being angry, because five people on 
the mailing lists sent a lot of messages.  (About half of the traffic in 
the threads on centos and centos-devel comes from five people, and 
various people replying to them.)




But no, as soon as Oracle started rebuilding RHEL source code Red Hat
first made things difficult for everyone to create kernels (source code
was not srpms anymore but tar?)



You're misinformed.  Kernels are still built from SRPM, but the archive 
used is no longer an upstream release with a series of patches.


The reason for the change is not insidious.  It's unfortunate that the 
pristine source + patches can't be maintained, I agree, but speaking as 
a developer: maintaining hundreds of patches that touch intersecting 
files and rebasing them all when earlier patches are updated is an 
incredibly difficult and time consuming task.  And, if I remember 
correctly, applying all of those patches took almost as long as building 
the kernel.  If it takes that long to just prepare the source code, 
that's a major hit to productivity when a developer needs to work on the 
code or build the SRPM to validate changes.


And, ultimately, there's very little value in shipping those patches 
when the vast majority of them are already in the current version of the 
upstream kernel, and they're merely backported to the older release that 
Red Hat supports.  It's an entirely different story when distributions 
are shipping patches that they don't push upstream, but that's not 
generally what you see with the kernel package.



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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Kay Schenk]

On 12/11/20 12:23 AM, Gordon Messmer wrote:

On 12/10/20 6:28 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:

Allow me to disagree. We both trust Chris Wright's words, don't we? CTO
won't lie. Citing him:

"To be exact, CentOS Stream is an upstream development platform for
ecosystem developers. It will be updated several times a day.


So, like Fedora?  People run servers on Fedora now, and I think that's 
fine.



This is not a production operating system."



Does he say that CentOS is a production operating system?

As far as I know, Red Hat has never endorsed running CentOS in 
production, so I don't understand why it's significant that they also 
don't endorse running CentOS Stream in production.


I'm happy you made this point. Yes, CentOS is asssumed to be as 
"stable"  as the release it's based on, but there are changes.


I think it's good to keep this in mind and consider an actual RH license 
if 100% stability and compatibility are the goals.







And even if I reduce the number of CentOS Stream upgrades to
minimal one, the base advantage of CentOS is lost: predictability.



It's really difficult for me to look at a distribution that just stops 
getting updates for 4-6 weeks, twice a year, and use the word 
"predictable" to describe it.


My first reaction to the announcement was pretty negative, too. But 
when I stepped back and looked at the current situation *real* 
honestly, I had to admit that CentOS just doesn't offer any of the 
things that people are complaining about losing.


And I hope that the CentOS maintainers don't interpret that as 
criticism, because it isn't intended to be.  They've always maintained 
that if you need updates/patches in a timely manner, then you should 
be paying Red Hat for RHEL.  I agreed with them then, and I still do.



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 -- Yoda

  Kay


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/11/20 8:00 AM, Sergio Belkin wrote:

how could you ask trust and confidence with something like that:



I'll repeat what I said earlier, CentOS has never offered the things 
people are complaining about losing.  They've never asked for your trust 
and confidence.  Both Red Hat and the CentOS maintainers have always 
referred users who needed "trust and confidence" to RHEL.



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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Sergio Belkin]

El vie, 11 dic 2020 a las 12:33, Matthew Miller ()
escribió:

> On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 12:23:59AM -0800, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> > >This is not a production operating system."
> > Does he say that CentOS is a production operating system?
> >
> > As far as I know, Red Hat has never endorsed running CentOS in
> > production, so I don't understand why it's significant that they
> > also don't endorse running CentOS Stream in production.
>
> Yeah, I too think this is important context. I don't think you'll ever find
> anyone from the business side ever even suggesting that they think CentOS
> Linux, the rebuild, was *ever* something Red Hat recommended to run in
> production.
>
>
> --
> Matthew Miller
> 
> Fedora Project Leader
>

With all due respect. Please don't mix topics.
Everyone is grateful about the effort of CentOS developers in the last 16
years.
The problem is not only the announce and decision of RH, but also the
unfortunate PR of CentOS, how could you ask trust and confidence with
something like that:

> If you are using CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment, and are
concerned that CentOS Stream will not meet your needs, we encourage you to
contact Red Hat about options.

