There is a reason some of us chose to support Debian and its model of allowing downstream companies like Ubuntu (Canonical) to give back up to the open source father. And this is it. We dont need to compromise here. We already have a system that works perfectly and provides a choice for what suits you. If you are an enterprise then try Ubuntu instead of RHEL. If you are a home user you dont need enterprise support and can help us log bug reports and create the next version of Trixie. We need more testers and we have fought this long fight and proven we wont give up. What other proof do you need?
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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I got a feeling that the kind of people that use Rocky or Alma linux would have a heart attack dealing with snap on ubuntu. Maybe they're better off switching to Debian LTS instead.
As an inexperienced user, I can tell you that Debian is way harder to use than most people think. Out of the box, the distro is pretty bare ones. I'm having a blast using an Arch based distro, but on Debian I had to do everything manually. Stable is freaking old and unstable has lots of limitations, Docker for example is a true pain.
Ubuntu, Mint, Zorin, POP OS, are way better than Debian for users like me.
Stable is freaking old
Red hat users would feel right at home, right?
Reading this, I wonder if we talk about the same Debian 😆
undefined> I’m having a blast using an Arch based distro, but on Debian I had to do everything manually
how???
Stable is freaking old and unstable.
I ll give you old but not at all unstable, wonder what instability have you found in LTS.
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There is a reason some of us chose to support Debian
It's amazing how some people have to learn the lesson that you can only trust non-profit foundations, not for-profit corporations, over and over again, and then even then it still somehow never seems to stick.
More recently, we have determined that there isn’t value in having a downstream rebuilder.
Alright, well, there it is in plain English. They're killing downstream clones like Rocky, Alma, etc.
I have to wonder how this is going to affect software which officially only supports (insert RHEL clone here). I use DaVinci Resolve for work every day, historically they've only supported CentOS, and just recently they started supporting Rocky as well. VFX isn't my wheelhouse, but I know the situation is basically the same for those programs as well.
At least they aren't pretending to be the good guys anymore.
I am actually wondering whether they'll start considering a Flatpak version of Resolve. Seems like Blackmagic is reluctant to support anything other than RHEL and CentOS, and RedHat seems to be moving towards Flatpak anyways, given their recent move to stop shipping LibreOffice.
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Lots of words to say:
- We do what we are legally allowed to do.
- We don’t care for the spirit of open source (anymore).
- Pay up or fuck off!
headline: IBM STILL DOESN'T UNDERSTAND ITS RESPONSIBILITY WITH OPEN SOURCE
Nothing much more to see here; just, the spots have finally come in on the leopard.
But, as IBM isn't responsible for systemd, ansible and similar trumped-up barely-capable competitors, it's not all IBM's fault. Let it sell crutches as long as it can.
Guess me as an end user for Fedora should stop contributing my time and energy to identify and fix bugs, or get Fedora's name out there, because I FIND NO VALUE in giving Red Hat my FREE work.
One thing while I worked at Red Hat, they will under pay you, they will push you beyond the breaking point, they will under value you, because "we will change the world." And apparently you change the world by all those things I just mentioned.
I don't think anyone's arguing that Red Hat isn't in the right, legally, to do what they did (anymore). At this point, I think Redhat users are just tired of being jerked around. We're not children, most of us in the industry have been around a while and have seen this same story play out over and over again. We can see the writing on the wall and they've destroyed the trust of their community so, a long winded blog post defending their decision, arguing that they are within their rights to do it is largely irrelevant at this point. They've lost the narrative and the industry (us) will respond by gradually finding ways either away from or around Red Hat and associated projects. Soon, the only people left using it will be the same people who use other irrelevant and dated software, government.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that Red Hat isn’t in the right, legally, to do what they did (anymore).
I am. It's there in the GPL text in black and white. Red Hat does not have any right to place restrictions on the distribution of derivative works that they do not own the original copyright for. Threatening to terminate a service agreement is a restriction.
