( managed to screw up my last reply )

Ned Slider wrote:
> I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as
> CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed
> key parts of the system.

who defines what is key and what isnt ? We can come up with a list of
what 'we' consider to be 'vital' for the system to still be refred to as
a CentOS based install - and we should do that ( isnt that what the wiki
page in question is trying to do ? )

> The community can't be expected to support it
> when we (the community) don't know what a solution provider has changed
> or why they have changed it.

well. thats a good question. But my question to you would be - what
makes one user a part of the community and another not ?

Flip side is, we only need to make a best effort - after all, the
$provider of $BrokenSystems should be the upstream support group for
these people, no ? If they wander down to the centos mechanisms they are
welcome to.

> So we're back to the question of what can and can't be changed in a
> system for it still to be CentOS.

For it to be exactly CentOS ? nothing can be changed. Nothing added,
nothing removed.

For it to be a reasonable CentOS'ish install ? I am sure we can come up
with a list.

--
Karanbir Singh
CentOS Project { http://www.centos.org/ }
irc: z00dax, #centos@irc.freenode.net
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Karanbir Singh wrote:
> Dag Wieers wrote:
>
>> You get 2 parties hating each other and the guilty party earns the cash
>> and maybe doesn't care
>
> ok, so a two pronged approach - one targetting the providers, and focus
> on best practises and another set of wiki pages, working on a 'recovery
> path' that users of these setups might be able to walk through to bring
> their machine upto a stable status.
>
> It can, ofcourse only be a best effort from the CentOS side of things -
> eg, you cant 'fix' a OpenVZ install, its not going to work if you fix it
> all the way. Neither is a Plesk or cPanel install. If you 'fix that' the
> product itself stops working. What we could do is make the situation
> clear to both sides, and give them both material to work with.
>
> my 2c worth.
>

Agreed


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Karanbir Singh wrote:
> Ned Slider wrote:
>> I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as
>> CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed
>> key parts of the system.
>
> ok, so lets be clear about one thing - no-one except CentOS.org can
> distribute anything called 'CentOS'. Everything else is just 'derived
> from, based on, using parts of, inspired from etc.
>

Agreed - I think the gripes I see mainly stem from hosting providers
selling solutions that are based on CentOS as CentOS... the /based on/
seems to get forgotten somewhere along the line. Their not distributing
it, just selling a solution using it or based on it.


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Karanbir Singh wrote:
> ( managed to screw up my last reply )
>
> Ned Slider wrote:
>> I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as
>> CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed
>> key parts of the system.
>
> who defines what is key and what isnt ? We can come up with a list of
> what 'we' consider to be 'vital' for the system to still be refred to as
> a CentOS based install - and we should do that ( isnt that what the wiki
> page in question is trying to do ? )
>

Yes to your last question, and to your first question - who better
CentOS core devs to do that!

>> The community can't be expected to support it
>> when we (the community) don't know what a solution provider has changed
>> or why they have changed it.
>
> well. thats a good question. But my question to you would be - what
> makes one user a part of the community and another not ?
>

God point - I've never really looked at it like that. I just try to
offer the best help I am able to whomever I can. Sometime the best
advice we can give is to seek support from their provider when the
provider has altered the product as one would hope the provider is going
to have a more intimate knowledge as to what they've done and why
they've done it than we are.

> Flip side is, we only need to make a best effort - after all, the
> $provider of $BrokenSystems should be the upstream support group for
> these people, no ? If they wander down to the centos mechanisms they are
> welcome to.
>

Agreed, and nothing to add really to my comments above.

>> So we're back to the question of what can and can't be changed in a
>> system for it still to be CentOS.
>
> For it to be exactly CentOS ? nothing can be changed. Nothing added,
> nothing removed.
>
> For it to be a reasonable CentOS'ish install ? I am sure we can come up
> with a list.
>

It may actually be easier to come up with a list of things we wouldn't
expect them to change (like the kernel, for example) as opposed or in
addition to a list of things a genuine CentOS system should include.
Less wiggle room for inventive marketing?

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On Tue, 23 Dec 2008, Karanbir Singh wrote:

> Ned Slider wrote:
>> I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as
>> CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed
>> key parts of the system.
>
> ok, so lets be clear about one thing - no-one except CentOS.org can
> distribute anything called 'CentOS'. Everything else is just 'derived
> from, based on, using parts of, inspired from etc.

So can they distribute centos-release verbatim ? Because that is the
problem to me. They may state somewhere that it is based on, but the users
sees /etc/redhat-release and that clearly says CentOS.

The user thinks he is getting CentOS and we are expecting different things
when giving support. Yum problems clearly are the big offender here, but I
can imagine other things as well. I'd prefer to clearly state that
centos-release cannot be distributed if it does not comply with some
rules. (We can of course also forbid distributing some other things that
hold CentOS in that case)

--
-- dag wieers, dag@centos.org, http://dag.wieers.com/ --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]
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Ned Slider a écrit :
> Karanbir Singh wrote:
>
>> Ned Slider wrote:
>>
>>> I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as
>>> CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed
>>> key parts of the system.
>>>
>> ok, so lets be clear about one thing - no-one except CentOS.org can
>> distribute anything called 'CentOS'. Everything else is just 'derived
>> from, based on, using parts of, inspired from etc.
>>
>>
>
> Agreed - I think the gripes I see mainly stem from hosting providers
> selling solutions that are based on CentOS as CentOS... the /based on/
> seems to get forgotten somewhere along the line. Their not distributing
> it, just selling a solution using it or based on it.

Things should be more simple if providers could targeted theirs products
as a single name branded repo, the same way that centosplus repo deals
with other centos upstream repos.
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