Please don't blame the rest of the world for things that you wrote.

Regards

-- 
--
Sergio Belkin
LPIC-2 Certified - http://www.lpi.org
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Gianluca Cecchi]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 4:33 PM Matthew Miller  wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 12:23:59AM -0800, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> > >This is not a production operating system."
> > Does he say that CentOS is a production operating system?
> >
> > As far as I know, Red Hat has never endorsed running CentOS in
> > production, so I don't understand why it's significant that they
> > also don't endorse running CentOS Stream in production.
>
> Yeah, I too think this is important context. I don't think you'll ever find
> anyone from the business side ever even suggesting that they think CentOS
> Linux, the rebuild, was *ever* something Red Hat recommended to run in
> production.
>
>
>
>
In early 2000 I don't think you'll ever find anyone from the business side
ever even suggesting that they think Linux (in general) was *ever*
something vendors recommended to run in production... but here we are now
;-)
And bye bye to AIX, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Digital Unix, Tru64 Unix (only to
mention the OSes I had been involved in at different levels); and I would
like to notice that each one of those had its strong points anyway and let
me learn much.

Business men joked with me when I asked about considering Linux in some
context and they replied "Eh, Linus? The cartoon guy?"

So what?

Please leave business to business
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 12:23:59AM -0800, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> >This is not a production operating system."
> Does he say that CentOS is a production operating system?
> 
> As far as I know, Red Hat has never endorsed running CentOS in
> production, so I don't understand why it's significant that they
> also don't endorse running CentOS Stream in production.

Yeah, I too think this is important context. I don't think you'll ever find
anyone from the business side ever even suggesting that they think CentOS
Linux, the rebuild, was *ever* something Red Hat recommended to run in
production.


-- 
Matthew Miller

Fedora Project Leader
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Alessandro Baggi]

Il 11/12/20 12:59, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS ha scritto:

On 11.12.2020 17:41, Alessandro Baggi wrote:

Il 11/12/20 10:24, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS ha scritto:

My primary objection is breach of trust. RH shouldn't have lied at least
to CentOS community.

Other bug-to-bug compatible RHEL clones will replace the CentOS, so this
is the part I am less worried about. If someone is happy with CentOS
Stream, that's fine. I am not, but that's (not only) my problem.

This.

Centos Stream is NOT a REPLACEMENT of CentOS, it is a different
"product" used as a rhel preview (and testing platform for next rhel
releases [minor/major]). This is a simple direction change for a
corporation. I accept this without any problem, they have not any legal
duty with CentOS community. Ethically, wow...they should ask itself WTF
did they done. But no problem..many of us have imagined this since IBM
ops (also if this is a centos board decision), today it is reality.
Really there is nothing new for me (This is why I started to find
alternatives for my case usage since 8 was released waiting the switch
to see if direction was good)

The days you install CentOS as server distro for stability and
compatibility are gone. I always used centos and not rhel because I
don't need support. I don't need CentOS Stream so  I will not use it.
CentOS 8, with its all defects, was enough for me and I think I will not
use rhel until forced. So for me (and many) there is not an alternative
then to change ship and switch to Debian/Ubuntu LTS that are not bad
systems. Intended, there are other alternatives like SUSE/OpenSUSE, OL
and other...

I started intensively using Debian, Ubuntu and Kali 3+ years ago. So
far, they are solid enough (talking of LTS) and quite reliable, as
CentOS 6 was.


I read many times that Debian/Ubuntu LTS are not centos/rhel, this is
true (they are different products) but please, stop saying this, them
are not shitty distro..but when I read that many users use fedora as
server distro I laugh.

