Red Hat Looking To Bolster EPEL

[Setif]

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There would literally be no reason to do this whatsoever, and would gain absolutely nothing. EPEL is wholly unsupported in a Red Hat environment (Red Hat only cares about provides support for the packages they deliver). I'm not even going to try and touch on whether they could actually even do that if they wanted to because it's a beyond ridiculous sentiment.
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Cheers,
Mike

For the same reason why did they with CentOS. as you said "because it's a beyond ridiculous sentiment."
They start by contributing, then take control, then tell the community that they will not continue offering their services for free.
CentOS was not supported by RH, first they start contributing to it, then they acquired it and finally ... we all know what happened,

[kpedersen]

it's not a complete clone of EPEL, there will only be a handful of packages in there. Did you even read the link you supplied?

Yep. So based on this, "Next" is a really dumb (intentionally?) misleading name for it then don't you think?

Why don't they just go the whole way with the ultimate marketing sleaze word, "Modern"? The Modern repo. Both Next and Modern make intentions very clear.

[MadeUpName]

Last time I used actual Redhat they were moving stuff out of EPEL and into channels in order to get you to have to buy licenses.

[Developer12]

The RHEL derivatives slipped out of their hands and splintered after they spend a lot of time taking over control of CentOS. Now they're planning to regain some of that control by exerting pressure on the repo everyone grabs extra packages from.

Turning it into a "you must be running CentOS stream to use this" kind of deal would shut out all those new alternatives and pull everyone back towards Cent.

[Alex/AT]

They already 'bolstered' CentOS to a dead infinite beta. EPEL next?

[mroche]

They start by contributing, then take control, then tell the community that they will not continue offering their services for free.
CentOS was not supported by RH, first they start contributing to it, then they acquired it and finally ... we all know what happened

You're skipping over the part where EPEL is not considered as part of RHEL or Red Hat. It's a Fedora SIG. The only reason/way they would "take over" EPEL is if they actually started supplying the packages first hand. For packages that are requested by customers with good enough reason, they do that and the packages get removed from EPEL (part of its policy). But you don't see EPEL packages in RHEL directly because they don't serve a purpose being there from a business perspective. If a package had value to Red Hat's vision for the OS and its customers, it'd be in RHEL.

Yep. So, so based on this, "Next" is a really dumb (intentionally?) misleading name for it then don't you think?

What do you think would be a technically and logically appropriate name then? Because 'next' makes complete sense to me, applying to both major and minor RHEL versions.

EPEL-Next: Extra Packages for (Enterprise Linux Next)

Or more aptly put -> EPEL-Next: EPEL Packages for (Enterprise Linux Next)

It's not testing, it's not staging (those terms have specific meanings in the packaging development), and it's not "Stream" specific as it can apply to RHEL betas as well. So what do you propose?

Cheers,
Mike

[kpedersen]

and it's not "Stream" specific as it can apply to RHEL betas as well. So what do you propose?

RHEL betas are closely tied to Stream though aren't they? I thought that was the whole point of killing off CentOS and re-using the name.

I would probably use words like Current, Continuous, Rolling, Upstream. Possibly even "EPEL Beta Overlay" which is what the Wiki actually eludes to.

"Next" indeed is a good name for RHEL 9. But then just a repo called "RHEL9" would probably be better. I am thinking back to 5, 6, 7 betas. They just named it appropriately to what it was. Package names like "something.el8.next" just sound non-standard and weird. Literally like they are "extending" el8 packages in a way that only works for their "blessed" version of EL8.

Red Hat controls much of it, so why do weird things like this?

[pal666]

CentOS?

centos was addon repository for rhel?

[pal666]

CentOS was not supported by RH, first they start contributing to it, then they acquired it and finally ... we all know what happened,

i suggest you resist urge of screaming until rh acquired epel then

[mangeek]

why would RedHat do that?

I think... the Red Hat ecosystem might be dying, and the only thing holding it together is resources from the mothership.

Personally, I like the break between RHEL, and CentOS Stream, I think it makes a lot of sense, but I think Red Hat might be overplaying their hand with it. I get the impression most people use CentOS because the office has RHEL support in production and they want free QA and DEV systems to match PROD, not because they like the product.