CentOS Is Gone -- But RHEL Is Now Free For Up To 16 Production Servers (arstechnica.com) 129
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last month, Red Hat caused a lot of consternation in the enthusiast and small business Linux world when it announced the discontinuation of CentOS Linux. Long-standing tradition -- and ambiguity in Red Hat's posted terms -- led users to believe that CentOS 8 would be available until 2029, just like the RHEL 8 it was based on. Red Hat's early termination of CentOS 8 in 2021 cut eight of those 10 years away, leaving thousands of users stranded. Red Hat's December announcement of CentOS Stream -- which it initially billed as a "replacement" for CentOS Linux -- left many users confused about its role in the updated Red Hat ecosystem.
As of February 1, 2021, Red Hat will make RHEL available at no cost for small-production workloads -- with "small" defined as 16 systems or fewer. This access to no-cost production RHEL is by way of the newly expanded Red Hat Developer Subscription program, and it comes with no strings -- in Red Hat's words, "this isn't a sales program, and no sales representative will follow up." Red Hat is also expanding the availability of developer subscriptions to teams, as well as individual users. Moving forward, subscribing RHEL customers can add entire dev teams to the developer subscription program at no cost. This allows the entire team to use Red Hat Cloud Access for simplified deployment and maintenance of RHEL on well-known cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
As of February 1, 2021, Red Hat will make RHEL available at no cost for small-production workloads -- with "small" defined as 16 systems or fewer. This access to no-cost production RHEL is by way of the newly expanded Red Hat Developer Subscription program, and it comes with no strings -- in Red Hat's words, "this isn't a sales program, and no sales representative will follow up." Red Hat is also expanding the availability of developer subscriptions to teams, as well as individual users. Moving forward, subscribing RHEL customers can add entire dev teams to the developer subscription program at no cost. This allows the entire team to use Red Hat Cloud Access for simplified deployment and maintenance of RHEL on well-known cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
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.
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"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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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
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>"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
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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
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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.
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>"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).
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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.
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>"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
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>"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).
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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).
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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..."
And... (Score:4, Insightful)
CentOS was Red Hat meeting its licensing requirements. Redhat can't legally seat limit the number of seats the code runs on. So what is their solution for compliance?
Re: (Score:2)
Like most any business, their solution will be to tell anybody that has a problem to STFU and pay until someone with the money behind them to fight back actually does. And chances are if they have the money to fight back, they have the money to implement a different solution and leave Red Hat behind.
This whole thing seems like Red Hat (i.e. IBM) cutting off their own nose to spite their face. It may, *MAY* increase short term subscriptions to RHEL, but it's going to leave a lot of people scrambling to run
Re: (Score:2)
They'll probably find some way to skirt by compliance requirements or at least that they can argue does. This whole things reeks of either extreme desperation or extreme greed.
If it is desperation or need, IBM and Red Hat have both been very good friends of the community in the past. They have friends out there and they could have figured out a less aggressive and adversarial.
Re: (Score:2)
No "skirting" is involved. Almost everything in RHEL itself is available, with build tools, at https://git.centos.org/ [centos.org] .
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I guess we all go back to Gentoo [gentoo.org]....?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
"What they can't do is do all that and not offer source code to anyone who wants it."
Actually, as much I hate to admit it they only have to provide source to those they distribute binaries and/or modified source to.
Re: (Score:2)
True, although they can't stop anyone from redistributing those sources to someone else.
And if they are allowing 16 nodes for free, then anyone can install just one node, get the sources, and redistribute them.
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't true. According to the terms of the GPL, they are required to:
They're perfectly entitled to charge for access to their binary packages, and restrict access to the source to people who have access t
Re: (Score:3)
to anyone they've provided with a binary.
Which includes anyone who has signed up for free licenses for up to 16 production servers
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Still requires you to go through the process of signing up and obtaining a license. My point is they aren't required to have a public SRPM repository accessible to the world.