I'm not in enterprise so I don't need this type of "support" and can
change the distro without any problem but I will stay away from
CentOS/RH products due to 0 trust in them.

For the past years, for CentOS 6,7 and 8 thank you Johnny, Rich and all
other maintainers. You did a great job.

I agree, I think I leave this thread on a good line. The maintainers did
great job (and I hope they will keep doing it). But "tempora mutantur,
and nos mutamus in illis". Good luck to all of us.


"tempora mutantur,
and nos mutamus in illis"

+1

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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 11.12.2020 17:41, Alessandro Baggi wrote:
> Il 11/12/20 10:24, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS ha scritto:
>> My primary objection is breach of trust. RH shouldn't have lied at least
>> to CentOS community.
>>
>> Other bug-to-bug compatible RHEL clones will replace the CentOS, so this
>> is the part I am less worried about. If someone is happy with CentOS
>> Stream, that's fine. I am not, but that's (not only) my problem.
> 
> This.
> 
> Centos Stream is NOT a REPLACEMENT of CentOS, it is a different 
> "product" used as a rhel preview (and testing platform for next rhel 
> releases [minor/major]). This is a simple direction change for a 
> corporation. I accept this without any problem, they have not any legal 
> duty with CentOS community. Ethically, wow...they should ask itself WTF 
> did they done. But no problem..many of us have imagined this since IBM 
> ops (also if this is a centos board decision), today it is reality. 
> Really there is nothing new for me (This is why I started to find 
> alternatives for my case usage since 8 was released waiting the switch 
> to see if direction was good)
> 
> The days you install CentOS as server distro for stability and 
> compatibility are gone. I always used centos and not rhel because I 
> don't need support. I don't need CentOS Stream so  I will not use it. 
> CentOS 8, with its all defects, was enough for me and I think I will not 
> use rhel until forced. So for me (and many) there is not an alternative 
> then to change ship and switch to Debian/Ubuntu LTS that are not bad 
> systems. Intended, there are other alternatives like SUSE/OpenSUSE, OL 
> and other...

I started intensively using Debian, Ubuntu and Kali 3+ years ago. So 
far, they are solid enough (talking of LTS) and quite reliable, as 
CentOS 6 was.

> I read many times that Debian/Ubuntu LTS are not centos/rhel, this is 
> true (they are different products) but please, stop saying this, them 
> are not shitty distro..but when I read that many users use fedora as 
> server distro I laugh.
> 
> I'm not in enterprise so I don't need this type of "support" and can 
> change the distro without any problem but I will stay away from 
> CentOS/RH products due to 0 trust in them.
> 
> For the past years, for CentOS 6,7 and 8 thank you Johnny, Rich and all 
> other maintainers. You did a great job.

I agree, I think I leave this thread on a good line. The maintainers did 
great job (and I hope they will keep doing it). But "tempora mutantur, 
and nos mutamus in illis". Good luck to all of us.

-- 
Sincerely,

Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Alessandro Baggi]

Il 11/12/20 10:24, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS ha scritto:

My primary objection is breach of trust. RH shouldn't have lied at least
to CentOS community.

Other bug-to-bug compatible RHEL clones will replace the CentOS, so this
is the part I am less worried about. If someone is happy with CentOS
Stream, that's fine. I am not, but that's (not only) my problem.


This.

Centos Stream is NOT a REPLACEMENT of CentOS, it is a different 
"product" used as a rhel preview (and testing platform for next rhel 
releases [minor/major]). This is a simple direction change for a 
corporation. I accept this without any problem, they have not any legal 
duty with CentOS community. Ethically, wow...they should ask itself WTF 
did they done. But no problem..many of us have imagined this since IBM 
ops (also if this is a centos board decision), today it is reality. 
Really there is nothing new for me (This is why I started to find 
alternatives for my case usage since 8 was released waiting the switch 
to see if direction was good)


The days you install CentOS as server distro for stability and 
compatibility are gone. I always used centos and not rhel because I 
don't need support. I don't need CentOS Stream so  I will not use it. 
CentOS 8, with its all defects, was enough for me and I think I will not 
use rhel until forced. So for me (and many) there is not an alternative 
then to change ship and switch to Debian/Ubuntu LTS that are not bad 
systems. Intended, there are other alternatives like SUSE/OpenSUSE, OL 
and other...


