Why do you always take every opportunity you can to try and discredit me on this? Anytime someone mentions me, boom, there you are, in every social media, everywhere, being the first to try to discredit to me. As a spokesperson for a competing project, I'd expect a higher level of decency than spreading FUD like this.
I'd be happy to discuss and debate this with you, but you weren't actually there. I tell you what, go find someone else who was actually there at that time, and I'd be happy to discuss it with them publicly.
At the moment, there is no "defacto", as both provide significant value.
As others have said, Alma has been awesome and blazingly fast on releases, both Rocky and Alma are very fast on security/errata updates, and Rocky has been excellent on testing/QA (as our identification of a pretty major PPC bug demonstrates).
Rocky has always been 100% open with all development and community involvement with every part of the process and always reproducible by others. While this is does add a bit of latency in the build and release process, we believe always having a diverse community involved is well worth the tradeoff.
Where we can do better? ... Messaging! I've become a personal target since starting Rocky, so I tend to not engage directly anymore. Luckily, we do have a new community team lead, and she seriously ROCKS!
It is necessary for the community to always have alternatives. This is what will ensure that an open source Enterprise Linux alternative will exist for everyone.
It is amazing to be part of this and we would love to have you and others join us and check it out for yourself: https://chat.rockylinux.org.
ELRepo has upstream kernels for all Enterprise Linux compatibles.
Also, the Rocky Linux SIG/Kernel group may even provide an alternative ISO(s) with those upstream kernels at periodic intervals. If you (or anyone else) is interested in helping with that, jump into https://chat.rockylinux.org and join that special interest group.
SHAMELESS PLUG: CIQ (my company) also has an upstream optimized kernel that we support provided via Mountain (our operating system delivery platform).
I do try to ensure that others are always getting credit, I'm not even mentioned in the release notes of who did the work.
And the board doesn't keep people out. If you read the bylaws and charter, you would know that it is all contributing members of the projects that will vote for the board members, and the board will elect the officers of the organization.
You are obviously not an RESF Member and I trust the Members of the projects to make the best decision for the RESF and Projects. If I am among them, cool, I will always do my best job there. If not, I will support the decision and enjoy knowing that the structure that I helped to create, is working, and will keep the project open, free, and in the community for decades to come.
Last point, it isn't cool to discredit non-technical contributions, every role in an open source project is important.
Rocky McGaugh started building cAos-EL under the cAos Foundation which I created and led.
Due to my role with the cAos Foundation, I was part of the planning, inception, architecture, setup, leadership, management and led the project itself, but Rocky did 99% of the engineering work for cAos-EL-2 (later renamed to CentOS-3) and after Rocky was working on that, John Newbigin started on what would become CentOS-2.
Lance was there since the early days of the cAos Foundation, and he suggested the name "CentOS" (and he squatted and held the domain from the Foundation, which was how he took over the project), and he got involved with engineering/development of CentOS-3 after Rocky passed away. While I would agree, he is a co-founder, he proved to be opportunistic and acted very unethically and has been further demonstrated with the open letter sent to him from Russ Herrold (another co-founder) and the rest of the CentOS contributors for going AWOL, still holding the domain, and taking the project donations for years.
CentOS split off from the cAos Foundation (501c3) due to Lance's stronghold on the domain. To be clear, the separation was not mutual but it was cordial and sugar coated for the good of the project. I always enjoyed being part of CentOS and working on Linux distributions so not being part of CentOS was hard on me. This is one of the reasons why I announced a new distribution (Rocky) within 2 hours of CentOS being killed off, I was excited to do a distribution again! You can also imagine how and why I setup the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation different from the cAos Foundation to better protect the project(s).
One last point, just because I wasn't working on core engineering and development of CentOS doesn't mean I wasn't deeply involved for the first years of CentOS and not a reason to discredit my role as project leader and co-founder.
Sorry, I don't remember the specific instance of what happened there, but specifically Singularity was never technically "public domain". It was always copyrighted and licensed (firstly with the DOE/LBL license based on the 3-clause BSD license, then just BSD3).
Was the issue on the project copyright, or was it the copyright in the source files?
While I have some experience in open source and copyright, I'm certainly no expert nor do I claim to be. Luckily I have people I can rely on for advice and guidance (e.g. back then, it was probably LBL/UCOP's Tech Transfer), but sometimes things still get mucked up.
Sorry if there was a miscommunication or an error on my part back then.
> Nobody here or anywhere is trying to slander Rocky, or yourself. And everything I said (or others said) cannot be called a "rumor".
Did you even read what you wrote? The entire thing is slanderous and based on rumors and you have provided ZERO facts or citations. Others have even pointed you to some links, and if you were really curious, the facts are easily found, go look before you post inaccurate information and perpetuate rumors.
Another thing, I don't appreciate being attacked anonymously when all I'm trying to do is help the community by filling a much needed pain point.
> Everything said is factually correct, there is just a disagreement on the interpretation of these facts.
Actually, what you said is not factually correct and you've provided zero proof. Justify your allegation that me being a founder of CentOS is subjective or you just look like a hater and a troll.