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Requires one person to. And they can use that as the basis of a trademark-free distro compiled from that source. Or simply redistribute the source to someone who can.
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> They are entitled to charge for that, to require agreement to contracts, etc, etc. What they can't do is do all that and not offer source code to anyone who wants it.
Indirectly, yeah. What they have to do is offer the source code to anyone they provide the binaries to, under the GPL license. What that means is not that they have to directly provide it to EVERYONE. It means that if I buy a copy, I can also get the source code. I can then give out to everyone. For large company like Red Hat it ends up
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I'm afraid. CentOS 8 Stream will be RHEL 8.5 beta, and will for the foreseeable future be the beta platform for RHEL releases. It will _never_ be a precise rebuild of production RHEL, and it will be free to break API's and release new, incompatible versions of core utilities with no warning to consumers. The breaking updates need never be published to RHEL, they can be updated, tested, and abandoned with no support, ever, from Red Hat.
Re: (Score:2)
That would suck if that happened. Obviously that's not what point releases are, and that is not at all the plan that Red Hat has out out there. Which is good, because if they started breaking APIs in the point releases RHEL would die and Red Hat would die. It would be suicidal.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I'm afraid it's the exact point of a beta release. CentOS admits this: see https://www.centos.org/centos-... [centos.org] .CentOS 8 stream, according to CentOS, is supposed to be "between RHEL and Fedora".
Re: (Score:2)
The point of a beta release is to do totally stupid shit that you know could never, ever make it to production? Shit like changing the API in a point release?
I guess I've been doing betas wrong for 20 years - I've been using betas to give a subset of customers early access to the release version.
Re: (Score:2)
As for the new Centos, there are a couple that I've heard about.
One that springs to mind is Cloud Linux. They committed to an upgrade path from Centos 8 - which amounts to changing a couple of repo files and running 'yum update'. Someone else has much the same offering, but I can't remember who right now...
Cloud Linux does the exact same thing as Centos used to - that is, they pull the source code from Redhat and recompile with their own logos on it. They just didn't have the exposure of Centos. It remains
Re: (Score:3)
No that is not how it works. RedHat per the GPL is only obliged to give source code access to their customers, now RH have always made their source code public anyway so they met the license requirements on day one.
The RedHat binaries contain trademarked data so you are not allowed per copyright law allowed to freely distribute those binaries (which is why CentOS stripped the trademarked data out of their binaries).
RH sells support contracts which includes you the right to download and use their trademarked
FTFY (Score:2)
The RedHat binaries contain trademarked data so you are not allowed per copyright law allowed to freely distribute those binaries.
Trademark law.
RH sells support contracts which includes you the right to download and use their trademarked binary, if you use it on more seats than what RH says that you are allowed to use it on then you have violated the subscription contract and per copyright law you loose the right to the RH binaries.
Contract law.
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But the source for those binaries must be provided without charge, functional, and sans any conflicting intellectual property or additional restrictions on distribution. Otherwise RedHat loses the right to distribute the binaries.
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The RedHat binaries contain trademarked data so you are not allowed per copyright law allowed to freely distribute those binaries (which is why CentOS stripped the trademarked data out of their binaries).
Rubbish and disinformation. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. [gnu.org]
Re: (Score:2)
They just have to release the source code (Score:3)
Probably A No Here (Score:5, Interesting)
As a long time CentOS (and prior to that, Fedora) shop, we have been taking an interest in these developments. The thing is, as a small business, one of the really appealing things about Open Source is that the friction of licensing is just not there. We could probably qualify for this program, but why would we want to have to worry about auditing ourselves to see if we needed to start paying at some point when we can just switch to Debian or one of the CentOS clones which are in the works? Not that Red Hat cares about us one way or the other, we're too small to register.
Re:Probably A No Here (Score:5, Interesting)
In a similar situation. I've been looking at alternatives for years. I mostly care about package management. Also would greatly prefer rolling-release. Tired of the nightmare of spinning up new OS install, re-learning a large percentage of configuration management that's changed now, as opposed to learning them one at a time during normal updates.
