How are they trying to justify that? It's open source! Does TFS mean a support contract?
Or is this more TiVoiszation (a form of racketeering), which we should have killed with the GPL 3 a long time ago. (if some livestock wasn't very vocally expressing their hate of not being abused.;)
How are they trying to justify that? It's open source! Does TFS mean a support contract?
This offering is specifically "self-supported", so no support contract. Red Hat makes people pay by only allowing you to use their package repositories if you have a subscription.
Since it's free software, if you can obtain them elsewhere you can for no cost. CentOS is (was) a "rebuild" with all the same packages, just with the Red Hat branding removed to avoid trademark problems. RH is trying to kill that hole by discontinuing CentOS, but since they can't stop someone from doing exactly the same thing under a different name, this is obviously doomed to failure.
"CentOS is (was) a "rebuild" with all the same packages, just with the Red Hat branding removed to avoid trademark problems. RH is trying to kill that hole by discontinuing CentOS, but since they can't stop someone from doing exactly the same thing under a different name, this is obviously doomed to failure."
Actually, I thought it was a primarily red hat driven open project in the first place. I don't see any reason it can't become one. Red Hat is still going to have to make most of it available sans tradem
Actually, I thought it was a primarily red hat driven open project in the first place. I don't see any reason it can't become one. Red Hat is still going to have to make most of it available sans trademarks to comply with the GPL. Though they could close the code on more of their tooling I guess.
CentOS was later taken over by RedHat but originally it was independent Rocky Linux [rockylinux.org] will be the new inheritor of the CentOS tradition once available. Scientific Linux [scientificlinux.org] is another RedHat rebuild but with some changes suitable for the scientific computing community.
Since it's free software, if you can obtain them elsewhere you can for no cost. CentOS is (was) a "rebuild" with all the same packages, just with the Red Hat branding removed to avoid trademark problems. RH is trying to kill that hole by discontinuing CentOS, but since they can't stop someone from doing exactly the same thing under a different name, this is obviously doomed to failure.
This is slightly wobbly reasoning based on what you mean by "obtain". The source code must be made available, but that doesn't mean the signed RH binary packages can be redistributed.
This is slightly wobbly reasoning based on what you mean by "obtain". The source code must be made available, but that doesn't mean the signed RH binary packages can be redistributed.
The GPL is pretty clear that you can, as that qualifies as a "non-source form" of a covered work. The situation may be different for packages of non-GPLed software.
"CentOS is (was) a "rebuild" with all the same packages, just with the Red Hat branding removed to avoid trademark problems. RH is trying to kill that hole by discontinuing CentOS, but since they can't stop someone from doing exactly the same thing under a different name, this is obviously doomed to failure."
Exactly - in fact the crew that did CentOS originally is back with Rocky Linux [rockylinux.org] which has exactly the same idea as CentOS originally had.
Actually, I thought it was a primarily red hat driven open project in the first place. I don't see any reason it can't become one. Red Hat is still going to have to make most of it available sans trademarks to comply with the GPL. Though they could close the code on more of their tooling I guess.
CentOS started independent and then was effectively bought by RedHat. When they did this they made promises they are now failing to keep.
It must only be made available to your customers (who in turn of course can publish them at will) so the GPL is no wall for subscriptions.
For many packages in RHEL that's fine. Some of them contain RedHat's branding however and that has to be distributed under RedHat's choice of terms and so is much more restricted. What the distributors like Scientific Linux and Rocky Linux do is remove the branding and put in their own which you can freely distribute.
Previously the update repositories required a paid subscription. They now require a free one. Don't get me wrong, hosting is not that expensive, but the actual package maintenance is a big job. Especially if you have enterprise customers and the software is supposed to work without dependency issues, random breakages, and whatnot.
I think they have reached a point where the existing paying customers, and the cloud VM royalties pay more than enough for the RHEL development. So now they can offer an "introductory" version for free.
>"I think they have reached a point where the existing paying customers, and the cloud VM royalties pay more than enough for the RHEL development.
