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> several founding members of Rocky were responsible for starting CentOS in the first place Hum, that's a subjective view of the history of "CentOS" told by Gr

> several founding members of Rocky were responsible for starting CentOS in the first place Hum, that's a subjective view of the history of "CentOS" told by Greg Kurtzer... In practical terms, Greg just helped setup the legal structure around the distribution that Rocky McGough created. In the 20 years history of CentOS, Greg Kurtzer stayed 2 years at the beginning, doing mainly PR/legal/community stuff, then left when Lance Davis inherited the ownership of the project after Rocky committed suicide. I'm not sure anyone is calling Greg a "CentOS founding member" except himself, everywhere.

justinclift 4y ago
> doing mainly PR/legal/community stuff Why are you not considering PR/legal/community stuff as being worthy?
- gnufx 4y ago
  It would frighten me having Kurtzer doing legalities, given his bizarre legal theory on copyright specifically (no longer recorded in the issues of a deleted github repo for me to reference).
  - realgmk 4y ago
    Can you elaborate on my bizarre legal theory on copyrights? Thanks.
    - gnufx 4y ago
      Sorry, I don't know why I missed off the sentence. The statement was that putting something under the Berkeley licence used by Singularity made it public domain, i.e. they could strip my employer's copyright, specifically. No answer to whether that was speaking for LBL legal.
      - realgmk 4y ago
        Sorry, I don't remember the specific instance of what happened there, but specifically Singularity was never technically "public domain". It was always copyrighted and licensed (firstly with the DOE/LBL license based on the 3-clause BSD license, then just BSD3). Was the issue on the project copyright, or was it the copyright in the source files? While I have some experience in open source and copyright, I'm certainly no expert nor do I claim to be. Luckily I have people I can rely on for advice and guidance (e.g. back then, it was probably LBL/UCOP's Tech Transfer), but sometimes things still get mucked up. Sorry if there was a miscommunication or an error on my part back then.
  - justinclift 4y ago
    That's pretty opaque. :(
placatedmayhem 4y ago
The CentOS project itself called Greg a founding member in a blog post interviewing him in 2019, well before the Red Hat/CentOS events in December 2020. https://blog.centos.org/2019/03/greg-kurtzer-centos-founder/ https://blog.centos.org/2019/03/greg-kurtzer-centos-founder/ For what it's worth, The Register refers to Greg as a CentOS founder in their first Rocky article: https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/10/rocky_linux https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/10/rocky_linux If you have some references to back your assertions, I would very much like to see them. You're not the first person I've seen assert that Greg shouldn't be called a founder of CentOS, but I've yet to see that backed up. Also, you seem to minimize the non-technical, especially legal, work around setting up and maintaining a distribution, but I don't understand why. In terms of legal work, trademarks need to be registered, non-profits need to be set up to fund critical items like build infrastructure, and more. Each of these seems like exceptionally valuable, if not critical, to the success of a distribution.
- carlwgeorge 4y ago
  That CentOS blog post is an interview with Greg. The source for Greg being the founder is...himself. That post was supposed to be the first in a series of interviews with people who were around in the early days of CentOS, which is mentioned in the second to last paragraph. Those interviews happened, but they were never published because the interviewees disagreed with the premise set forth in the first post about Greg being the founder. It was decided that publishing additional interviews with conflicting claims would not be a good look for the project. All other articles referring to Greg as the founder use this blog post or Greg's own claims elsewhere as the source. Greg is the root source for all claims of himself being the founder. None of the other early CentOS folks have backed up his claims, despite him asking them to. There are even people in the Rocky project that have asked him to stop claiming this. Greg's response is typically to post archive links that show 1) he started the cAos Foundation and 2) CentOS started in the cAos Foundation. These are facts that no one is disputing. What is disputed is whether his level of involvement in CentOS itself merits declaring himself the founder many years after the fact.
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
> Greg Kurtzer stayed 2 years at the beginning, doing mainly PR/legal/community stuff Heck, that's the very stuff nobody wants to take care of, kudos to him he wanted to spend his time on these.
realgmk 4y ago
Lance did get control of the project, but not due to Rocky's death. He got it because after he suggested the name (CentOS) and I approved it and it was then accepted by the others, he promised to hand over the domain name which he was squatting on to the Caos Foundation (a 501(c)3). Jump forward, Lance and the Centos web team had Red Hat trademark violations on the centos.org website and they alienated Red Hat's legal team enough for them to come after me personally. I believed in Red Hat and we needed to correct our actions, so I reached out to Lance and the web team to rectify the situation. My requests were ignored as they didn't care that they were doing a disservice to Red Hat. I forced the situation as much as I could, which was purely political as the Caos Foundation didn't have access or control over the domain. After the PNALV fiasco, matters got worse, and Lance was able to control the project because he retained controlled the domain. This was how Lance inherited the ownership of the project, well over a year after Rocky passed away. It was a matter of board manipulation (he convinced the Caos Foundation board that it was okay for him to own the domain). Note, he continued being a bad actor even afterwords when he went AWOL and was pocketing donations personally when the developers had to write him a public open letter to hand over the domain. What I said is not my subjective view of history, it is corroborated fact which was never challenged or questioned until I founded Rocky Linux. The right question to ask now... Why are some people spreading rumors trying to rewrite history and slander me (and thus Rocky).
- Galanwe 4y ago
  > The right question to ask now... Why are some people spreading rumors trying to rewrite history and slander me (and thus Rocky). Nobody here or anywhere is trying to slander Rocky, or yourself. And everything I said (or others said) cannot be called a "rumor". Everything said is factually correct, there is just a disagreement on the interpretation of these facts. I will be honest with you, every time I read something where you claim to be a "founder of CentOS", it irritates me, for a number of reasons. 1/ CentOS was not created in a short time. Ideas, source code and history were spread and shared over multiple years and from multiple projects, I tend to consider that "founders" are "recognized as", not "claimed to be". Yet you are very loud about shouting everywhere your "founder" status to promote your Linux distribution. All in all, this status of yours is the sole selling point of Rocky Linux. 2/ There is, IMHO, a difference between "being there during the foundation" and "being a founder". I value the work you did with Caos, but to me being there in 2002 does not make you a "founder". 3/ There is a meaning in the status of founder, it implies some legacy on the future success of the project. Bill gates is a legitimate founder of MSFT because even though he's not there anymore, he did put the company on a track for what it is today. I do not agree that you have a legacy claim on CentOS' future success. You were let go of the org after 2 years (I know you see it as the board having been "manipulated" by Lance). TLDR: I do not contest your contribution to CentOS in the early days. But I think calling yourself a "founder" is misleading, and is a borderline dishonest attempt at reaping the success of an org that earned 99% of its respect long after you were let go.

