On 08/01/14 16:44, Lirodon wrote:
> Looking at the Slashdot comments, I saw some gems, but this one hits the
> nail:
> 
> "One does have to wonder what is ACTUALLY going on here. Presumably Red
> Hat wants to harness somehow all the energy around CentOS. One suspects
> the installed CentOS base is vastly larger than the RHEL installed base,
> and there is a whole lot of energy in unpaid peer support. Presumably
> Red Hat is eyeing that energy enviously. For CentOS' part, it is much
> less clear what they gain. Possibly Red Hat gave them an ultimatum,
> implying or spelling out that they could make their life a living hell,
> by making it very hard to recompile the source, perhaps as simply as
> threatening to contaminate the source so thoroughly with Red Hat
> branding that it would be impractical to "clean" it.
> 
> This is all guesswork, but it at least makes some degree of sense as a
> possibility. Officially, there is absolutely no hint what the motivation
> is on either side.

Speculations like this brings absolutely nothing to the table.

The only fact to have in mind is that CentOS is a community based
project rebuilding RHEL source packages and trying to stay as close to
RHEL as possible, just what SL does as well.

And of course, Red Hat is a major upstream open source contributor,
having a lot of upstream developers on their payrolls.  Red Hat needs to
have a commercial focus as well, to be able to pay those developers.
But that itself doesn't mean they want to reduce CentOS in any ways.

This all boils down to trusting Red Hat being good and not evil.  And
rather take a look at their track records.  Each company or project they
get involved starts opening up if they were closed to start with.  Even
proprietary products they've bought up have been open sourced (like the
old Netscape Directory Server -> 389 (Red Hat Directory Server in RHEL)
and ManageIQ comes to mind, but there's more, like the SPICE protocol
used in VDI, etc, etc, etc).

The video I pointed you at spins around Red Hat's mission statement:

   "To be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and
    partners creating better technology the open source way."

I don't see Red Hat moving away from this path when getting more
involved formally with CentOS.
[...snip...]

> I have been trying to use the prospect of EL7 as a way to try and get
> everyone back together on it, but this is a real game-changer we should
> really discuss. Personally, I just think that we need less duplication
> in this realm, but afaik SL is the 2nd most-popular EL re-spin behind
> CentOS itself.

What this move basically gives are more open processes in the CentOS
project and a sponsor who can help the project out even further.  In
fact, CentOS can more easily open up their own processes, which again
can benefit SL too.

> Can you really call CentOS an EL re-spin anymore if
> CentOS is now owned by Red Hat?

From my view point, CentOS isn't owned by Red Hat any more than they
already were before (using Red Hat source RPMs).  CentOS will still have
their own build systems, producing their own binaries.  This is no more
different now than what it was.  In fact Red Hat people working on the
CentOS project will also be isolated from the RHEL groups inside Red
Hat. Further Red Hat will sponsor more build systems and resources to
the project too, not "swallow" CentOS into a "RHEL pipe".

See the official announcement from CentOS here, which clarifies much of
these things: <https://lwn.net/Articles/579489/>

Also an interview with Karanbir Singh in regards to joining Red Hat:
<http://cloudevangelist.libsyn.com/rss>
<http://traffic.libsyn.com/cloudevangelist/Cloud_Evangelist_Podcast_Ep77_Karanbir_talks_CentOS.mp3>


--
kind regards,

David Sommerseth