They reached that a long time ago.
>"So now they can offer an "introductory" version for free."
We already had that. It was CentOS.
1) This move is meaningless, because now none of us trust them. If they can break their promise of 10 years of support for CentOS 8, what makes us think they are going to keep THIS promise?
2) This move doesn't replace CentOS- you have to LICENSE and REGISTER your psedudo-free RHEL machines and deal with ongoing licensing management, compliance, breakage when you change the machine name or IP or whatever other criteria they use, etc. It has LESS value than CentOS.
3) This won't stop replacement CentOS clones.
4) They have DESTROYED the good will and mindshare that CentOS brought to their brand. This won't make up for that.
The only thing they can do right now that would help is "revert before convert", and quickly. The longer they wait, the more people will have already decided to convert to something non CentOS and non RHEL. Be that one of the new clones coming, or some totally different distro like SuSe or Debian.
Nicely written response. I agree they've burnt hard-earned goodwill in the blink of an eye.
I use Debian-based distributions but have long admired the RH flavours. (Indeed starting on RH decades ago.) But after this I have no trust.
I perhaps disagree on one thing: even if they reverted imminently I think trust is gone. As a minimum there would have to be a sacking / cleansing of the people who championed this move.
It's like criminals oozing contrition when they're caught: are they sorry for the offence? Or s
>"I perhaps disagree on one thing: even if they reverted imminently I think trust is gone. As a minimum there would have to be a sacking / cleansing of the people who championed this move."
You might be right. I was one person burned badly by this. I spent MONTHS creating and testing a complex CentOS 8 machine right before this whole fiasco hit. I am not sure even if they reverted now, I would feel comfortable rolling this out. I would feel more comfortable with a clone at this point.
I don't envy your predicament; I would also feel betrayed were I in your shoes.
You're clearly a sensible & rational person. I would advise taking emotion out of the decision and doing the maths; after all that's what RH did:
* Your earlier post nicely enumerated the newly introduced burdens even if one never exceeds 16 servers. * On the other hand you do have a server that's basically ready to go. * Do you expect to grow beyond 16 servers? * What if, in 2 years, they drop the cap to 5 servers? Then later do
Or go with the flow and move to Debian-based distributions like everybody else. They are put together in the interest of the user as opposed to the interest of Red Hat. Just one aspect of how this hurts everybody: Red Hat's bug databases are proprietary, even though the software affected is open source. That siloing hurts everybody, even Red Hat in the end, which paid the corporate death penalty for it.
You've got a lot of shrill statements in there. But, I don't disagree this is about trying to kill CentOS use in businesses that do their own support. They want CentOS to go away so they can drive the large enterprises that are doing their own internal CentOS deployments towards a RHEL subscription.
The 16 license thing does mean you don't need to use CentOS for a test deployment anymore, but lets not pretend this is an attempt to kill the CentOS system and drive people to support contracts, because it most
You say shrill - instead I think there's a palpable anger. Some of us have man times had to choose which of the free distributions (Ubuntu / CentOS / Debian) we put in. Specifically because it was pushing people in the direction of RedHat and specifically because RedHat has been paying for much of the kernel development and other development of Linux software some of us have been pushing CentOS in these cases.
Now the people that we told that CentOS was a good option are finding themselves betrayed and the
We're you really going to run your CentOS machine for ten years on the same code?
Seriously? What is your application that requires more than 16 production servers? And where did you get your info about how the free instances will be registered, licensed?
I suspect RH will simplify the process to the point it's a non-issue, you just needed something to complain about I guess.
>"And where did you get your info about how the free instances will be registered, licensed?
It is true that I do not know if it needs to be registered and licensed. That is an assumption based on every way they have done such things in the past (and not just Red Hat).
No we didn't. CentOS and RHEL were two different products with different development streams and different cadences. What they did was accelerate the development stream for CentOS and called it CentOS Stream, and force people who were more interested in stability back to RHEL.
