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> Under Red Hat control, CentOS no longer modeled RHEL production code but was marketed as a beta—a preview of what was coming down the pipe. Eventually, the co

> Under Red Hat control, CentOS no longer modeled RHEL production code but was marketed as a beta—a preview of what was coming down the pipe. Eventually, the company sunsetted the project entirely, and as a result, new copycats emerged. I thought CentOS was downstream of RHEL. Doesn't this describe what CentOS Stream became?

mroche 3y ago
That very brief segment of the article pretty much collapsed a decade of time into two sentences, but yes it appears to be denoting the transition from CentOS [Linux] to CentOS Stream.
- 16bitvoid 3y ago
  Right, but I assume the first sentence refers to CentOS and the second sentence of "sunsetting" referring to the end of CentOS and the start of CentOS Stream. After all, CentOS became a part of Red Hat back in 2014 and stopped in 2021. In other words, how was downstream CentOS considered a beta or "a preview of what was coming down the pipe"?
  - mroche 3y ago
    Probably a typo, but the CentOS Project came under the Red Hat umbrella in 2014. That segment of the article in particular is very poorly written, and seems to aim for sensationalism rather than accuracy. To answer your question directly: it wasn't.
  - spicyusername 3y ago
    They're probably referring to CentOS Stream being upstream of RHEL.
jt2190 3y ago
It was, but that changed as of RHEL 8. I suspect that AmazonLinux (also originally downstream of RHEL) caused Red Hat to reconsider this. I’m not sure why exactly. Perhaps Red Hat/IBM compete with Amazon in some space, or perhaps they felt that Amazon should release their patches.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  OpenShift and IBM Cloud.
- dralley 3y ago
  The CentOS Stream transition was a shift from the "throw it over the wall" model of open source like Android to a more collaborative approach. Example: As a user of (original) CentOS, you discover a bug. Where do you report that bug? The Red Hat Enterprise Linux bug tracker, because CentOS is just a clone and the community has no real ability to fix things. Then what? You wait until a Red Hat employee gets around to looking at it, and then wait until the next patch release which might be up to 6 months away. Now repeat with the new model. As a user of either CentOS Stream or one of the RHEL clones such as Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, etc. you discover a bug. Where do you report that bug? The CentOS Stream bug tracker, upstream for RHEL and thus also upstream for all RHEL clones. CentOS Stream is a community project, so the community (including yourself, and including maintainers for Alma / Rocky / Oracle Linux) can actively contribute to and drive the fix onwards to completion and test it afterwards, wheras before it would sit in internal nightly builds for a few months. Both the community and Red Hat benefit from aligning incentives that way. However, I understand why there was a lot of frustration about the way it was announced and implemented. It could have been handled better. disclosure: I work for Red Hat, but not on anything related to RHEL or CentOS Stream.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    This is only a very small benefit to CentOS Stream. Most users would never report bugs but still suffered the loss of a LTS CentOS.
    - zozbot234 3y ago
      CentOS has always had minor updates. Current support for CentOS Stream releases (Stream 8 and Stream 9) is comparable to old CentOS major releases.
      - vetinari 3y ago
glutee 3y ago
That is correct my sir. And that's where this article lost me.

mroche 3y ago

That very brief segment of the article pretty much collapsed a decade of time into two sentences, but yes it appears to be denoting the transition from CentOS [Linux] to CentOS Stream.

16bitvoid 3y ago
Right, but I assume the first sentence refers to CentOS and the second sentence of "sunsetting" referring to the end of CentOS and the start of CentOS Stream. After all, CentOS became a part of Red Hat back in 2014 and stopped in 2021. In other words, how was downstream CentOS considered a beta or "a preview of what was coming down the pipe"?
- mroche 3y ago
  Probably a typo, but the CentOS Project came under the Red Hat umbrella in 2014. That segment of the article in particular is very poorly written, and seems to aim for sensationalism rather than accuracy. To answer your question directly: it wasn't.
- spicyusername 3y ago
  They're probably referring to CentOS Stream being upstream of RHEL.

jt2190 3y ago

It was, but that changed as of RHEL 8. I suspect that AmazonLinux (also originally downstream of RHEL) caused Red Hat to reconsider this. I’m not sure why exactly. Perhaps Red Hat/IBM compete with Amazon in some space, or perhaps they felt that Amazon should release their patches.

pjmlp 3y ago
OpenShift and IBM Cloud.
dralley 3y ago
The CentOS Stream transition was a shift from the "throw it over the wall" model of open source like Android to a more collaborative approach. Example: As a user of (original) CentOS, you discover a bug. Where do you report that bug? The Red Hat Enterprise Linux bug tracker, because CentOS is just a clone and the community has no real ability to fix things. Then what? You wait until a Red Hat employee gets around to looking at it, and then wait until the next patch release which might be up to 6 months away. Now repeat with the new model. As a user of either CentOS Stream or one of the RHEL clones such as Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, etc. you discover a bug. Where do you report that bug? The CentOS Stream bug tracker, upstream for RHEL and thus also upstream for all RHEL clones. CentOS Stream is a community project, so the community (including yourself, and including maintainers for Alma / Rocky / Oracle Linux) can actively contribute to and drive the fix onwards to completion and test it afterwards, wheras before it would sit in internal nightly builds for a few months. Both the community and Red Hat benefit from aligning incentives that way. However, I understand why there was a lot of frustration about the way it was announced and implemented. It could have been handled better. disclosure: I work for Red Hat, but not on anything related to RHEL or CentOS Stream.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  This is only a very small benefit to CentOS Stream. Most users would never report bugs but still suffered the loss of a LTS CentOS.
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    CentOS has always had minor updates. Current support for CentOS Stream releases (Stream 8 and Stream 9) is comparable to old CentOS major releases.
    - vetinari 3y ago

glutee 3y ago

That is correct my sir. And that's where this article lost me.