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I think that things started to go downhill when RedHat decided to kill CentOS and invented the CentOS Stream; the killed that. My guess is IBM and some RedHat

I think that things started to go downhill when RedHat decided to kill CentOS and invented the CentOS Stream; the killed that. My guess is IBM and some RedHat people decided to be greedier than than they should and by shutting down access to the RH repositories somehow they think they can squeeze as many companies as possible to pay for Linux. Terrible how good things are ruined by greed.

lproven 3y ago
[OP here] I disagree. I think the mistake was bringing CentOS in house: legitimising a free version of their own cash cow. It is virtually Rule No. 1 of business: don't compete with yourself. If you are selling something expensive, don't later start to offer an unrestricted free version too.
- gunapologist99 3y ago
  AFAICT, that's why they "bought" CentOS: to embrace-extend-extinguish it. There was no mistake about it.
  - lproven 3y ago
    In hindsight, that does look plausible. However I'm not sure that the timeframe supports it. The company acquired the CentOS organisation in 2014, and it didn't kill off the free Linux distro until 2020. That's a pretty big gap.
    - 2b3a51 3y ago
      And the decision to withdraw CentOS 8 was taken quite suddenly, part way through the advertised 10 year lifetime of EL8. And the free RHEL development licence offer wasn't ready to go the day of the announcement - there was a delay of some months. I'm thinking a sudden change of view because of internal politics rather than an organic change as part of some master plan.
      - omniglottal 3y ago
        So...IBM, huh?
      - passthejoe 3y ago
        The decisions seem rushed, not borne out of consensus, and not well thought out
    - mjw1007 3y ago
      I think the existence of Scientific Linux was one of the things keeping RH honest until then. In 2019 the Scientific Linux developers announced they would stop development and collaborate on CentOS instead. At that point Red Hat had captured the RHEL-clone world, leaving them in a position to destroy it.
      - geerlingguy 3y ago
        There's still Springdale / PUIAS, out there just trying to do their thing... not sure what route they'll take. I remember trying out PUIAS for a short time back when CentOS was having a lot of community issues.
      - passthejoe 3y ago
        This exactly
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago
  I do not think that companies that were paying RedHat customers all of a sudden starting replacing RHEL with CentOS depriving it of revenue and that's why RedHat decided to end CentOS. I personally used CentOS for systems that I knew had a long lifetime ahead of them and for their use a distribution that could be "supported" for a number of years was the way to go. But since upgrading from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8 was such a PITA, I started slowly migrating to Ubuntu LTS which makes version upgrades painless.
  - geodel 3y ago
    > I do not think that companies that were paying RedHat customers all of a sudden starting replacing RHEL with CentOS I think they did. Place I worked had explicit direction to replace RHEL with CentOS to cut licensing costs. Most big companies would pay when they are force to pay and no free alternatives available that'd do the job. They won't pay just because it is nice thing to do.
chasil 3y ago
Red Hat made a fateful choice when they acquired JBoss, against the express wishes of Oracle and Larry Ellison. Oracle then forked the distribution, and their presence far outweighs CentOS. For those who would argue against this assertion, run the command "wsl.exe -l -o" inside a Microsoft Windows command prompt. You will not find CentOS there, and you will not find Red Hat, but the coverage of Oracle Linux is quite thorough. Red Hat has a long history of antagonism of their partners and users, and they have paid dearly for it.

lproven 3y ago

[OP here] I disagree. I think the mistake was bringing CentOS in house: legitimising a free version of their own cash cow. It is virtually Rule No. 1 of business: don't compete with yourself. If you are selling something expensive, don't later start to offer an unrestricted free version too.

gunapologist99 3y ago
AFAICT, that's why they "bought" CentOS: to embrace-extend-extinguish it. There was no mistake about it.
- lproven 3y ago
  In hindsight, that does look plausible. However I'm not sure that the timeframe supports it. The company acquired the CentOS organisation in 2014, and it didn't kill off the free Linux distro until 2020. That's a pretty big gap.
  - 2b3a51 3y ago
    And the decision to withdraw CentOS 8 was taken quite suddenly, part way through the advertised 10 year lifetime of EL8. And the free RHEL development licence offer wasn't ready to go the day of the announcement - there was a delay of some months. I'm thinking a sudden change of view because of internal politics rather than an organic change as part of some master plan.
    - omniglottal 3y ago
      So...IBM, huh?
    - passthejoe 3y ago
      The decisions seem rushed, not borne out of consensus, and not well thought out
  - mjw1007 3y ago
    I think the existence of Scientific Linux was one of the things keeping RH honest until then. In 2019 the Scientific Linux developers announced they would stop development and collaborate on CentOS instead. At that point Red Hat had captured the RHEL-clone world, leaving them in a position to destroy it.
    - geerlingguy 3y ago
      There's still Springdale / PUIAS, out there just trying to do their thing... not sure what route they'll take. I remember trying out PUIAS for a short time back when CentOS was having a lot of community issues.
    - passthejoe 3y ago
      This exactly
ExoticPearTree 3y ago
I do not think that companies that were paying RedHat customers all of a sudden starting replacing RHEL with CentOS depriving it of revenue and that's why RedHat decided to end CentOS. I personally used CentOS for systems that I knew had a long lifetime ahead of them and for their use a distribution that could be "supported" for a number of years was the way to go. But since upgrading from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8 was such a PITA, I started slowly migrating to Ubuntu LTS which makes version upgrades painless.
- geodel 3y ago
  > I do not think that companies that were paying RedHat customers all of a sudden starting replacing RHEL with CentOS I think they did. Place I worked had explicit direction to replace RHEL with CentOS to cut licensing costs. Most big companies would pay when they are force to pay and no free alternatives available that'd do the job. They won't pay just because it is nice thing to do.

chasil 3y ago

Red Hat made a fateful choice when they acquired JBoss, against the express wishes of Oracle and Larry Ellison. Oracle then forked the distribution, and their presence far outweighs CentOS. For those who would argue against this assertion, run the command "wsl.exe -l -o" inside a Microsoft Windows command prompt. You will not find CentOS there, and you will not find Red Hat, but the coverage of Oracle Linux is quite thorough. Red Hat has a long history of antagonism of their partners and users, and they have paid dearly for it.