I'm loving Alpine linux at home. First tried it because it can be a very tiny install. And/or includes Xen (hypervisor which works very well.) Or you can do a huge install. Or replace busybox packages with the real ones as needed. Haven't deployed it live, but it's rock solid. Package management works, but is weak, IMHO. I'm big on command-line, mostly use CLI, but it would be nice to have a graphical package manager. But it seems well supported- I always find helps and how-tos in their documentation / wiki.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, I've been hunting for a low-resource Linux for a home box for a bit. How's Alpine on older hardware? The synopsis for it seems to indicate it's low resource, but first hand experience would be great to hear about.
Re: (Score:2)
How low do you mean? Like 386? :) Joking aside, I'm curious the specs you're talking about.
My main install is on a 3 GHz Core 2 Duo, 8 GB. I think the entire install takes less than 3 GB disk, and that's with X and apps and many of the busybox utilities overwritten with the real stuff. I'm sure it would run in less than 1 GB RAM.
Oddly, some Linux distros need 1 GB RAM, or more, for the installer, but will then run in less once installed. (Darned installer bloat! :)
There are some distros that'll run in
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite that old. In all honesty, my main priority is minimizing unnecessary background processes. I'm actually running an i7 with 32 GB RAM and four 500 GB SSDs, but have found that background processes really mess with my audio processing. And since the primary function is to run as a DAW, it's starting to really irk me. Even AVLinux, supposedly meant to be primed and ready for audio, flakes out and slows down every few seconds when recording. There was an older version of AVLinux that worked for m
Re: (Score:2)
I have a theory about huge RAM in a system. I'm an EE, but haven't analyzed this- it's intuition: I wonder if too much RAM messes with RAM cache, kind of dilutes it. Cache size is fixed, and cache controller has to map all of main RAM to cache. Just a hunch- I haven't done the analysis. I wonder what would happen if you pared it down to 4 GB, or whatever is really needed by the system with DAW running.
BTW, audio guy here too. In spite of being a very long-time Linux buff, I don't run any Linux DAW. I d
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I had used Macs since around 2008 or so, and was a staunch Logic dude up until about two years ago when I started trying to branch out so I could escape Apple land eventually. I tried Reaper, but found it was so flexible that you couldn't do the simple things fast. I ended up with Ardour and Mixbus32c, both of which appeared to run alright under MacOS X and my previous version of AVLinux.
Eventually, my Mac started slowing down to the point I couldn't really use it for a DAW anymore. Which is odd, since I
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Wow, thanks for all that. Wow, that's a LOT of tracks! Is it all stuff you're playing yourself, or recording something major?
I think the most I've recorded is 40 tracks, but I don't do a ton of bigger projects. I'm more of a live mixer, and I've done 56 live. Right now regularly probably run 30 or so channels live stuff.
I'm embarrassed to say I've never heard of Mixbus32c! Thanks for that- I'm going to give it a try.
I used to use Ardour, but not in years. I wasn't sure where the project was going. So
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I meant to add: Alpine uses OpenRC init, NO systemd.
From Alpine docs:
A container requires no more than 8 MB and a minimal installation to disk requires around 130 MB of storage.
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Thing is that some tools that you are very used to change and a new fresh install won't have them whereas an old upgraded install (via rolling release) probably will have them. Had this issue with ifconfig and route when upgrading/updating debian/ubuntu releases vs. a fresh install.
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Yes, absolutely. You almost can't get away from it, unless you just don't upgrade. And that might be reasonable as long as you check for known vulnerabilities in any of the versions you're running. That said, if you're firewalled and not running an Internet server, you might be okay.