To put it in marketing terms: They killed Ubuntu. Everyone on Ubuntu has been forced to Arch, and everyone who didn't want a rolling ever up to date distro was told to use Debian.
>"CentOS and RHEL were two different products with different development streams and different cadences."
Well, no, they weren't. CentOS is a build based directly on the RHEL open source packages that are recompiled. The result is, essentially, a 100% clone of RHEL, but a little slower to release (due to the time it takes to strip the branding). There isn't much "development" at all.
>"What they did was accelerate the development stream for CentOS and called it CentOS Stream
>"OFFS they have not destroyed CentOS. They added a word to its name and will be updating it more. Sheesh."
Yes, they have destroyed it. CentOS "Stream" is no longer a stable distro clone based on RHEL. It will be a never ending beta of what RHEL is not. This is the absolute antithesis of what CentOS always has been.
It's not like that. The GPL and many other open source licenses do not obligate the binaries to be made available for free. Point. Trademark restrictions apply mostly to art that comes with the distribution. By the way, rebuilding a RHEL system is very easy. You just need a RHEL box to bootstrap the binary RPMS from SRPMS which is an easy process (however, yes, you need to strip the contents from any trademarked material).
Red Hat isn't required to provide binaries, but I thought that the GPL allowing to copy and distribute the program as long as you also offer the source code applies.
If that's the case it's trademark law that prevents redistributing the binaries from a self made mirror.
I could be wrong about the GPLs application to binaries though.
You are correct. Red Hat can't prevent you from redistributing its binaries, with or without its branding in them, because of this GPL language: "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights..."
Cost? (Score:2, Interesting)
How are they trying to justify that? It's open source!
Does TFS mean a support contract?
Or is this more TiVoiszation (a form of racketeering), which we should have killed with the GPL 3 a long time ago. (if some livestock wasn't very vocally expressing their hate of not being abused. ;)
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Informative)
How are they trying to justify that? It's open source!
Does TFS mean a support contract?
This offering is specifically "self-supported", so no support contract. Red Hat makes people pay by only allowing you to use their package repositories if you have a subscription.
Since it's free software, if you can obtain them elsewhere you can for no cost. CentOS is (was) a "rebuild" with all the same packages, just with the Red Hat branding removed to avoid trademark problems. RH is trying to kill that hole by discontinuing CentOS, but since they can't stop someone from doing exactly the same thing under a different name, this is obviously doomed to failure.
Re: (Score:2)
"CentOS is (was) a "rebuild" with all the same packages, just with the Red Hat branding removed to avoid trademark problems. RH is trying to kill that hole by discontinuing CentOS, but since they can't stop someone from doing exactly the same thing under a different name, this is obviously doomed to failure."
Actually, I thought it was a primarily red hat driven open project in the first place. I don't see any reason it can't become one. Red Hat is still going to have to make most of it available sans tradem
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, I thought it was a primarily red hat driven open project in the first place. I don't see any reason it can't become one. Red Hat is still going to have to make most of it available sans trademarks to comply with the GPL. Though they could close the code on more of their tooling I guess.
CentOS was later taken over by RedHat but originally it was independent Rocky Linux [rockylinux.org] will be the new inheritor of the CentOS tradition once available. Scientific Linux [scientificlinux.org] is another RedHat rebuild but with some changes suitable for the scientific computing community.
Re: (Score:2)
Since it's free software, if you can obtain them elsewhere you can for no cost. CentOS is (was) a "rebuild" with all the same packages, just with the Red Hat branding removed to avoid trademark problems. RH is trying to kill that hole by discontinuing CentOS, but since they can't stop someone from doing exactly the same thing under a different name, this is obviously doomed to failure.
This is slightly wobbly reasoning based on what you mean by "obtain". The source code must be made available, but that doesn't mean the signed RH binary packages can be redistributed.
Re: (Score:2)
This is slightly wobbly reasoning based on what you mean by "obtain". The source code must be made available, but that doesn't mean the signed RH binary packages can be redistributed.
