Thread by @carlwgeorge

I've been explaining the relationship between @fedora, @CentOS, and #RHEL for years, long before I was hired by Red Hat. It usually happened in the form of drawing on a dry-erase board. Of course, CentOS Stream changes things. 🧵

There are existing diagrams that depict the old relationship and the vision for the future relationship. These are often very high level and leave out details. That may work for their intended purpose, but some people want more.

Even the diagrams I've seen that do go into more detail are inaccurate regarding how things actually work in CentOS Stream 8, which is very much a transition release. This has lead to some missed expectations in the community.

I decided create my own diagrams. A few caveats:

1. These are my personal interpretation, not anything official from the CentOS project or from Red Hat.

2. I'm not a designer. I'm happy with the visual representation, but acknowledge that they could be prettier.

Here is the old relationship. Dotted lines indicate development, solid lines a release. This show the old CentOS minor releases were a point in time thing, not an independent version for users to pin to. What you don't see is that there was no way to contribute.

This is how things are in 8. RHEL development processes were already in place when Stream started. Stream is still a rebuild, just rebuilt from a different RHEL branch. It's possible to contribute now but there are workflow problems that aren't easily solved in this release.

In 9, RHEL maintainers do their own builds directly in CentOS. Workflows are more streamlined, removing obstacles from the contribution path. Distributions like @AlmaLinux can leverage this new model to improve the larger ecosystem, including their own OS.

I hope these diagrams strike the right balance of detail and clarity to help people understand things better. CentOS has a bright future ahead of it as an integral part of the Red Hat ecosystem as the Community Enterprise Operating System. 😎