> 1/ CentOS was not created in a short time. Ideas, source code and history were spread and shared over multiple years and from multiple projects, I tend to consider that "founders" are "recognized as", not "claimed to be". Yet you are very loud about shouting everywhere your "founder" status to promote your Linux distribution.
First off, CentOS was absolutely founded in a short time. It's all clearly documented on the Caos email list and easily corroborated by archive.org, but that point is neither here nor there. I led the project from inception to the point where it was literally a household name. If you don't think my contribution was valuable, then you are entitled to that perspective.
> All in all, this status of yours is the sole selling point of Rocky Linux.
Nope, wrong, I never said that and I don't like anyone putting words in my mouth.
The background I have from early days of CentOS is entirely valid and what we did was amazing, but there were of course things we could have done better. Based on this experience, myself and the team leads/board were able to make decisions for the betterment of the project and recapitulate what CentOS did right, and reevaluate what could have been done better.
The Rocky team has done remarkably amazing to bring Rocky Linux out to the community and our growth demonstrates we solved a major pain point for the community. To marginalize all of that because my role with CentOS "irritates" you is just childish.
> 2/ There is, IMHO, a difference between "being there during the foundation" and "being a founder". I value the work you did with Caos, but to me being there in 2002 does not make you a "founder".
That point is accurate, there were a lot of people who were "there during the foundation", and that doesn't make them "founders".
I created the Caos Foundation, I incorporated it, managed it, converted it to a 501(c)3 which then became the origin of CentOS.
Red Hat EOLed the freely available RHL and pivoted it to RHEL thus adversely affecting many people in the Linux and open source community. We (Rocky, Lance, Russ, and myself -- the primary CentOS Founders) decided to rebuild the sources of RHEL with Rocky taking the first stab at it with CentOS3 (which was the current version of RHEL). That was the moment of Founding CentOS. Its initial name was "Caos EL"[1] and it wasn't until a bit later did Lance suggest the name CentOS to me and I, as the project lead, approved it first, then it went to group vote. Rocky was the person who announced the name change from Caos-EL to CentOS on the Caos email list[2] along with letting the world know he was about 99% done with it (this is right before he passed away). Then I continued to lead the CentOS project for another 18'ish months.
> 3/ There is a meaning in the status of founder, it implies some legacy on the future success of the project. Bill gates is a legitimate founder of MSFT because even though he's not there anymore, he did put the company on a track for what it is today.
If you don't consider the contribution I provided the project as valuable, then sorry, but that does not delegitimize my role as a Founder.
> I do not agree that you have a legacy claim on CentOS' future success. You were let go of the org after 2 years (I know you see it as the board having been "manipulated" by Lance).
I've never, not once, tried to substantiate a claim on CentOS' long term success. You are putting words in my mouth. What the team did after me is 100% on them. Their dedication, and work, is an amazing tribute and should not be marginalized by anyone. I was there, I saw what they did and how they held the project, especially after the "CentOS Debacle" and the open letter to Lance. The team did amazing, and it has withstood an amazing set of hurdles. I have nothing but admiration for that team and I'm still friends with many of them.
Again, you are spreading missinformation and rumors. I was not "let go" from the org... CentOS, via Lance, left the Caos Foundation.
Was the board manipulated by Lance? Yes, absolutely. He convinced them that the Caos Foundation 501(c)3 did not need to own the CentOS.org domain assets which in the end was the main leverage he had to remove it out of the Caos Foundation. Couple that with the legal issues he got me into, and the Caos board agreed to let CentOS goto Lance.
> TLDR: I do not contest your contribution to CentOS in the early days. But I think calling yourself a "founder" is misleading, and is a borderline dishonest attempt at reaping the success of an org that earned 99% of its respect long after you were let go.
So you believe that it is misleading and dishonest for someone to call themselves a founder to a project which they helped to create and then go onto lead for years?
Lance did get control of the project, but not due to Rocky's death.
He got it because after he suggested the name (CentOS) and I approved it and it was then accepted by the others, he promised to hand over the domain name which he was squatting on to the Caos Foundation (a 501(c)3).
Jump forward, Lance and the Centos web team had Red Hat trademark violations on the centos.org website and they alienated Red Hat's legal team enough for them to come after me personally. I believed in Red Hat and we needed to correct our actions, so I reached out to Lance and the web team to rectify the situation. My requests were ignored as they didn't care that they were doing a disservice to Red Hat. I forced the situation as much as I could, which was purely political as the Caos Foundation didn't have access or control over the domain. After the PNALV fiasco, matters got worse, and Lance was able to control the project because he retained controlled the domain.
This was how Lance inherited the ownership of the project, well over a year after Rocky passed away. It was a matter of board manipulation (he convinced the Caos Foundation board that it was okay for him to own the domain). Note, he continued being a bad actor even afterwords when he went AWOL and was pocketing donations personally when the developers had to write him a public open letter to hand over the domain.
What I said is not my subjective view of history, it is corroborated fact which was never challenged or questioned until I founded Rocky Linux.
The right question to ask now... Why are some people spreading rumors trying to rewrite history and slander me (and thus Rocky).
I'd be happy to discuss and debate this with you, but you weren't actually there. I tell you what, go find someone else who was actually there at that time, and I'd be happy to discuss it with them publicly.