CentOS Project Leader Interview on Red Hat Deal

Original author: Libby Clark
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You probably remember that at the beginning of this year, CentOS and Red Hat announced a joint effort . However, in the Russian-language news the essence of this partnership was not disclosed, which is that CentOS from simply “RHEL without support” is becoming a much wider project. CentOS is becoming the platform for a whole range of open technologies. Then, in January, I translated something “for myself”, but now I decided to publish it, since since then no intelligible information has appeared in Russian. So, the translation of an interview with the CentOS project leader. ( Attention, poll after the article. )


For 10 years that have passed since the CentOS project was launched, he had neither a board of trustees, nor lawyers, nor any commercial activity. The developers who created “RHEL from the community” worked for free (although some earned consultations privately). The project had only a few hundred dollars in a bank account for organizing events and printing T-shirts with CentOS symbols. The developers did what they themselves needed today, without trying to look into the technologies that will come tomorrow.

But all this has changed after the news that Red Hat itself will participate in the CentOS project, says Karanbir Singh], the CentOS project leader and one of four developers who, thanks to the new collaboration, are moving to Red Hat. For the first time, developers will work on CentOS professionally and this will “shift the paradigm” of the project and its participants, Karanbir said.

Red Hat will provide resources and infrastructure for the project. And CentOS, for its part, will become a stable platform for expanding the scope of application of Red Hat technologies, this applies to both RHEL and other software, Singh says.

“We will work to ensure that other projects can successfully work with CentOS,” says Singh. “We will not develop any new features. On the contrary, we want to push developers of other projects to ensure that they themselves can make the CentOS assembly they need without having to learn all the details of building an iso-image of the distribution. ”

In this interview, Singh discusses the collaboration between CentOS and Red Hat; what to expect from the project now; The role of Red Hat in the community about the opportunities provided by partnership; as well as his feelings about working on CentOS as a professional developer.

How did this partnership begin? Did you really just have one day Red Hat lawyers phoned (like you joked on Twitter)?

Yes, it wasn’t easy to find the answer when they called me from Red Hat asking: “Who are we talking to? Who can I discuss legal issues with? ” We have no commercial interests, so there are no lawyers or a legal entity for partnership. Red Hat came to take the project to the next level, providing resources and helping us achieve the goals of the project. More precisely, we want to combine our efforts.

What allowed you to join forces? Has anything changed in your relationship with Red Hat?

Many people seem to think that our relationship with Red Hat was tense, but it is not. We always relied on the shoulders of Red Hat employees; we took what we developed at Red Hat and tried to make these technologies accessible to everyone.

But one of our problems was that we could not defend ourselves against legal issues. For example, if someone suddenly forgot to remove the trademark, then this would lead to a serious violation of the law. The only way we could avoid this situation is to work on the project with an organized group without a legal entity. One of my biggest complaints was that the CentOS project could not work publicly, because the emergence of a formal organization could lead to unpredictable legal consequences.

One of the benefits of working with Red Hat is that we can now resolve legal issues and become much more open.

What does it mean to become much more open?

Previously, there was only one way to get into the CentOS team - first, the community should have nominated you to the QA team . Other participants in the project should have known you for several years, you should have many answers on the forum and a lack of commercial interest, then you could go to the QA team. And only after working in a QA team, did you become one of the main developers and get a privileged position with access to servers.

But now all this remains in the past. We are increasing the main project team from 6 to 15 people, and the QA-team from 60 to 70 people and there is another qualitative change - which inspires me very much - people from other projects who are trying to do something of their own based on CentOS, can come and work on their task with us.

How do other projects get started with CentOS?

We are still working on the details, but the main idea is that we want to see different versions of CentOS. Other projects can add their own “layers” or components and configure the system so that they get their own solution, for example, for VOIP, hosting, cloud computing, data storage, etc.

Initially, we discussed with Red Hat that, ideally, you need one project, which in a few steps becomes any of the above CentOS-based solutions. We planned that six such solutions would appear in the first six months. But in the first 24 hours we get 7 options, and then three more.

However, there is one requirement for such options - for each of them to become a full-fledged solution, a good development team must exist. We all must be sure of its further development. Now there are a lot of discussions about what should be and how.

What do you hear from projects that want to work with you?

If you look back a few years ago, you can see that many developers have found CentOS stable operating system for their software, but the lack of SLA and any guarantees prevented them from widespread use of CentOS. Now they will take our project into their ecosystem and together with us will implement the modifications they need in CentOS. They will know the history of each error, each feature and each patch.

This option will allow them to go along with the CentOS project. They will accompany only what they themselves need, without worrying about other parts of the system. Similarly, 40 different projects can use Apache, but only one person is needed to support Apache, and everyone else can focus on their tasks.

What benefits will CentOS benefit from this partnership?

New people will come to us and together we will be able to expand the ecosystem. There are so many things whose perspective would be highly doubtful if everything had remained as before. It was very difficult for people whom we personally do not know to participate in the project. Now these barriers are broken.

What do you think will change in the organizational plan?