The GPL is pretty clear that you can, as that qualifies as a "non-source form" of a covered work. The situation may be different for packages of non-GPLed software.
Re: (Score:2)
"CentOS is (was) a "rebuild" with all the same packages, just with the Red Hat branding removed to avoid trademark problems. RH is trying to kill that hole by discontinuing CentOS, but since they can't stop someone from doing exactly the same thing under a different name, this is obviously doomed to failure."
Exactly - in fact the crew that did CentOS originally is back with Rocky Linux [rockylinux.org] which has exactly the same idea as CentOS originally had.
Actually, I thought it was a primarily red hat driven open project in the first place. I don't see any reason it can't become one. Red Hat is still going to have to make most of it available sans trademarks to comply with the GPL. Though they could close the code on more of their tooling I guess.
CentOS started independent and then was effectively bought by RedHat. When they did this they made promises they are now failing to keep.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It must only be made available to your customers (who in turn of course can publish them at will) so the GPL is no wall for subscriptions.
For many packages in RHEL that's fine. Some of them contain RedHat's branding however and that has to be distributed under RedHat's choice of terms and so is much more restricted. What the distributors like Scientific Linux and Rocky Linux do is remove the branding and put in their own which you can freely distribute.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are infrastructure costs.
Previously the update repositories required a paid subscription. They now require a free one. Don't get me wrong, hosting is not that expensive, but the actual package maintenance is a big job. Especially if you have enterprise customers and the software is supposed to work without dependency issues, random breakages, and whatnot.
I think they have reached a point where the existing paying customers, and the cloud VM royalties pay more than enough for the RHEL development. So now they can offer an "introductory" version for free.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
>"I think they have reached a point where the existing paying customers, and the cloud VM royalties pay more than enough for the RHEL development.
They reached that a long time ago.
>"So now they can offer an "introductory" version for free."
We already had that. It was CentOS.
1) This move is meaningless, because now none of us trust them. If they can break their promise of 10 years of support for CentOS 8, what makes us think they are going to keep THIS promise?
2) This move doesn't replace CentOS- you have to LICENSE and REGISTER your psedudo-free RHEL machines and deal with ongoing licensing management, compliance, breakage when you change the machine name or IP or whatever other criteria they use, etc. It has LESS value than CentOS.
3) This won't stop replacement CentOS clones.
4) They have DESTROYED the good will and mindshare that CentOS brought to their brand. This won't make up for that.
The only thing they can do right now that would help is "revert before convert", and quickly. The longer they wait, the more people will have already decided to convert to something non CentOS and non RHEL. Be that one of the new clones coming, or some totally different distro like SuSe or Debian.
Re: (Score:3)
Nicely written response. I agree they've burnt hard-earned goodwill in the blink of an eye.
I use Debian-based distributions but have long admired the RH flavours. (Indeed starting on RH decades ago.) But after this I have no trust.
I perhaps disagree on one thing: even if they reverted imminently I think trust is gone. As a minimum there would have to be a sacking / cleansing of the people who championed this move.
It's like criminals oozing contrition when they're caught: are they sorry for the offence? Or s
Re: (Score:2)
>"I perhaps disagree on one thing: even if they reverted imminently I think trust is gone. As a minimum there would have to be a sacking / cleansing of the people who championed this move."
You might be right.
I was one person burned badly by this. I spent MONTHS creating and testing a complex CentOS 8 machine right before this whole fiasco hit. I am not sure even if they reverted now, I would feel comfortable rolling this out. I would feel more comfortable with a clone at this point.
It would be interes
Re: (Score:2)
I don't envy your predicament; I would also feel betrayed were I in your shoes.
You're clearly a sensible & rational person. I would advise taking emotion out of the decision and doing the maths; after all that's what RH did:
* Your earlier post nicely enumerated the newly introduced burdens even if one never exceeds 16 servers.
* On the other hand you do have a server that's basically ready to go.
* Do you expect to grow beyond 16 servers?
