This is not a political reply.

Keith Lofstrom <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> The big physics labs that supported Scientific Linux get
> much or all of their funding from the US government,

CERN is primarily funded by CERN nation states, of which US is not one.

FNAL, being a US DOE National Lab, is primarily funded by US DOE.

> I wonder how much IBM contributes to the politicians who
> make the funding decisions for the labs, and I wonder if
> there is subtle back-channel pressure on lab software
> purchases and project funding decisions?  

The subtle pressure theory is very doubtful to me.  Here is why:

1. The various HEP/NP clusters are almost universally on SL7 so have
   until ca 2024 to figure out wtf they will do next.  So, there's
   simply nothing there to apply any subtle pressure against.  And, any
   argument to move the clusters from SL7 before we get closer to 2024
   would have to be very compelling.

2. The cost of going "full RHEL" for the clusters is prohibitive.
   Removing the previously expected "CentOS future" and applying subtle
   pressure will not magically make funding appear to pay for full RHEL
   licensing on the clusters.  IBM would have to offer a deep,
   essentially exponential, price break as a function of $(nproc).  But,
   even if they did, RHEL does not really offer anything novel and
   useful for the clusters.  Clusters update their OS far less
   frequently than the OS updates become available so something like
   RHEN licensing is useless.  Cluster admins are DEEP experts so don't
   need the paid hand holding.

3. There is already some RHEL penetration in labs for various "servers"
   so that market is partly saturated.  Even if it was still fully open,
   it's a rather mid-level salesdroid "get" (in terms of profit).  So,
   it does not seem to me to motivate any "subtle pressure" tactic.
   Where special RHEL-only drivers can't be avoided, the few systems
   that fall into this category can also use RHEL if there were no
   alternative.  

4. Little real movement to CentOS 8 has occurred.  So, few have fallen
   into that particular tar pit.  Some isolated suckers (and knowing
   some of them well, I say that with fondness) have, and they'll need
   to dig out but by and large, there is no ensnared market here to
   leverage with subtle pressure.  I think the move to CentOS 8 was just
   picking up steam.  Had IBM waited, say 1 year, they'd have ensnared
   many more in the tar pit.  So, if any dodgy tactic was going on, they
   blew it.

5. At the physicist "personal" laptop/workstation level, Mac dominates,
   with Windows next.  The small fraction of "personal" Linux I'd guess
   SL is no a majority.  There's a lot of Ubuntu and Fedora.  Like in
   general, most of those using SL are on SL7 so also fall into the "got
   until 2024 to figure wtf they will do next".

So, the way I see it, labs are simply not in a position of being "subtly
pressured" on this issue and have ample time to figure out a next step
solution for the various demographics.  A few systems are in the tar pit
but can (must) get out in some way.  A few others are already in on RHEL
so don't care.


My hope is they (we) take this current situation as a lesson and make a
radical change that puts all of our computing on more sustainable
footing as we go into the next decades.

-Brett.