On Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 4:46 PM John Pilkington <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Re-sending to list
>
> On 23/02/2020 06:24, Yasha Karant wrote:
> >  From below:
> >
> > Will look forward to move to another distribution.
> >
> > End excerpt.
>
>  From the official announcement last year:
>
> Fermilab...will deploy CentOS 8 in our scientific computing
> environments rather than develop Scientific Linux 8. We will
> collaborate with CERN and other labs to help make CentOS an even better
> platform for high-energy physics computing.
>
> These are not 'amateur' bodies; they are supported by international
> treaties.  Why the FUD?

What do you mean by "international treaties"? Between which parties?
CentOS controlled by RH, which now owned by IBM. The only "threat"
between IBM and any other side is a commercial contract, for ex. to
support. Generally it's not about Open Source, Free Scientific
Community or something like this. We had the same situation with UNIX
-- when the business smelled of money, the most promising Open Source
OS was closed, monetized and divided between different vendors. And
this has largely caused Microsoft systems to dominate. We now have
UNIX-like systems that grow mainly in the server and mobile device
segments, but many years have passed since the FSF and Linux
communities were able to overcome the legal problems caused by this
change in business policies. Of course, this does not mean the
business approach is bad in itself, but it may be internally
incompatible with the openness of scientific research.

> John P
--Oleg