On 03/02/2020 22:12, Stephan Wiesand wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 3. Feb 2020, at 21:11, David Sommerseth <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> On 01/02/2020 17:12, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>>> *No one* calls it "Oracle 8". It's still RHEL 8. Oracle now owns and
>>> can still use the Red Hat trademarks.
>>
>> No, not at all.  It was IBM who acquired Red Hat; but IBM has so far kept Red
>> Hat as a separate company/brand with its own organization.
>>
>> And Oracle Linux is essentially a fork of CentOS, so it's even one step
>> further down on the "downstream ladder".
>>
>>   Fedora -> RHEL -> CentOS/SL -> Oracle Linux
> 
> Sigh, we had this meme before, and by repeating it like a mantra it won't become less false.
> 
> If Oracle Linux was a CentOS fork, how could they possibly outperform CentOS in getting stuff out by *months*?
> 
> And that's not the only respect in which OL compares quite favourably.
> Just look for updateinfo.xml in repo metadata, or the SRPMs for the latest updates.

I don't know how Oracle builds their distro.  Unless my memory fails me now,
Red Hat has put the .srpms behind a wall and points users at the CentOS git
repo for "unrestricted access".

Building a distro requires multiple steps, and the first few ones are the most
time consuming ones [1].  Bootstrapping the distro build environment, then
bootstrapping the base packages to get to the step where dracut can do its job
and continue booting the system into the third step, the environment we use in
normal days.  And all these steps needs to be able to be built by itself,
without depending on an "external" entity.  So the bootstrapping steps needs
to be able to build itself from its own sources.  And then comes the installer
which needs to be built and adjusted accordingly.  Additional tasks are
removal of trademarks and copyright evaluations of contents in each package
needed as well as the QA step to ensure things do work as expected and
provides the wanted packages with the proper compatibility to RHEL, etc, etc.

If Oracle wants to have packages being as close to RHEL compatibility as
possible, they do need to replicate what CentOS (and RHEL) has done.  Red Hat
don't share their bootstrapping tools and guides with the world, while CentOS
does.  Plus CentOS has the package repository publicly available too, where
all the .spec files resides [2] used to build the RPMs.

Once you've achieved to build packages being compatible (or at least
compatible enough) with RHEL and/or CentOS, then it becomes easier to provide
different kernel releases (or whatever package they provide on top of
everything) with it's own release cycle.  When reaching this step, it is
easier to out-perform CentOS in releasing new updates.

And if Oracle Linux 8 was faster out than CentOS with  EL8 ... then they
probably had a better or simpler bootstrap environment from EL 7 which could
be reused.  Or they paid attention to what CentOS did in parallel to their own
work and had more manpower to complete the work.  Or that Oracle skipped some
"features" CentOS had as a release criteria.  There are many possible reasons.

But it is also important to beware that the CentOS git repository with the
beginning of their CentOS 8 builds was pushed out to the public in May 2019.
Which is the base line taken from RHEL, adopted for CentOS.  And this is most
likely the source point for Oracle Linux as well.

So when I say "Oracle Linux" comes from CentOS, I don't mean by the letter,
that they just modify CentOS packages and redistributes them.  They build
their own distro building, based on sources and progress from the CentOS
community.  Just as CentOS does the same, but they get their sources (.spec
files) from Red Hat instead.  And RHEL is built on a similar chain coming from
Fedora.  The point is: All distros have their own tooling for building the
distribution from only .spec files which generates the source RPMs.


[1] You can see a brief overview of all the steps CentOS 8 went through here,
    including time consumption: <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__wiki.centos.org_About_Building-5F8&d=DwICaQ&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=Z2SMchSAiarGqewv7hexNXq5XLgRslkqKRyXHxa6ipM&s=S6Jl-06mcCRzMCcoxrRI4CKd0Qs_rEHuT9YZ64U-jkg&e= >
[2] <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__git.centos.org_&d=DwICaQ&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=Z2SMchSAiarGqewv7hexNXq5XLgRslkqKRyXHxa6ipM&s=1z5dS-_b1qDsX2Cf9tbbKD1IVWAk_HaS-6hA_CwfACw&e= >


-- 
kind regards,

David Sommerseth