I read many times that Debian/Ubuntu LTS are not centos/rhel, this is 
true (they are different products) but please, stop saying this, them 
are not shitty distro..but when I read that many users use fedora as 
server distro I laugh.


I'm not in enterprise so I don't need this type of "support" and can 
change the distro without any problem but I will stay away from 
CentOS/RH products due to 0 trust in them.


For the past years, for CentOS 6,7 and 8 thank you Johnny, Rich and all 
other maintainers. You did a great job.


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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Leon Fauster via CentOS]

Am 11.12.20 um 09:23 schrieb Gordon Messmer:

On 12/10/20 6:28 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:

Allow me to disagree. We both trust Chris Wright's words, don't we? CTO
won't lie. Citing him:

"To be exact, CentOS Stream is an upstream development platform for
ecosystem developers. It will be updated several times a day.


So, like Fedora?  People run servers on Fedora now, and I think that's 
fine.



This is not a production operating system."



Does he say that CentOS is a production operating system?

As far as I know, Red Hat has never endorsed running CentOS in 
production, so I don't understand why it's significant that they also 
don't endorse running CentOS Stream in production.




And even if I reduce the number of CentOS Stream upgrades to
minimal one, the base advantage of CentOS is lost: predictability.



It's really difficult for me to look at a distribution that just stops 
getting updates for 4-6 weeks, twice a year, and use the word 
"predictable" to describe it.


To be honest, such argumentation is pointless because anyone knowns that
grey shades in beetween exits. CentOS Linux was more on the bright side, 
then Centos Stream will be (in terms of current usage scenarios).



My first reaction to the announcement was pretty negative, too. But when 
I stepped back and looked at the current situation *real* honestly, I 
had to admit that CentOS just doesn't offer any of the things that 
people are complaining about losing.


And I hope that the CentOS maintainers don't interpret that as 
criticism, because it isn't intended to be.  They've always maintained 
that if you need updates/patches in a timely manner, then you should be 
paying Red Hat for RHEL.  I agreed with them then, and I still do.




I think a main point(s) at this all is the timing (communication)!

--
Leon

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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 11.12.2020 15:23, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 12/10/20 6:28 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:
>> Allow me to disagree. We both trust Chris Wright's words, don't we? CTO
>> won't lie. Citing him:
>>
>> "To be exact, CentOS Stream is an upstream development platform for
>> ecosystem developers. It will be updated several times a day.
> 
> So, like Fedora?  People run servers on Fedora now, and I think that's 
> fine.

On a production server, where no surprises are expected? That may be. 
People often act very, so to say, strangely.

I am telling about other people. I doubt those actively running Fedora 
on production systems do participate in these threads.

>> This is not a production operating system."
> 
> Does he say that CentOS is a production operating system?
> 
> As far as I know, Red Hat has never endorsed running CentOS in 
> production, so I don't understand why it's significant that they also 
> don't endorse running CentOS Stream in production.

Is RHEL itself suitable for running on production servers?

If not, my argument is weak. If yes, then CentOS, bug-to-bug compatible, 
is suitable, too.

RH won't ever endorse running CentOS (more generally, anything free of 
charge) for obvious reasons, so I don't care about their opinion on this 
subject.

>> And even if I reduce the number of CentOS Stream upgrades to
>> minimal one, the base advantage of CentOS is lost: predictability.
> 
> It's really difficult for me to look at a distribution that just stops 
> getting updates for 4-6 weeks, twice a year, and use the word 
> "predictable" to describe it.

Well, it's not at all difficult for me. Tastes differ.