justinclift 4y ago

> doing mainly PR/legal/community stuff Why are you not considering PR/legal/community stuff as being worthy?

gnufx 4y ago
It would frighten me having Kurtzer doing legalities, given his bizarre legal theory on copyright specifically (no longer recorded in the issues of a deleted github repo for me to reference).
- realgmk 4y ago
  Can you elaborate on my bizarre legal theory on copyrights? Thanks.
  - gnufx 4y ago
    Sorry, I don't know why I missed off the sentence. The statement was that putting something under the Berkeley licence used by Singularity made it public domain, i.e. they could strip my employer's copyright, specifically. No answer to whether that was speaking for LBL legal.
    - realgmk 4y ago
      Sorry, I don't remember the specific instance of what happened there, but specifically Singularity was never technically "public domain". It was always copyrighted and licensed (firstly with the DOE/LBL license based on the 3-clause BSD license, then just BSD3). Was the issue on the project copyright, or was it the copyright in the source files? While I have some experience in open source and copyright, I'm certainly no expert nor do I claim to be. Luckily I have people I can rely on for advice and guidance (e.g. back then, it was probably LBL/UCOP's Tech Transfer), but sometimes things still get mucked up. Sorry if there was a miscommunication or an error on my part back then.
- justinclift 4y ago
  That's pretty opaque. :(

placatedmayhem 4y ago

The CentOS project itself called Greg a founding member in a blog post interviewing him in 2019, well before the Red Hat/CentOS events in December 2020. https://blog.centos.org/2019/03/greg-kurtzer-centos-founder/ https://blog.centos.org/2019/03/greg-kurtzer-centos-founder/ For what it's worth, The Register refers to Greg as a CentOS founder in their first Rocky article: https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/10/rocky_linux https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/10/rocky_linux If you have some references to back your assertions, I would very much like to see them. You're not the first person I've seen assert that Greg shouldn't be called a founder of CentOS, but I've yet to see that backed up. Also, you seem to minimize the non-technical, especially legal, work around setting up and maintaining a distribution, but I don't understand why. In terms of legal work, trademarks need to be registered, non-profits need to be set up to fund critical items like build infrastructure, and more. Each of these seems like exceptionally valuable, if not critical, to the success of a distribution.

