Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

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> is clear that CentOS is now a Dev focused operating system not designed or targeted for Stable Enterprise operations with a community of Enterprise SysAdmins around it

This is absolutely not true. Would you have described RHEL this way? If not, then you shouldn't describe CentOS this way either. CentOS took RHEL's place in the chain. Instead of Cent being downstream of RHEL, the two were swapped around.

> If you believe the changes are "not all the much" then you are clearly not in touch with the user base of CentOS, outside of Devs that is

Say what you will. I've been using Cent since 2012 and currently run numerous workloads in production on it. I've shipped SaaS products on top of it and have been responsible for widespread maintenance. I've been a package maintainer for numerous packages as well.

> But for us Old School, OnPrem sysadmins running CentOS for Stability, and Long Term Support, CentOS is most certainly dead

I know plenty of old school on prem sysadmins who run CentOS for stability and LTS (I'm one of them. I have 3 bare metal machines in prod at the moment running CentOS). I may go with Rocky for one of those machines (it's a router/load balancer), I haven't fully decided yet.

That said I agree with you somewhat, that is the one area where this change could be somewhat negative. However, with CentOS being week and months behind RHEL right now, do you see that as a good thing? Do you like having an unpatched system for days or weeks at a time when an embargoed security fix hits RHEL and has to wait for CentOS to build and distribute? I don't. Security patches are top priority for me.

Edit: Blog post mentioned is now live: https://freedomben.medium.com/centos-is-not-dead-please-stop...

>>However, with CentOS being week and months behind RHEL right now, do you see that as a good thing? Do you like having an unpatched system for days or weeks at a time when an embargoed security fix hits RHEL and has to wait for CentOS to build and distribute? I don't. Security patches are top priority for me.

This is absolutely a False dilemma fallacy, there is absolutely nothing technically or legally prohibiting RedHat from releasing patches for both at the same time. Nothing. It is a sales/marketing or a internal process choice to do it that way.

Changes to do this process, even moving CentOS to be ahead of RHEL is not the problem. The "rolling release" or non-release, or what every model they are calling it now with CentOS Stream is the problem. The fact that it will no longer be Binary Complete with RHEL is the problem, the fact that CentOS will be used as a "beta" (and spare me the marketing BS claiming it is not that) is the problem

> Would you have described RHEL this way?

RHEL is a targeted, Released Enterprise Operating system with a 10 year support cycle

CentOS was a targeted, Released Enterprise Operating system with a 10 year support cycle

CentOS Stream is not a targeted, released Enterprise operating system with 10 year support cycle. CentOS Stream is pseudo-rolling release with no point releases, used to build a targeted, released enterprise operating system.

> RHEL is a targeted, Released Enterprise Operating system with a 10 year support cycle

> CentOS was a targeted, Released Enterprise Operating system with a 10 year support cycle

And you don't see the problem here? Why do you expect Red Hat to maintain a free OS which targets exactly the same use case as their paid OS? They are not a charity.

It would be great to have a free alternative to RHEL, but you shouldn't feel entitled to Red Hat providing that for you.

> Why do you expect Red Hat to maintain a free OS which targets exactly the same use case as their paid OS?

Because they said they would.

They could have made the change effective prior to releasing CentOS 8, or they could have made it effective for all versions after CentOS 8. Either of those paths would be understandable. Making the change after many have already migrated to 8 sends the message that Red Hat commitments are not to be trusted.

Well first and foremost because the software is open source released under the GPL so yes to any code that is released under the GPL I am entitled to it for free, that is the terms of the license and the fundamental promise of FOSS software

Secondly I do not believe I stated anywhere that I was entitled to it, this seems to be a strawman you created in some attempted to project your own beliefs of my motivations

In several comments I have stated my biggest issue with RetHat/CentOS announcement was not they were shifting focus, but rather that they did so while reducing their previously stated committed of supporting CentOS 8 until 2029, to 2021.

This is a betrayal of trust, and I do believe people are entitled to hold companies to account, and demand they honor their public commits of which RedHat previously committed to supporting CentOS 8 until 2029, and I feel they should honor that commitment. If they want to discontinue the support or shift the focus of the project for future releases then more power to them, the community will take the GPL code as we are entitled and create a replacement CentOS.

> the fact that CentOS will be used as a "beta" (and spare me the marketing BS claiming it is not that) is the problem

If you just want to vent, go ahead. I'm not going to engage with someone assuming bad faith. If you actually care to hear the argument about why saying "beta" is stupid, here it is: https://freedomben.medium.com/centos-is-not-dead-please-stop...

> CentOS will no longer be downstream of RHEL as it was previously. CentOS will now be upstream of the next RHEL minor release. This is NOT a “RHEL Beta”

That's... what beta means.

EDIT: Let me reframe it this way: If CentOS Stream is just becoming RHEL, then why does RHEL exist? If it's truly just as good as the old RHEL was, then explicitly merge them - either give RHEL away 100% freely like CentOS and charge for support, or discontinue the RHEL brand and sell support for CentOS. The fact that you have a downstream RHEL says that that is more stable, because that is what you're willing to sell for money.

EDIT2: Actually, thinking it over more and trying to be charitable, I can see a way for that to make sense: If you believe that CentOS is moving to RHEL's spot and RHEL is getting even more stable/slow/tested, then you can say that CentOS isn't getting any worse and ... sort of object to calling it RHEL beta. Except that it still is RHEL-beta, just moved up the scale of stablity.

Easy problem to solve.

https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos/

Similar to forcing Microsoft or Google to prompt the user for their desired browser or search provider, it would be interesting if rhel was forced to prompt for a repo provider.

It would have been wiser to splash rhel support upgrades on CentOS gdm or cli cockpit than to threaten to kill a product.

Really, what were you thinking? Nazgul indeed! Fork you!

Old habits die hard.

Ha! Red Hat is too evil so you move to Oracle :‑D

> Really, what were you thinking? Nazgul indeed! Fork you!

Glad we were able to have a productive conversation

Oracle offered freedom from the perspective of rhel, and I used it.

I actually was granted IPO shares because of the things I wrote two decades ago.

I think there was a fundamental misjudgment in what you have done. Oracle is more expensive on most tiers, but offers a $100 support level (forum-only, with updates) that undercuts all rhel agreements.

Had you offered this support level, and advocated it (as I said) with gdm and CLI advertisements, you might have kept a great many in the fold.

You did not do this, and now Oracle updated their repo conversion for CentOS 8.

It is not too late. You should reconsider.

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