I don't work for Red Hat, but I saw a post that was saying that there is something in the works to fill the niche that CentOS offered. It just wasn't ready yet so the announcement hasn't been made yet. However, they needed to send a statement out regarding CentOS so companies were aware of what would be happening with CentOS 8 and perhaps avoid migration right now.
For a community that depends on LTS, the sysadmins seem to make some rash decisions/drama. I think the logical decision here would surely be to wait and see what happens and make a decision in a year when support ending would actually become relevant.
Many many many companies, right or wrong, wait until the very list minute to upgrade their legacy systems.
Many of us are either still in the process or worse just finish our migration from CentOS 6 to CentOS 8, only to have the rug pulled out from under us.
The sheer impact this move will have on many organizations is what is driving this emotional reaction
If they would have honored the LifeCycle for CentOS 8, there would not have been the reaction you have seen
100% of the emotion / drama is coming from the choice RedHat has made to cut the supported life of CentOS 8 by 7 years. that is a DRASTIC action, and their belief that 12 months is "enough time" shows a clear ignorance of how the product is used in enterprise or they fully understand and are banking on the desperation of enterprise to sell RHEL licenses.
Well, we mostly agree! I agree with everything until:
> their belief that 12 months is "enough time" shows a clear ignorance of how the product is used in enterprise or they fully understand and are banking on the desperation of enterprise to sell RHEL licenses.
There's another explanation, and I think it makes a little more sense than yours which would require Red Hat, literally the company whose core job it is (which they are damn good at, enough so that you use it) to provide an enterprise distribution to some of the most conservative companies on the planet, to not understand how the product is used in enterprise.
The suggestion that RH is "banking on the desperation of enterprise to sell RHEL licenses" at least makes sense given the facts, and that's kind of what I thought too when I first saw the news (the way they worded it sure made it seem like this was a money grab).
It is possible however (and indeed this is my belief) that Red Hat doesn't consider Stream to be that big of a change, and they've given a full year to migrate. Indeed if you read my blog post[1] I don't think it's that big of a deal.
I have zero inside info on this but I would bet highly that sales of RHEL were a factor in this decision for sure. I don't see how they couldn't be. But given how long Red Hat has been providing all their sources publicly (which they DON'T have to do) and acquiring and open sourcing companies, you don't give them even a tiny benefit of the doubt here that maybe their not just one-sided evil capitalists trying to squeeze nickels out of the CentOS community for short term gains?
I have not read your blog post yet, I will however I do want to comment on this
If you claim RedHat understands the CentOS Client base so well, they how did they not predict and address all of the concerns that we OnPrem Enterprise Admins have? How did they fail at the messaging soo bad, and why has there been no formal statements addressing the issues we have had?
Why has the CentOS Site not been updated to clearly address that "CentOS Stream is not that big of a change you guys are all over reacting"
I suspect because it is a pretty big change, and they know it
Ok so I have read your blog post, I would like to address some of the things you raise
First you ask "Did you think of RHEL as a beta for CentOS, if not you should not think of CentOs Stream as beta for RHEL"
This is flawed in a big way, CentOS was complied from RHEL sources, only having RedHat trademarks removed. It was binary for binary compatible. RHEL 8.3 is the EXACT SAME as CentOS 8.3, so not it was not a beta.
This can not be said for CentOS Stream, first off there are no point releases, no releases at all for CentOS Stream, it is a Continuous Stream of updates (thus the name) for the entire 5 year support window (down from 10 year support for CentOS). So where one could plan and update from point release to point release there is no such way to do that with CentOS Stream, that type of release cadence is not acceptable for a production work load
Further Red Hat has explicitly said CentOS Stream is to be used "for the development of RHEL" so how else can one take that, the updates applied to CentOS Stream will then be used to roll up into a point relase of RHEL, sure seems like beta in all but name to me... Sure maybe it will be more stable than other types of Beta Testing, and maybe the baggage that comes with the word beta is a bit to strong for this case. Still CentOS Stream is not binary compatible with a Point release of RHEL that much is clear, to many of use that would classify it as a Beta
Secondly you also claim that RedHat or CentOS has acknowledged that is botched the messaging and it is water under the bridge. I have been following this issue pretty closely, and I do not see any such acknowledgement. I suppose it could have been on social media, i do not follow social media, but it certainly was not added to the Blog Post, nor has a new blog post been issued acknowledging it, nor has the original blog post been updated to clarify things
So no I dont think it has been acknowledged, nor it is water under the bridge we should move on from
Third you talk about "CentOS being old crusty etc", for many of us this is the EXACT reason we use CentOS, we support long lived legacy system that we do not want to change very often, some of use run software are a DECADES old, some dating back to long before I was born (and I am a middle aged man). We need, want a "crusty old" STABLE system. I am not runing the latest NodeJS project, or Ruby, or Rust, or Go, or what ever the hot new startup lang of the week is today...
I am not running docker, k8s, or any of the "hot new" technologies.
I am running an old EPR, an old database, an old Java app, or some other legacy system. I want stability, not hot new feature. CentOS is my choice for stability, if I want to play in the wild world of new hotness I have Arch for that.
as to licensing sales, RHEL shots them selves in the foot here. For example tagging their no support license as "not for production use" is a bad move IMO, why is not for production use, if I do not need RHEL support, why should not use a RHEL licensed system in production?
There are many many other problems with RHEL sales but that is for another day.
Though I do agree shoving CentOS in the face of a RHEL sales person is a shit thing to do. I hope it does not happen all that often, that said if a RedHat sales person does not have ready answer for that well that should be day 1 training for RedHat sales staff.
One final thing, the publication of sources. Some of the code they absolutely are required to release the sources. any Code that GPL. Now I understand not all of RHEL is GPL, and some if it would get in the grey area of what is "linking" code, but that is for lawyers to debate over, and like you I hope the day never comes where the lawyer need to debate over that issue
RedHat has done alot of good in the community, but FOSS is a three leg stool. Trust is one of those legs, and RedHat is taking a hacksaw to that leg right now....
Completely agree. I am critical of Red Hat for not announcing this all at the same time, but I likewise very much agree with you. We still have a full year and they've said to expect an announcement within a month or two (at least that's what I read elsewhere, nothing I've heard internally).
“We aren’t going to fulfill our LTS support promises of CentOS 8, but just wait a few months until we announce the replacement. Trust us, it will be different this time.”
For a community that depends on LTS, the sysadmins seem to make some rash decisions/drama. I think the logical decision here would surely be to wait and see what happens and make a decision in a year when support ending would actually become relevant.