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58 lines
4.1 KiB
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<![CDATA[<body><header><h1>A Brief Goodbye to CentOS</h1></header><p>The traditional CentOS Linux distribution as we know it is dead.
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Here is another drop in the ocean of opinion pieces that follow the
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news of its death. After cooling down from the initial rush of
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blood to my head, here is my take on this event.</p><h2>Why Did This Probably Happen</h2><p>With the advent of DevOps and SRE, businesses and startups are
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moving away from the old-school concept of traditional server
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clusters to running their applications on disposable containers.
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The trend is clear and true. Developers are increasingly less
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reliant on a tried-and-true Linux distribution that lasts for a
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decade. With containers, developers can develop, test, deploy, and
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rollback with blazing fast velocity.</p><h2>How It Will Affect All of Us</h2><p>Without a doubt one of the most popular Linux distributions to
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ever exist, CentOS was prevalent among all kinds of computing
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systems ranging from simple database servers to billion-dollar
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computer clusters. There are countless organizations have made the
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business decision to keep using the traditional model, or
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organizations that do not require microservices at all. With CentOS
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drawn from below their feet, a lot of organizations will be forced
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to migrate to another option, or fork out a pretty penny for RHEL.
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Besides, on-prem deployment of any container orchestration tool
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still requires a stable Linux distribution.</p><p>The second ripple effect it will have is towards the skilled
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professionals who have spend decades on CentOS. Not every company
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is willing to pay up for RHEL or risk using CentOS Stream. For
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those who migrate to Debian or OpenSUSE, they will have to retrain
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and adapt with different tools.</p><h2>Questioning IBM/Red Hat Decisions</h2><p>The most obvious of them all was, was it necessary for CentOS to
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die? With CentOS Stream to track ahead of RHEL, it is still
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possible for CentOS to remain functional and serve its purpose.
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This is clearly a business decision to increase profits. It used to
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be that developers wanted to write for RHEL but did not want pay
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for it; CentOS filled that need. What also happened was that some
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companies decided that they wanted the free experience all the way.
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Red Hat now provides free use of the Red Hat Universal Base Image
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for developers. With this, companies no longer have an excuse.</p><p>Secondly, why the PR disaster? In hindsight, there is no way to
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deliver this news gently to the public. However, I felt that Red
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Hat gave the bird to the open source community, especially those
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who contributed to CentOS, by pulling the plug on Centos 8 towards
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the end of 2021. There wasn't even a courtesy to end it later then
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CentOS 7's EOL date, June 30th 2024. A raw-dogged "Pay up, now" to
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everyone.</p><p>Last of all, what is the next move from Red Hat/IBM? With CentOS
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gone, there is a huge vacuum for another to take its place. RHEL
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sources are still available and can still be repackaged. While Red
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Hat currently has massive influence over Linux in general, is this
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a arrogant statement proclaiming "Hey, you can't live without me"?
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Another ominuous take with conspiratorial undertones would be that
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Red Hat plans to eventually scrap the FOSS model, but I would have
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to wear my tin hat for this one.</p><h2>So, What Happens Now?</h2><p>Almost immediately after the release, all the attention is now
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directed to towards filling the space that CentOS will leave
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behind. Undoubtedly, Ubuntu and SUSE would try to assert their
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presence with their open source alternatives. Debian, the largest
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behemoth of them all, hopefully will receive funding and
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participation like never before. A silver lining of this event
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would perhaps be the buzzing excitement of what will be and can be.
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It is time to be excited about Linux again. I, for one, have to
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begin migrating my CentOS containers and virtual machines to
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Debian.</p><p>CentOS's founder, Gregory Kurtzer, is working with the community
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to establish Rocky Linux. Join them at
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https://webchat.freenode.net/#rockylinux .</p><blockquote>I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you
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truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an
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eggplant.<br/>
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- Ursula K. Le Guin</blockquote></body>]]>
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