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The "betrayal" sentiment comes from Red Hat reneging on their commitment to support CentOS 8 in particular. Prior to this announcement, Red Hat promised to sup
by theevilsharpie 6y ago
The "betrayal" sentiment comes from Red Hat reneging on their commitment to support CentOS 8 in particular.
Prior to this announcement, Red Hat promised to support CentOS 8 until 2029 (the same life cycle as RHEL 8), and I have no doubt that many organizations made the decision to invest in and deploy CentOS 8 based on that promised lifetime. With CentOS 8 effectively dead at the end of 2021, that leaves those organizations less than a year to find another solution. The fact that CentOS 7 will remain supported until 2024 (which was Red Hat's initial commitment) makes this situation even more awkward for the engineers that advocated for CentOS 8.
Now, you could argue that these organizations have been free-loading off of Red Hat and got what they paid for, but it's understandable why people are upset. If Red Hat had made this decision earlier (i.e., making CentOS 7 the last version), or made good on their promise to support CentOS 8, I doubt there would be anywhere near as much outrage.
- gwd 6y ago> ...it's understandable why people are upset. If Red Hat had made this decision earlier (i.e., making CentOS 7 the last version), or made good on their promise to support CentOS 8, I doubt there would be anywhere near as much outrage. Yes, they certainly broke their public commitment; I totally agree that they should have either announced that there would be no CentOS 8 from the beginning, or announced that CentOS 8 would be the last such beast, and after that CentOS would be stream-only. And it would be totally reasonable for the rest of us to take RedHat's other public commitments with a grain of salt from now on. But that doesn't rise to the level of "betrayal" to me. To me, betrayal implies a stronger sense of obligation -- generally from mutual dependence. I just don't think that organizations have that much obligation to people who are consuming their loss-leader. (See also Travis-ci.)
- op00to 6y agoWhere is this commitment written?
- theevilsharpie 6y ago> Where is this commitment written? In the public documentation describing CentOS's life cycle, CentOS 8 was described as being supported until May 31st, 2029. Upon the announcement of CentOS's change of direction, this was changed to December 31st, 2021. You can see the commit diff here: https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product?action=diff&rev1=123&rev2=122 https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product?action=diff&rev1=123&r...
- op00to 6y agoNot on redhat.com or done by a red hat employee? I see.
- theevilsharpie 6y agoThe CentOS project and all of its assets (including its web site) are owned and managed by Red Hat, and the person that made the commit changing the documented end-of-life date -- Rich Bowen -- is a Red Hat employee with an @redhat.com email address.
- op00to 6y agoThe person who changed the date to 2021 is @redhat.com. Who put the 2029 date on the wiki?
- arbitrage 6y ago> Red Hat promised If a corporation goes back on their 'word', who else can you believe? Honestly, what is this world coming to. > it's understandable why people are upset ... because they have to pay for a product they use. very understandable, yes. so what?
- suifbwish 6y agoI have a better one for you. Don’t start an open source project if you intend to make people pay for it. Go ahead and sell your support but don’t pull a bait and switch on people who develop their business models around the open source community. Plus, it makes the rest of the open source community look bad when someone pulls shit like this.
- op00to 6y agoCitation for red hat’s commitment to support Centos 8 until 2029 please? One that is from Red Hat not a CentOS community member, please.