Believe me, I'd prefer to not deal with technical licenses and have a simple site licence option for software. I have more than enough commercial software on Windows that I have to support that add way too much time just for their crappy licensing changes etc...
--
James Pulver
CLASSE Computer Group
Cornell University
________________________________________
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Mark Stodola <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 4, 2021 4:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: scientific-linux-users
Subject: Re: any update on CERN Linux and CentOS-8 situation?
For our use, free is definitely a positive, but not a requirement.
We deploy our product's control systems and are really looking for the
long term stability and security patches. I wouldn't have a problem
with purchasing licenses, as long as it didn't get in the way. That
meaning, not having to deal with serial numbers, subscriptions, and
phoning home. I want something I can buy, deploy, and forget about with
regards to licensing. This is a logistics issue. I don't want to dump
that responsibility on our customer long term and not all of our
machines are remotely accessible to manage ongoing license maintenance.
This is likely in stark contrast to the HEP community, as I see that
more of a site-wide deployment managed by a team dedicated to the job.
Best Regards,
Mark
--
Mr. Mark V. Stodola
Control Systems Manager
National Electrostatics Corp.
P.O. Box 620310
Middleton, WI 53562-0310 USA
Phone: (608) 831-7600
Fax: (608) 831-9591
On 5/4/21 2:51 PM, James M. Pulver wrote:
> Honestly, I've seen a lot of the FLOSS community prefer Rocky over Alma, and I think it's because Rocky is actually not backed by any company. However, we see how that went before, and I just think Rocky as described is ripe for CENTOS 2.0 to me. It's even run by one of the CENTOS founders, so -- maybe he's learned his lesson, but I don't see that as a positive for Rocky - it's neutral at best. I mean, CENTOS was bought by Red Hat and then "killed". Oracle? not even a blip. CloudLinux? Not a blip. Princeton, not a blip. I.e. all the rebuilds with a organization behind them that isn't dependent totally on community funding were basically unaffected here. The major distros that are going strong are company backed (Including SuSE, Ubuntu, RHEL, etc), except for Debian that seems to be the exception that proves the rule to me. And most of what Yasha et al seem to be looking for is a professional rebuild that is free - which might be a contradiction in terms, except for communities maintaining what they need for their use.
>
> This is why I (and I guess Yasha etc) are so disappointed that all the HEP labs can't get together to fund what? 5 FTE across all of them to re-create SL for the HEP community? Or some sort of Internet2 license that is affordable of RHEL (maybe that's the secret goal). Is that really a huge part of the CERN, Fermilab, etc all the labs budget? I imagine it's less than the commercial RHEL license costs. But we do have Alma (and others, including Oracle - wish I trusted them even a little) donating that rebuild to the world at large, so there's some people interested in putting donations out there.
>
> Anyway, digression aside, it's hard to do more than wait and see I guess - and much of that waiting is maybe for EL9 and to see if Rocky releases something that creates a better community than Alma has managed. Though I'm still betting on a company backed project getting going and keeping going much better in the short term anyway.
> --
> James Pulver
> CLASSE Computer Group
> Cornell University
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Jack Aboutboul <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 4, 2021 2:39 PM
> To: Dave Dykstra
> Cc: Bonnie King; Konstantin Olchanski; scientific-linux-users
> Subject: Re: any update on CERN Linux and CentOS-8 situation?
>
> Dave,
>
> Thanks for your response. My message was going to everyone on the list, not necessarily just the decision makers. To me/us it’s important to involve the whole community not just any specific decision makers.
>
> Thanks for your feedback. If you don’t mind, can you just give me more insight/feedback as to why you think that Rocky is better positioned? I’m curious to hear your opinion.
>
> Thanks,
> Jack
>
>> On May 4, 2021, at 11:30, Dave Dykstra <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jack,
>>
>> I am not involved in the decision-making regarding Linux here at
>> Fermilab, so I'm just a community member as well. I think it's good
>> to have options but in my opinion the Rocky Linux effort is better
>> positioned for long term support by the community than AlmaLinux is.
>>
>> Dave
>>
>> On Mon, May 03, 2021 at 05:54:35PM -0400, Jack Aboutboul wrote:
>>> Hi Bonnie, Dave, et. al.
>>>
>>> I am a long time Fedora person and now the community manager of AlmaLinux.
>>>
>>> We certainly understand the quandary you are now in and we deeply value the work that you and the scientific (both capital S and lower-case) community do. It is of utmost importance to humanity. Likewise, we can only begin to image the loop that the CentOS EOL announcement must have caused you.
>>>
>>> We are ready, willing and able to help. We released our x86_64 STABLE a drop over a month ago and are working on other architectures now. We are also in the process of opening up our-next generation build system, amongst other things.
>>>
>>> I extend a hand to the Scientific community-at-large to work together with you all to build whatever it is that you need. We are even open to offering a board seat (yes despite what FUD people try and spread, we are community-governed) to someone from fermilab/cern (or some other representative) to ensure that the relevant voices are heard and acted upon.
>>>
>>> I'm reaching out to you out of my own volition, because I respect you and the work you do and its vital impact in the humanity both present and future.
>>>
>>> Seriously, anything we can do for you guys, any way we can help in order to promote and foster scientific research, we stand at the fore ready to get it done.
>>>
>>> I am sure there may be questions and I would be glad to answer anything anyone would like to know more about.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Jack
>>>
>>>> On May 3, 2021, at 07:25, Bonnie King <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Konstantin,
>>>>
>>>> There hasn't been any official statement. On the Fermilab side we are holding discussions and gathering feedback from experiments and other collaborators.
>>>>
>>>> We are working on it and will make an announcement soon.
>>>>
>>>> Bonnie King
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________________
>>>> From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Konstantin Olchanski <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> Sent: Saturday, May 1, 2021 9:27 AM
>>>> To: Dave Dykstra
>>>> Cc: scientific-linux-users
>>>> Subject: Re: any update on CERN Linux and CentOS-8 situation?
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 09:35:02PM +0000, Dave Dykstra wrote:
>>>>> Both Fermilab and CERN have stated that they plan to use CentOS 8 stream
>>>>> for now (or Scientific Linux 7 or CentOS 7) and will evaluate later
>>>>> whether or not to switch to one of the clones.
>>>> Interesting. I do not see any information about this and I believe
>>>> I receive both internal and external official communications from CERN.
>>>>
>>>> Do you know who and when made this "centos stream" statement?
>>>>
>>>> K.O.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Dave
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 10:35:18AM -0700, Konstantin Olchanski wrote:
>>>>>> Any news or updates on the status of CERN Linux?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Per https://linux.web.cern.ch/centos8/ CERN users are strongly encouraged
>>>>>> to use CentOS-8 while the same page states that support for CentOS-8 will
>>>>>> end at the end of this year. Update is promised "during Q1 2021", today
>>>>>> we are 1/3 into Q2 2021, and there is no new information.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The CentOS forums are graveyard quiet. (censored?)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any information from the FermiLab side of things? Any information from the SL side
>>>>>> of things? Any rumours?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I opened a support ticket with CERN about this, let's see what they say.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Konstantin Olchanski
>>>>>> Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
>>>>>> Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
>>>>>> Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
>>>> --
>>>> Konstantin Olchanski
>>>> Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
>>>> Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
>>>> Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
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