CentOS dying ?

jibbajabba

Red Hat Enterprise clone poised to 'die' ? The Register

July 30, 2009 04:39 UTC

This is an Open Letter to Lance Davis from fellow CentOS Developers

It is regrettable that we are forced to send this letter but we are left with no other options. For some time now we have been attempting to resolve these problems:

You seem to have crawled into a hole ... and this is not acceptable.

You have long promised a statement of CentOS project funds; to this date this has not appeared.

You hold sole control of the centos.org domain with no deputy; this is not proper.

You have, it seems, sole 'Founders' rights in the IRC channels with no deputy ; this is not proper.

When I (Russ) try to call the phone numbers for UK Linux, and for you individually, I get a telco intercept 'Lines are temporarily busy' for the last two weeks. Finally yesterday, a voicemail in your voice picked up, and I left a message urgently requesting a reply. Karanbir also reports calling and leaving messages without your reply.

Please do not kill CentOS through your fear of shared management of the project.

Clearly the project dies if all the developers walk away.

Please contact me, or any other signer of this letter at once, to arrange for the required information to keep the project alive at the 'centos.org' domain.

Sincerely,

Russ Herrold
Ralph Angenendt
Karanbir Singh
Jim Perrin
Donavan Nelson
Tim Verhoeven
Tru Huynh
Johnny Hughes

dynamik

I don't think The Register is a great source of news, but even if this "dies" it will probably just spring up again as something else.

jibbajabba

dynamik wrote: »

I don't think The Register is a great source of news, but even if this "dies" it will probably just spring up again as something else.

The quote itself is actually from www.centos.org - The Community ENTerprise Operating System

tiersten

It'll just reappear under another name. CentOS is RHEL compiled from source without any of the commercial only parts anyway.

Bl8ckr0uter

Guess I better download this quick...

stupidboy

Oh well ... perhaps more people will discover the power or Arch

It is actually a real shame, great project.

tiersten

knwminus wrote: »

Guess I better download this quick...

Its not going anywhere soon. There are plenty of mirrors.

darkerosxx

Nobody noticed the "at the centos.org domain" part of the sentence? They're saying they're going to keep developing it somewhere else unless he shares management control because they think he sucks at managing.

Forsaken_GA

The real heart of the issue is money. He's the only one with access to the Adsense accounts and the Paypal donation account, and has refused any transparency regarding the financials. That causes a major trust issue.

Bl8ckr0uter

From the website:


CentOS is not dead or going away. The signers of the Open Letter are fully committed to continue the CentOS Project. Updates and new releases will continue.

The issues raised in the Open Letter have been raised privately literally for years and a voluntary resolution had been hoped for and worked toward. But progress requires follow through. We have tried contacting Lance in private for a long period of time before this Open Letter. While we received promises, there was no real response or follow through from him on promises made. We are sure he is not dead, on vacation, or sick. Once we all decided there was no movement in the matter we created the Open Letter. This is not something that appeared just recently.

We would really like to continue the project using the centos.org domain. That is one of the reasons for the Open Letter. But the developers will move to another domain if there is no other option. Protective backups are in place; hot machines exist to allow for a cutover with a simple one time installation of one RPM package. We continue to refine our plans if this might be the case, to make the transition as smooth as possible.

We thank the people who have stepped forward and want to donate to the CentOS project to hold off for now until issues surrounding the centos.org domain and donation policy are resolved. Selected donations will be privately solicited by the signers of the Open Letter on some transition matters. We will post general instructions on how you can help the project as matters become resolved.

The CentOS project is run completely by volunteers and we are aware that this requires a different management style. We have been and continue to work to prevent issues like these from occurring in the future. We will continue this effort in the future, but the matters mentioned in the Open Letter prevent us from moving forward at this moment, as they need to be resolved first.

Last Update: July 30, 2009 20:45 UTC by Donavan

Hyper-Me

but...buut...but...but..its the year of the linux desktop!!!!!

Pash

Hyper-Me wrote: »

but...buut...but...but..its the year of the linux desktop!!!!!

luckily CENTOS isnt as popular as some other distros for desktop.

Sad news this, I hope they resolve it.