CentOS Project Chair Karanbir Singh Steps Down

[phoronix]

Phoronix: CentOS Project Chair Karanbir Singh Steps Down

Karanbir Singh who had served as the CentOS Project Leader and involved with the community-based RHEL distribution since 2004 has stepped down from his roles...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Singh-CentOS-Steps-Down

[tildearrow]

Yep. It just sucks how much damage a corporation is able to inflict on such a project...

[hubick]

RedHat:

Your Red Hat subscription expires in 60 days - REVIEW SUBSCRIPTIONS

Chris, meet your Red Hat account team - Hi Chris, I was recently aligned as one of your dedicated Red Hat resources and will be working with your Account Manager, supporting you moving forward.

Me:

I use CentOS personally, and purchased my little subscription to support RedHat's contributions to the Open Source community. I cancelled my personal RHEL subscription the day RH cancelled CentOS, because I'm very upset over that decision. Requiring licenses and accounts and registration all that (regardless of price) just to use the actual stable RHEL product in any form, makes the RedHat ecosystem feel MUCH more like closed commercial software, and far less like an open COMMUNITY. It feels less like RedHat and more like IBM. It feels like maybe the people running the show over there don't understand that community aspect anymore. It makes me sad.

[You-]

Yep. It just sucks how much damage a corporation is able to inflict on such a project...

Like keeping a project alive that would have died in around 2013?

(without Red Hat contributions they were struggling to release Centos 6.)

I doubt this has anything to do with the governance of Centos by Red Hat. Afterall, he lead those changes.

Me: ... to support RedHat's contributions to the Open Source community. I cancelled my personal RHEL subscription ...

Red Hat is still one of the largest contributors to the open source community. You are probably entitled to the free subscription that they introduced earlier this year.

Regarding the rest of your issues, Centos Stream is much more like the ideal open community you wanted. Centos wasnt really a community - you were a consumer who had no interaction or ability to steer future development. Now in Centos Stream you do. So far my use of Centos Stream has been great, but if I need the old way there is Alma Linux which uses the sources from Centos but releases in line with RHEL.

[RealNC]

With the advent of containers, I haven't felt the need to use CentOS for years now, really. Nevertheless, It's sad to see it go. It's a major part of Linux history.

[xorbe]

CentOS Stream is similar in spirit to openSUSE Tumbleweed? I'm out of the loop.

[cynic]

Centos wasnt really a community - you were a consumer who had no interaction or ability to steer future development.

I partially agree with that. Maybe we users didn't had the ability to steer future development but that's not the only aspect of being a community.
The community has provided for a lot of years:

* bug reports (and often fixes);
* packages and repos of packages;
* documentation (in form of blogs, articles, forum help);

also, thanks to CentOS a lot of people started to use and got comfortable with it and then brang it into the CED of the company they are employed in (sometimes CentOS and sometimes paying RHEL subscription).

and no, the free RHEL subscription is not the same, sorry.

[You-]

I am not saying there were not any benefits to using Centos linux. If there weren't it wouldnt have been so popular.

The community has provided for a lot of years:

* bug reports (and often fixes);
* packages and repos of packages;
* documentation (in form of blogs, articles, forum help);

You were banned from making bug reports or proposing fixes unless you were a RHEL subscriber. Packages and reports can and do still exist. That hasnt changed with Centos Stream.

Documentation in form of blogs, articles forum help etc can continue too.

Centos was good, but since about 2013 it wasnt a thriving community. When Red Hat stepped in, it wasnt a takeover as opposed to life support for a community that had pretty muchdied. I remember waiting many months and following the struggles that Centos experienced in releasing Centos 6. Without them it might not have happened.

Ofcourse there were conspiracies back then that they stepped in precisely to give a free option to users instead of pushing them towards other alternative EL distros.

[bash2bash]

CentOS is dead (R.I.P.) so there is no real job position for a project Chair person. Good riddance.

Redhat changed their policy and will stop their involvement in projects that aren't Redhat products or don't offer real income. You'll notice the same policy across all Redhat sponsored projects.

No worries, you can migrate to AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux.

[cynic]

I am not saying there were not any benefits to using Centos linux. If there weren't it wouldnt have been so popular.


You were banned from making bug reports or proposing fixes unless you were a RHEL subscriber. Packages and reports can and do still exist. That hasnt changed with Centos Stream.

Documentation in form of blogs, articles forum help etc can continue too.

Well, if someone is willing to write doc, packages and other stuff for CentOS Stream that won't probably work for RHEL, since they're two different beasts.

Also, (but maybe I'm biased on that) nobody is doing that just because nobody is using Stream as everybody moved to Rocky.