2:34 p.m.
On 1/9/14, 2:48 PM, Nunez, Luis K wrote:
I noticed the recent news of Red Hat's intent to partner and
collaborate
with the CentOS Project and was wondering if SSG will branch on CentOS
content? From time to time folks have asked about running SCAP content on
the CentOS platform. Could CentOS leverage the shared directory? I am
just throwing this out to see the interest level.
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2014/1/red-hat-and-centos-joi
n-forces
A good FAQ on the announcement is available at:
http://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/
Ultimately, things will be broken down as:
- Fedora: Upstream code development, releasing in 6mo cycles, nightly
builds, very bleeding edge
- CentOS: At some point, open source upstream /code/ becomes an upstream
/project/ (e.g. OpenStack.org --> RDO). Upstream project developers --
such as those within the RDO community -- need a relatively stable
platform with selectively updated components to develop against. The
/project/ communities simply can not have nightly changes to their
operating system. CentOS will fill the gap between Fedora and RHEL;
meaning CentOS will become the free operating system that mirrors(ish)
RHEL for use by open source project developers. CentOS still remains a
community, non-supported, non-government certified platform. No STIG, no
common criteria, no APL, no FIPS, and no endorsement what so ever from
Red Hat as a platform for customers, partners, OEMs, or ISVs to utilize.
- RHEL: Remains the same.
<personal opinion>
In many ways, Red Hat has lost ground within the open source technology
development space to distributions like Ubuntu. Ubuntu provides a
moderately seamless migration from their free/unsupported release to
their commercial long term support variant. No such migration path
exists for Red Hat operating systems; the variance between Fedora and
RHEL is simply to great to develop on Fedora and assume everything will
'just work' in RHEL.
One could also argue that Fedora has lost its way and no longer moves
fast enough with upstream technologies. By working closer with the
CentOS community, we free Fedora to align closer with upstream and allow
CentOS to be a free, stableish community development platform. Because
CentOS tracks closely(ish) to RHEL, community developers now have an
onramp to RHEL if/as they decide to commercialize their technologies.
CentOS still has a slew of issues, which make it an incredibly poor
choice for enterprise and gov deployments:
- Absolutely no support
- Absolutely no security certifications
- Not an approved DoD CIO or DISA FSO operating system
- Questionable, if any, OEM/ISV integration
- Expensive to run alongside RHEL (see IDC report)
- Lack of 0-day responses to security problems
CentOS is a *community* development platform for things like RDO. For
ISVs, integrators, and customers, RHEL is where development and
certification should be performed.
</personal opinion>
Since CentOS really shouldn't be used on any government network, is
there really a need for SCAP content? Creating such would seem to
endorse the usage of CentOS, which really shouldn't be done.