Weirdness at CentOS [LWN.net]

Weirdness at CentOS

Posted Jul 30, 2009 18:00 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
In reply to: Weirdness at CentOS by drag
Parent article: Weirdness at CentOS

I still have a few CentOS servers. And I must say that while this is certainly not the end of the world, it's does affect my confidence in CentOS being around at the end of the the CentOS4 or CentOS5 life-cycle. And I would prefer that my customers not see this foolishness.

However, as I've finished my migrations of XDMCP servers away from the Fedora three ring circus, my CentOS servers were next on the list anyway. So I really don't have to worry about headlines like the "Weirdness at CentOS" or "CentOS Project Administrator Goes Missing-in-Action" headlines that I've seen today, even on non-Linux sites.

Perhaps he was kidnapped by the City of Tuttle...

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Weirdness at CentOS

Posted Jul 30, 2009 18:57 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

What does being able to point to a different URL (presumably at Red Hat, after paying for a commercial support contract) have to do with having confidence that CentOS will be around in 3 to 6 years' time? Others (e.g. Whitebox Linux and at least one other) have demonstrated that tracking RHEL is not trivial by trying to do it and then backing out. (And of course I'm not that concerned about them possibly having to move to centoslinux.org or whatever. That's not the point I'm making.)

At any rate, if this incident does not have at least *some* effect on your opinion of how the project is being run, then I have to wonder about your judgment. For example, this single point of failure should not have been allowed by policy in the first place. Are there any others waiting in the wings?

That probably comes off as more sensationalist than I would normally be. But as you're pushing the point, I'm responding.

Weirdness at CentOS

Posted Jul 30, 2009 19:18 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

> What does being able to point to a different URL (presumably at Red Hat, after paying for a commercial support contract) have to do with having confidence that CentOS will be around in 3 to 6 years' time? Others (e.g. Whitebox Linux and at least one other) have demonstrated that tracking RHEL is not trivial by trying to do it and then backing out. (And of course I'm not that concerned about them possibly having to move to centoslinux.org or whatever. That's not the point I'm making.)

Nope. That is not what I meant at all.

I meant that the worst case is if CentOS folks can't get the Centos.org domain under their control then they will just use a different domain name. So I will have to use that in my Yum repo.

Just because they can't get rights to the DNS name does not mean that the project itself is in risk of dying. It just mean it's going to be a huge PITA for them to migrate over to another domain. (mailing lists, security certificates, developer contacts and all that)

Weirdness at CentOS

Posted Jul 30, 2009 19:59 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]

CentOS is not the only rebuild; there's also Scientific Linux, and that's not going away.

Weirdness at CentOS

Posted Jul 31, 2009 1:20 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

Actually, I live just 20 minutes or so from Tuttle. (Seriously.) I could drive down to their City Hall, ask for Jerry Taylor, and *demand* that he release Lance immediately. :-)

I think he's left office now, though.

Weirdness at CentOS

Posted Jul 31, 2009 1:29 UTC (Fri) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link]

I hope they quietly dismissed him for being an incompetent moron (who wasn't even smart enough to find a competent staff member when he didn't understand something) as soon as the bruhaha died down.