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On 09/01/14 22:53, jdow wrote:

Ian, I suspect the SL staff position is more proper engineering with
it's concern about what could possibly go wrong than it is about
minimizing their work or compromising their main sponsor's needs. I
suspect that the SL staff position is also tempered with a healthy
dose of, "What do our customers want and need?"

I didn't suggest otherwise. However, I could have sworn I read somewhere
that Red Hat would stop release their source as SRPMs (which would have
a direct impact on the build process of SL I assume), but I can't find
that now. Maybe I mis-read that. I'll keep looking.

Will this new relationship change the way CentOS obtains Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code?

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The main SL customers are their sponsers, Fermilab and Cern. They do
not need the latest and greatest. They need stable support for "what
we already have for as long as practical."

I thought core CentOS would still track Red Hat in releases and support
lengths. If I have that wrong, then that does throw a spanner in the works.

All the other SL customers, such as you and I, don't matter a hill of
beans against the billion dollar investments of their sponsors. I am
sitting back and watching. I certainly respect their work, appreciate
their work, and admittedly sponge off their work. So I'd not dream of
trying to tell them what to do.

I wouldn't dream of telling them what to do either. All I am doing here
is chewing the cud, as it were.

FWIW, I don't feel link I sponge... I merely drink from the same open
source cup that SL and Red Hat does. I have a few lines of code accepted
in the Xen project; does that mean all Xen users (4.3+) are sponging off
me? I don't think so.

I do note that for the machine on which I use SL it is precisely the
sort of thing I want, too.

{^_^}   Joanne Dow

On 2014/01/09 14:30, Ian Murray wrote:

On 09/01/14 21:12, William R. Somsky wrote:

One thing people should keep in mind while discussing this is the why
the original Fermilab distro (and Cern distro) which then became
Scientific Linux was created, and why Fermilab continues to actively
commit resources to SL. Remember Fermilab (and Cern) are particle
accelerator facilities with million/billion dollar experiments that
*must* have long-term guarantees of stable and supported software.

To make Scientific Linux a variant of Centos would be to introduce an
unknown/uncontrollable element as a controlling factor in the mix.
What if Centos pulled an Ubuntu and decided to start introducing
controversial changes in an attempt to become more "user friendly" or
to "win the desktop"?

A merging w/ Centos would need to carefully consider such issues.

I don't come from a scientific background, just more of a piggy-backer
on what seems to be a well governed and reliably supported operating
system. An O/S with some big names behind it, such as they ones you
mentioned above. I was a longterm CentOS user until it became clear that
there was surprising little opaqueness around the governance and
processes of the project and it seemed overly reliant on one or two
individuals. Despite it being having a huge userbase, I came to the
conclusion that this was largely a vanity project for those individuals.

Now, the Red Hat news has completely changed that situation. So for me,
CentOS is now viable again.

To answer your concern, directly:-

"To make Scientific Linux a variant of Centos would be to introduce an
unknown/uncontrollable element as a controlling factor in the mix."

Scientific Linux is already based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so in
that sense you are not introducing any new element, in my opinion. The
press release talks about Special Interest Groups and official variants.
Now if SL was to become an official variant, then part of the acceptance
of the SIG from the Scientific side could be to get confirmation that
ongoing support would suit the needs you speak of.

Something else worth remember that I seem to recall reading on this list
that a discussion had taken place sometime ago about a possible merger
between CentOS and SL (or at least a common base). The wording in the
list that I recall was that "the conclusion was that both projects goals
were too different". Obviously, that is wide open to exact
interpretation. Those differences may now be reconcilable or even moot.

Having said all that, it would be a shame for the (now) only significant
independent RHEL rebuild project to lose its independence.

On 01/08/14 11:53, Connie Sieh wrote:

We are in the process of researching/evaluating this news and how it
impacts Scientific Linux.

-Connie Sieh