+1

On 2/22/20 5:41 PM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> I'm an independent electronics inventor, heavily dependent
> on both competent software and competent laboratory science,
> both for the knowledge I depend on and the tools I use to
> transform that knowledge into products and services for
> my customers.
> 
> SL has been a very good tool for that.  Thanks to all who
> have contributed.
> 
> I depend on "benign neglect" for a stable computing
> platform - just enough funding and staffing to fix urgent
> problems, but not continuously mutate the platform to
> conform to ephemeral fashion or management whim.
> 
> I moved /from/ Windows to gain that stability, even if
> that limits the choice of new widgets I can attach to my
> (older) computers.  I have plenty of replacement-spare
> old widgets, and I don't need the distraction of a
> rapidly mutating platform optimized for market churn
> and planned-obsolescence sales.
> 
> I'm actually glad that Microsoft, Apple, and IBM are
> busily churning those markets, because it keeps their
> customers distracted and not bothering me with those
> distractions while I think and work.  The hardware cast
> off by the fashion-chasers is still abundant on eBay,
> and I have enough of it to last me for life (except
> for the batteries and backlights for my old Thinkpads).
> 
> I presume there are enough like me, some of whom are on
> this list, that we can continue to carve out a community
> space on top of CentOS, focused on inquiry and reliability.
> 
> If CentOS 9 or 10 or 11 goes off the rails, there are
> enough of us here to tweak CentOS 7 or 8 into something
> we can continue to use, just like Linux was "in the good
> old days".
> 
> While "security by obscurity" is not optimum, I presume a
> smaller community of impoverished science geeks is a less
> tempting target for professional software criminals than
> million-dollar IT departments for billion-dollar
> corporations and governments, or billions of hapless
> consumers.  We are part of the global target, but we are
> unlikely to attract specific attention from the bad guys.
> 
> And while we still benefit from the use of servers at
> Fermilabs for our "static" distro and our active mailing
> list, perhaps we should have a backup plan for migration
> in case some bureaucrat decides to pull the plug on us.
> That has /always/ been a risk for what we do here; we are
> one presidential tweet away from Saint Louis USDA exile.
> 
> As a community of scientific, like-minded Linux users,
> let's begin to prepare a rudimentary plan B, and hope
> that we never need to implement it.
> 
> Keith
>