carlwgeorge 4y ago
That CentOS blog post is an interview with Greg. The source for Greg being the founder is...himself. That post was supposed to be the first in a series of interviews with people who were around in the early days of CentOS, which is mentioned in the second to last paragraph. Those interviews happened, but they were never published because the interviewees disagreed with the premise set forth in the first post about Greg being the founder. It was decided that publishing additional interviews with conflicting claims would not be a good look for the project. All other articles referring to Greg as the founder use this blog post or Greg's own claims elsewhere as the source. Greg is the root source for all claims of himself being the founder. None of the other early CentOS folks have backed up his claims, despite him asking them to. There are even people in the Rocky project that have asked him to stop claiming this. Greg's response is typically to post archive links that show 1) he started the cAos Foundation and 2) CentOS started in the cAos Foundation. These are facts that no one is disputing. What is disputed is whether his level of involvement in CentOS itself merits declaring himself the founder many years after the fact.

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

> Greg Kurtzer stayed 2 years at the beginning, doing mainly PR/legal/community stuff Heck, that's the very stuff nobody wants to take care of, kudos to him he wanted to spend his time on these.

realgmk 4y ago

Lance did get control of the project, but not due to Rocky's death. He got it because after he suggested the name (CentOS) and I approved it and it was then accepted by the others, he promised to hand over the domain name which he was squatting on to the Caos Foundation (a 501(c)3). Jump forward, Lance and the Centos web team had Red Hat trademark violations on the centos.org website and they alienated Red Hat's legal team enough for them to come after me personally. I believed in Red Hat and we needed to correct our actions, so I reached out to Lance and the web team to rectify the situation. My requests were ignored as they didn't care that they were doing a disservice to Red Hat. I forced the situation as much as I could, which was purely political as the Caos Foundation didn't have access or control over the domain. After the PNALV fiasco, matters got worse, and Lance was able to control the project because he retained controlled the domain. This was how Lance inherited the ownership of the project, well over a year after Rocky passed away. It was a matter of board manipulation (he convinced the Caos Foundation board that it was okay for him to own the domain). Note, he continued being a bad actor even afterwords when he went AWOL and was pocketing donations personally when the developers had to write him a public open letter to hand over the domain. What I said is not my subjective view of history, it is corroborated fact which was never challenged or questioned until I founded Rocky Linux. The right question to ask now... Why are some people spreading rumors trying to rewrite history and slander me (and thus Rocky).

Galanwe 4y ago
> The right question to ask now... Why are some people spreading rumors trying to rewrite history and slander me (and thus Rocky). Nobody here or anywhere is trying to slander Rocky, or yourself. And everything I said (or others said) cannot be called a "rumor". Everything said is factually correct, there is just a disagreement on the interpretation of these facts. I will be honest with you, every time I read something where you claim to be a "founder of CentOS", it irritates me, for a number of reasons. 1/ CentOS was not created in a short time. Ideas, source code and history were spread and shared over multiple years and from multiple projects, I tend to consider that "founders" are "recognized as", not "claimed to be". Yet you are very loud about shouting everywhere your "founder" status to promote your Linux distribution. All in all, this status of yours is the sole selling point of Rocky Linux. 2/ There is, IMHO, a difference between "being there during the foundation" and "being a founder". I value the work you did with Caos, but to me being there in 2002 does not make you a "founder". 3/ There is a meaning in the status of founder, it implies some legacy on the future success of the project. Bill gates is a legitimate founder of MSFT because even though he's not there anymore, he did put the company on a track for what it is today. I do not agree that you have a legacy claim on CentOS' future success. You were let go of the org after 2 years (I know you see it as the board having been "manipulated" by Lance). TLDR: I do not contest your contribution to CentOS in the early days. But I think calling yourself a "founder" is misleading, and is a borderline dishonest attempt at reaping the success of an org that earned 99% of its respect long after you were let go.