We had some levels of organization, but not to the extent that we got a full board of trustees for project management. It's great that Red Hat understands how the OpenSource community works. For example, every day Red Hat employees can be easily met at the IRC and asked some questions. Now our processes and procedures will become more clear and transparent, this applies to both access to the infrastructure and the code. In the next few months, everyone will be able to participate in the project and make decisions with us.

We were not a community focused on the benefits of software; we were a community focused on the challenges. Eighty-five percent of the time, we did the same thing. In other words, only 15 percent of the time we did something new, important for the developer community.

The changes that took place in the project did not appear there because someone had a big idea about the need for this in the future. They were aimed at solving the problems that are now. For example, many are trying to build IaaS or adapt CentOS for some other promising technologies. Our approach was that if they are smart enough to deploy such systems, they definitely do not need our help.

The CentOS project in the form in which it is now will remain unchanged, but we will work to ensure that other projects are successful with us. We do not want to bring any new features to the platform. We want to make as simple as possible the introduction and construction of what you need so that you can make your CentOS build without having to learn all about creating iso-images of Linux distributions. People will work together on similar issues.

Will CentOS become the testing ground for new technologies at RHEL, as some commentators have suggested?

I think in a way, yes. However, it would be a mistake to think that it would be a training ground specifically for RHEL. Rather, it will be like a foundation for a wide range of open technologies. We are creating a sustainable platform that you can take as a basis and not be afraid that it will cause your problems. There is nothing that limits us to the development of Red Hat. For example, we see great potential for cooperation with the Xen Project and Red Hat is not yet involved in this.

We hope that the fruits of our work will find their place in RHEL, but we are seriously committed to ensuring that the platform is not limited to the specifics of RHEL.

The CentOS 6.5 release took place in December - what about the next release? How will the new partnership affect him?

Despite the fact that I now work for Red Hat, I am not dedicated to what they think of release plans. Therefore, over the next few months, the CentOS project council will publish its own roadmap. The main line, the core of the project, will remain unchanged. Well, the various projects with which we will cooperate will be able to write their own roadmaps for their CentOS options (based on the release plan for these projects).

Most importantly, we will try to ensure that in the CentOS installer, users can choose which of the existing CentOS options they want to install. But this is still in the “wish list”, which needs to be more clearly defined before development.

What are your personal plans at Red Hat - what can you do in the company from what you could not do while remaining an independent developer?

Ten years ago, when we were just about to launch a project, our goal was 300 users, and this figure seemed fantastic to us. At that time, from our point of view, this would be enough for success. Now we define success as creating something that will take us to a user-oriented approach. We think about how it works, where it works and in general, how well it turned out from the point of view of users.

I have never worked for a large OpenSource company before, but I hope to introduce a “user look” approach in Red Hat. I will try to focus on the user community and due to this, I hope to better manage the project.

On the other hand, not much has changed. They sent me a phone and a laptop. I consider it a great honor that now I have the opportunity to focus on CentOS.

Now, do you want to relax a bit or vice versa, get more pleasure from your work?

Our project never had money. We have a bank account, but it never had more than a couple of hundred dollars that we spent on ordering T-shirts with our symbols for various events. For the first time, there is a group of people who work professionally on CentOS as a platform.

Previously, some of us went to our main job, and then worked another 40 hours a week on CentOS. But you won’t be able to withstand the 80-hour work week for a long time, so the reason I agreed to work at Red Hat was not because I was offered a big salary, but because I want to be involved in CentOS development.

You wrote on Twitter: “I think this is a great opportunity for Red Hat to prove that they are worried that their approach to interacting with the community is open, transparent and focused on user needs.” How can they do this?

This is a difficult question. Here you have a community-driven nonprofit project that unexpectedly gets support. Now we have access to some resources, we can count on people who are available during working hours or some server capacities, for example. This changes the project paradigm, but we want to keep the project in its current form.

You will not feel the difference with how it was before. If there are any objections, let's openly discuss them after the first six months of our work. Red Hat is committed to taking the burden of taking into account the views of all members of the community.

How do you think this partnership will affect the Linux community and Red Hat?

I think it will reflect well. Red Hat is already investing a lot in Linux. Many of the feedback that I get from people working at Red Hat, both from senior executives and from novice developers, says that they value our work, that there is a strong spirit of openness and community within the company. People working outside of Red Hat do not really understand how OpenSource thinking is rooted in this company.

Anything else you want to say to the Linux community?

Join us.

Only registered users can participate in the survey. Please come in.

How do you think the deal with Red Hat will affect the CentOS project?

  • 28.9% Bad, CentOS will lose its independence, Red Hat will try to “crush” the project so that it does not take away their customers. 160
  • 11.7% No way, those few developers who are now working in Red Hat will not change anything. 65
  • 46.1% Good, CentOS will grow faster, developers will not have problems with finances. 255
  • 11.3% The role of CentOS will change dramatically, the project will become a catalyst for a new generation of open source software that will capture a significant part of the corporate market. 63
  • 1.8% I have my own version, I will write in the comments. 10

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