> My first reaction to the announcement was pretty negative, too. But when 
> I stepped back and looked at the current situation *real* honestly, I 
> had to admit that CentOS just doesn't offer any of the things that 
> people are complaining about losing.
> 
> And I hope that the CentOS maintainers don't interpret that as 
> criticism, because it isn't intended to be.  They've always maintained 
> that if you need updates/patches in a timely manner, then you should be 
> paying Red Hat for RHEL.  I agreed with them then, and I still do.

My primary objection is breach of trust. RH shouldn't have lied at least 
to CentOS community.

Other bug-to-bug compatible RHEL clones will replace the CentOS, so this 
is the part I am less worried about. If someone is happy with CentOS 
Stream, that's fine. I am not, but that's (not only) my problem.

-- 
Sincerely,

Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)
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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/10/20 6:28 PM, Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS wrote:

Allow me to disagree. We both trust Chris Wright's words, don't we? CTO
won't lie. Citing him:

"To be exact, CentOS Stream is an upstream development platform for
ecosystem developers. It will be updated several times a day.


So, like Fedora?  People run servers on Fedora now, and I think that's fine.


This is not a production operating system."



Does he say that CentOS is a production operating system?

As far as I know, Red Hat has never endorsed running CentOS in 
production, so I don't understand why it's significant that they also 
don't endorse running CentOS Stream in production.




And even if I reduce the number of CentOS Stream upgrades to
minimal one, the base advantage of CentOS is lost: predictability.



It's really difficult for me to look at a distribution that just stops 
getting updates for 4-6 weeks, twice a year, and use the word 
"predictable" to describe it.


My first reaction to the announcement was pretty negative, too. But when 
I stepped back and looked at the current situation *real* honestly, I 
had to admit that CentOS just doesn't offer any of the things that 
people are complaining about losing.


And I hope that the CentOS maintainers don't interpret that as 
criticism, because it isn't intended to be.  They've always maintained 
that if you need updates/patches in a timely manner, then you should be 
paying Red Hat for RHEL.  I agreed with them then, and I still do.



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Re: [CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

[Konstantin Boyandin via CentOS]

On 11.12.2020 08:25, Gordon Messmer wrote:
[...]
> For practical purposes, CentOS Stream will need to be fully patched for 
> compatibility purposes, just like CentOS is, and will be equally suited 
> for production purposes.

Allow me to disagree. We both trust Chris Wright's words, don't we? CTO 
won't lie. Citing him:

"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."

[...]
> Based on the information available today, I expect CentOS to be a very 
> reliable, reasonably secure distribution of GNU/Linux with Long Term 
> Support.  And judging by Red Hat’s mention that Facebook’s internal 
> groups either are already using an internally curated OS built from 
> CentOS Stream, or will be using it soon, I think I’m not alone in 
> believing that.

I do not wish to argue with all your statements. Mostly they look 
reasonable. However, there's an unpredictable variable in this equation, 
namely RH.

The major problem here is the breach of trust. A year ago RH's CTO is 
singing charming songs that CentOS won't go, now we see an abrupt 
direction change. This time, CTO keeps silent (I wonder why).

Also, there's change in patterns. With CentOS, I reduce updates to 
minimal ones. That's significant: the management doesn't like the idea 
that updates can be applied daily, and glitches may happen at any 
moment. The management prefers the known devil.

With current CentOS life cycle the number of upgrades is typically 
small. And even if I reduce the number of CentOS Stream upgrades to 
minimal one, the base advantage of CentOS is lost: predictability. At 
any given moment I could be sure that it has the same quirks and bugs 
the matching RHEL has.

CentOS Stream has its advantages and use cases. The problem is, no one 
cared to estimate what use cases of majority of current CentOS users are.

Damn, RH could at least bring formal apologies for changing the promised 
lifecycle. Instead we see the typical marketing blah-blah-blah of how 
that would benefit everyone. Nothing shows better the actual RH attitude 
towards the CentOS community.

-- 
Sincerely,

Konstantin Boyandin
system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. - IPHost Network Monitor)
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