IBM decided to change the EOL of CentOS 8 from 2029 to 2021, then continue CentOS as useless RR testbed. What a nice attempt at forcing users into the paid RedHat version.

That's a risky move because Rocky Linux is already gearing up to replace CentOS, and the whole RedHat ecosystem could bleed out to Ubuntu, Suse, and Debian LTS. Well done, suits.

What about the EOL of RHEL 8?

Edit: still 2029 as far as I can see. Hunh.

@RememberMe Yeah of course - the idea is to force anyone who recently upgraded to CentOS 8 to now change for a subscription.

That's why they are doing that move now, i.e. after people went from CentOS 6 right to CentOS 8, and enough upgraded from CentOS 7.

That's betting on vendor lock-in to pull an Oracle move.

@Fast-Nop how many really use CentOS 8 though? As in, for how many is it a problem if CentOS 8 is updated to the next version? If you're a big org you'd use RHEL anyway (or why even buy into Red Hat's ecosystem), this could just be a way to save effort for the CentOS team instead.

@RememberMe Basically everyone who wants RHEL but doesn't need any support. Lots of small orgs, businesses, and operators.

The problem is that the new CentOS won't be LTS anymore. It will be an RR testbed, and that makes it useless for anyone who went for CentOS in the first place.

@Fast-Nop
> [...] to pull an Oracle move.

Fun fact: Oracle Linux is free to use...

@sbiewald There are two kinds of people: those who have never used anything by Oracle, and those who will never use anything by Oracle again.

The risk of Oracle pulling a licence dick move is just too damn high. Because, what exactly is free? The download? Cool. But what if they included also their JVM as well as something that uses its Enterprise features? BOOM, you'd be fucked.

Someone already made https://centos.rip (:

Honestly I'm very concerned about CentOS' future with this when Red Hat can't even keep their promises about EOL, never mind making an enterprise distro their designated test bed - especially when Fedora has already been that for years!

Very glad to have gone with Debian now. My condolences to everyone who has to rush a migration to another operating system now...

@Condor CentOS will become useless for the intended usage. RedHat is in for a rough wake-up because without the surrounding ecosystem to keep people in, what they are doing is axing their potential customer basis.

That's MBA suit logic at work, destroying shit because they don't understand it.

Why not just switch to CentOS Stream? It is basically CentOS 8 that has rolling upgrades. It won’t be lock step with RHEL but it will probably be maintainable in more of an evolutionary way like Arch.

@irene Because CentOS stream is CentOS 8 with rolling upgrades, that's why.

@Fast-Nop I guess that's how you roll now.

@irene I don't think so. CentOS Stream will just sink into irrelevancy.

@irene the problem is that CentOS is a server operating system, where feature updates are normally avoided. Security updates are always quickly distributed like you would expect on any other OS, but feature updates could break existing configs and other such shenanigans - and once deployed you wouldn't need any new features anyway. On servers where you might very well not be able to afford any downtime, or maintain a fleet of thousands of them, you don't want software to suddenly break. Because of that, rolling release distros have no place on servers whatsoever. Certainly not the ones that are currently running a system like CentOS.

I was just trying to use the word “roll” because it is funny. Normally people enjoy funny things. Upon further investigation I discovered that it was either too subtle or not funny. Either way if this comment is an important feature of the thread we should time box the amount of time fixing the poorly executed joke or remove it from the thread.

@irene Or add even worse ones.

Old and busted: rickrolling.
New hotness: centosrolling.

@Fast-Nop I wouldn’t invest in either of those meme futures.