* What if, in 2 years, they drop the cap to 5 servers? Then later do
Re: (Score:2)
Or go with the flow and move to Debian-based distributions like everybody else. They are put together in the interest of the user as opposed to the interest of Red Hat. Just one aspect of how this hurts everybody: Red Hat's bug databases are proprietary, even though the software affected is open source. That siloing hurts everybody, even Red Hat in the end, which paid the corporate death penalty for it.
Re: (Score:2)
You've got a lot of shrill statements in there. But, I don't disagree this is about trying to kill CentOS use in businesses that do their own support. They want CentOS to go away so they can drive the large enterprises that are doing their own internal CentOS deployments towards a RHEL subscription.
The 16 license thing does mean you don't need to use CentOS for a test deployment anymore, but lets not pretend this is an attempt to kill the CentOS system and drive people to support contracts, because it most
Re: (Score:2)
You've got a lot of shrill statements in there.
You say shrill - instead I think there's a palpable anger. Some of us have man times had to choose which of the free distributions (Ubuntu / CentOS / Debian) we put in. Specifically because it was pushing people in the direction of RedHat and specifically because RedHat has been paying for much of the kernel development and other development of Linux software some of us have been pushing CentOS in these cases.
Now the people that we told that CentOS was a good option are finding themselves betrayed and the
Re: (Score:2)
This latest example of asshatery will drive more businesses to Ubuntu and Debian than it will drive to RHEL subscriptions. "Red Hat Embraces Linux"
Re: Cost? (Score:2)
We're you really going to run your CentOS machine for ten years on the same code?
Seriously? What is your application that requires more than 16 production servers? And where did you get your info about how the free instances will be registered, licensed?
I suspect RH will simplify the process to the point it's a non-issue, you just needed something to complain about I guess.
Re: (Score:2)
>"And where did you get your info about how the free instances will be registered, licensed?
It is true that I do not know if it needs to be registered and licensed. That is an assumption based on every way they have done such things in the past (and not just Red Hat).
Re: (Score:2)
We already had that. It was CentOS.
No we didn't. CentOS and RHEL were two different products with different development streams and different cadences. What they did was accelerate the development stream for CentOS and called it CentOS Stream, and force people who were more interested in stability back to RHEL.
To put it in marketing terms: They killed Ubuntu. Everyone on Ubuntu has been forced to Arch, and everyone who didn't want a rolling ever up to date distro was told to use Debian.
Re: (Score:2)
>"CentOS and RHEL were two different products with different development streams and different cadences."
Well, no, they weren't. CentOS is a build based directly on the RHEL open source packages that are recompiled. The result is, essentially, a 100% clone of RHEL, but a little slower to release (due to the time it takes to strip the branding). There isn't much "development" at all.
>"What they did was accelerate the development stream for CentOS and called it CentOS Stream
No, what they did was comp
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
>"OFFS they have not destroyed CentOS. They added a word to its name and will be updating it more. Sheesh."
Yes, they have destroyed it. CentOS "Stream" is no longer a stable distro clone based on RHEL. It will be a never ending beta of what RHEL is not. This is the absolute antithesis of what CentOS always has been.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't redistribute their binaries because of trademark, and you can't download the binaries without signing up.
You can download their source, strip the trademarks, and compile I assume (that's how CentOS started).
Re: (Score:2)
It's not like that. The GPL and many other open source licenses do not obligate the binaries to be made available for free. Point. Trademark restrictions apply mostly to art that comes with the distribution. By the way, rebuilding a RHEL system is very easy. You just need a RHEL box to bootstrap the binary RPMS from SRPMS which is an easy process (however, yes, you need to strip the contents from any trademarked material).
Re: (Score:2)
Red Hat isn't required to provide binaries, but I thought that the GPL allowing to copy and distribute the program as long as you also offer the source code applies.
If that's the case it's trademark law that prevents redistributing the binaries from a self made mirror.
I could be wrong about the GPLs application to binaries though.
Re: (Score:2)
You are correct. Red Hat can't prevent you from redistributing its binaries, with or without its branding in them, because of this GPL language: "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights..."