All of the projects that own FOSS code that Red Hat uses in RHEL could legitimately revoke Red Hat's license to use that software on the grounds that they have violated the licensing terms required by the GPL.
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those who do not want to pay for the time, effort and resources going into RHEL
Standard RHEL server subscription costs 800$/year, a ridiculous price for an individual to pay (yeah I know it's called Enterprise Linux, but still)
those who want to repackage it for their own profit
Funny considering that AlmaLinux OS Foundation is a non-profit
The developer subscription provides no-cost RHEL to developers and enables usage for up to 16 systems, again, at no-cost
Until RedHat decides to pull the rug, just like it already did with CentOS
Also:
The first thing to understand is that you cannot renew your no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscription for individuals after the first year. Unlike a paid subscription, the no-cost edition for developers is limited to one year.
So, what's a developer to do? Fortunately, that's easy: You can just register again. Yes, it's that simple. Once your developer subscription expires, simply re-register and get a new, no-cost subscription. Note that you must wait until your current subscription expires before you can renew it.
From: https://developers.redhat.com/articles/renew-your-red-hat-developer-program-subscription
Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way
Yeah, I think setting up build and distribution infrastructure is not adding any value
RH basically does not care, and i don't think this is going to be financially significant for them for quite a while (iff they can legally get away with this). the people choosing to pay $600 a year per server do not care about open source, they care that they servers are running linux and have 7 days a week 4 hour support. the people that use RHEL daily and care about open source are not decision makers, and convincing higher-ups to stop paying for RHEL, migrate the entire tech stack to something else with support and pay that is a non-starter.
In a few years, the quality of the service will probably be significantly worse, and at that point servers currently on RHEL will have to be mostly replaced. at that point only will RH see a downside to doing this, and by that time the execs will have gotten their package for making Good Decisions and will have ran out of there, leaving the comunity to pick up the pieces.
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On the one hand they do have a point, and as a Fedora volunteer it saddens me to see that it is affecting the wrong crowd, RH workers, who are receiving directly and indirectly the backlash, mostly snowballed by clickbait and plain disinformation.
On the other hand saying that redistributing the code you provide under the GPL "doesn't provide any value" sounds just as dystopian as it seems.
At this ratez they are just digging themselves deeper at this PR nightmare.
affecting the wrong crowd, RH workers, who are receiving directly and indirectly the backlash, mostly snowballed by clickbait and plain disinformation.
I know many former SCO employees now working for RedHat. Ironically, now they're facing some misdirected backlash after IBM was overly grabby about source code that wasn't proprietary.
What does this mean for Fedora? Since RHEL wont be Open source anymore, how can Fedora continue. If they publish their code through Fedora everyone will get to see it.
This won’t affect fedora. Fedora is upstream just like centos stream, and nothing they’re currently doing changes those projects. Besides possibly making people more hesitant to bother with rpm packages on GitHub at least
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There are a few completely fair points in there calling out what they are legally allowed to do (e.g. they are not directly violating GPL) and are doing (contributing changes back upstream, they claim "always"), that's about the only "right" this reader found.
Have some quotes that demonstrate the "wrong":
I feel that much of the anger from our recent decision around the downstream sources comes from either those who do not want to pay for the time, effort and resources going into RHEL or those who want to repackage it for their own profit. This demand for RHEL code is disingenuous.
Ultimately, we do not find value in a RHEL rebuild and we are not under any obligation to make things easier for rebuilders; this is our call to make.
Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity.
Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity.
This quote is particularly damning to me. It's right in the preamble of the GPL "Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it." Emphasis mine. It's a legal right, that I can redistribute it, whether or not I modify it in anyway. Stomping on my legal rights is not a threat.
Whole-heartedly agree on the quote and it stuck out to me even before coming to the comments here. Redhat might not like that people are repacking "their" software, but the spirit of GPL software is that you can charge for it but folks can also go through the trouble of building it themselves should they not want to go that route and are able to support/debug/maintain the software themselves on their own hardware.
If they don't think the clauses of GPL are fair, then they should probably stop distributing Linux entirely because their entire business model is founded off of profiting off the work of other open source contributions.
Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere.
One could argue Redhat already does this on packages they have not improved or submitted contributions for.
I actually agree with Red Hat's decision to not make their sources publicly available to non-customers, and I think this is a good example to set for free software companies. However, this quote shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what free software is. It's not a "threat to open source companies everywhere"; it's a feature. It's the horse you rode in on.
The SFC has suggested this, and Alma Linux wrote about their understanding of Red Hat's terms, but it seems that Red Hat may terminate contracts with customers who redistribute their sources. I think that's quite nasty and very much disagree with it. Grsecurity already does this, and my opinions about that company are the same. I thought it was interesting that Red Hat didn't address this at all in their post...
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Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity.
This quote is particularly damning to me.
I agree that it's particularly damning, but for a whole different reason. Anybody who considers "a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity" a "threat" to "open source" fundamentally no longer Gets It and is themselves an enemy of Free Software!
I understand "we do not find value in RHEL rebuild." At least, I understand that it means "we do not find the value [to Red Hat] outweighs the cost [to Red Hat]." I don't understand how "simply rebuilding code... represents a real threat to open source companies." It makes it sound like the rebuilders are doing something wrong.
Sure, you can say that it hurts your profits if others are providing an equivalent to your service for free, but if that isn't acceptable, why allow it? Moreso, why allow it for years and then suddenly claim the communities built around that decision are a "threat"?
Maybe I'm misreading, but I think I would respect this position a lot more if it was simply "we can no longer afford the competitive disadvantage," rather than implying various open source communities are actually exploiting and damaging open source.
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RedHat needs to be profitable, and it's getting harder and harder for them. RHEL is not their main product anymore. Everything is about Openshift and it's Ecosystem. But Openshift is expensive.
Additionally are the European sub divions not happy how the last round of layoffs went.
RHEL is not their main product anymore.
RedHat losing the plot is their own mistake to correct. I've been telling my OS TAM as much for a decade.
Everything is about Openshift and [its] Ecosystem. But Openshift is expensive.
And oVirt competes well.
But when your entire business is based around massively hyped bags stapled to the side of a badly-managed central product you don't mention or promote, what's the expectation?
RedHat was solid for the very thing that made centos a popular option. But then it had to have more; more, more more.
IBM is working hard to kill RedHat. They are probably having a party at Canonical right now.
Canonical has their own problems right now... Not a lot of snap fans out there. Canonical seems determined to skate to somewhere their users don't live and create a world they don't want.
That's a whole lot of "Woah is me, I'm so hard done by, praise me for everything I do and most importantly pay me scrubs."
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He's taliking like RHEL is the product to be monetized. I always thought the model was: the software is free - pay us for professional, enterprise-level support.
The problem is: The larger the usage of RHEL inside a company the more likely they do not need the support anymore, because they can have your own department do it instead. So those companies don't pay for bug fixes or general Linux development, which is a problem. If you want a healthy Linux ecosystem large companies need to pay the maintainers! I don't care if they do it through Redhat or directly.
that used to be the motto, but the business masters now demand profits from the puppets or they're coming for their jobs.
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I'm supposed to complete a higher level Red Hat cert this year, but I think I'll pass, despite it counting against my KPI. These exams are hard, expensive, take a lot of time to prepare for, and the ROI is increasingly questionable. I'll rather do some vendor-agnostic k8s or Ansible cert instead. This RHEL decision definitely helped to make up my mind.
I also wonder what IBM will do to ceph. Not really buying their spiel.
Friends don't let friends use Red Shat.
It sounds as though their motivation is mostly aimed at Oracle Linux from this post. Huh, I assumed it was Rocky and Alma.
Be nice if they at least gave Mike a picture for his blog posts.
Red Hat died the day IBM bought them. All that garbage about "leaving Red Hat alone" was of course total nonsense. IBM is doing what it does best -- squeeze its existing customer base for short term gains. This won't be the last thing Red Hat does that makes people annoyed.
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