I inherited one webserver running a 10+ year old Red Hat version, patched to newest patches, which were still 10+ years old. It was under constant attack, and only some vulnerability in vsftpd, when heavily attacked, would e
Re:Probably A No Here (Score:5, Interesting)
It's absolutely true that you can switch to Debian or one of the CentOS clones in the works - and that's exactly why RedHat is doing this. They don't want new CentOS clones to emerge. But at least they're realizing that small businesses like yours are never going to pay. So the bet is that a free RHEL license will be appealing enough for new clones to ever get enough traction to matter. And that's not exactly evil, y'know. They're playing by the rules, contributing a ton of code and were at one time, at least, a driving force behind Linux viability as a server for commercial uses.
Maybe we don't need them any more, but they're not the enemy. And IBM is trying to play nice. Cloud hosting seems to have caught RH off guard, but this looks like a step toward adapting in a way that allows them to survive and continue to contribute.
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Oh, I don't think they're evil, and I appreciate what they have done for years. I can totally see the logic of this move, and I'm happy that they are making money with Open Source and giving back. I'm just saying that, while this plan might work for some people, it won't work for us right now.
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Oh, I don't think they're evil
Then we will have to agree to disagree. Red Hat isn't known as the Microsoft of Linux for nothing.
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So the bet is that a free RHEL license will be appealing enough for new clones to ever get enough traction to matter.
And that's a very poor bet. It can't be good. Believe me, there are plenty of people and volunteers willing to make a free RHEL rebuild. 99% of it is trivial because of srpm build system. Lots of ISPs will be willing to pitch in with the free infrastructure to host the distributions. Lots of large businesses, ISPs, and academic institutions not willing to just fold and pay to RedHat what it
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they're not the enemy
They broke a core commitment retrospectively. Hardly a friendly act.
Re: Probably A No Here (Score:2)
They've committed a lot of redeeming acts, but I'm not sure if it's enough to counter years of PulseAudio shittyness, until it finally worked for most cases (except that networked audio over WiFi still stinks, and then some), same for SystemD (which I can live with, it just divided the community for no good reason),... Basically not telling Lenna
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As a long time CentOS (and prior to that, Fedora) shop, we have been taking an interest in these developments. The thing is, as a small business, one of the really appealing things about Open Source is that the friction of licensing is just not there. We could probably qualify for this program, but why would we want to have to worry about auditing ourselves to see if we needed to start paying at some point when we can just switch to Debian or one of the CentOS clones which are in the works? Not that Red Hat cares about us one way or the other, we're too small to register.
Indeed. This is precisely the issue, and RH's recent moves mean a lot of the leeway we might have given in stepping toward that direction now has to be viewed with caution.
* CentOS (along with all firewalled EL derivatives) is free as in speech.
* RHEL under this program is free as in beer.
All CentOS (and other EL) users have a vested interest in RedHat Enterprise Linux succeeding and RH continuing as a going concern, but there's a significantly distinct risk evaluation in choosing to deploy official RHEL th
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False. As a user, the friction isn't there. As a developer, the friction is there - there are plenty of license conflicts - GPLv2 cannot be mixed with GPLv3 (but GPLv2+ can). And it's not just difficult, it can be impossible if you have a mix of GPLv2 and GPLv2+ code - depending o the configuration, the final output may be GPLv2+, but choose the wrong option and it is
Commercial options (Score:2)
You might consider a mix of RHEL-based distributions. From the commercial spectrum, these are the current options with the greatest flexibility. My advice is to try the conversion from both directions. Perhaps Rocky Linux will support such a conversion in the future.
Red Hat offers a "no support" server license for $350/year, which is the lowest licensing tier. Tiers with more capability and support are available for $800, and $1300.
[redhat.com] https://www.redhat.com/en/stor... [redhat.com]
Oracle has a larger range of tiers
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Yeah, 'cause the history of licensing Windows is nothing but rainbows and sunbeams.
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Jokes are meant to be funny.
Red Hat vs Debian (Score:5, Insightful)
My workplace introduced Red Hat as our Linux server of choice a long time ago, at my behest. It worked fine for several years, but the license management drove me up the wall. Shortly after we hired another Linux-fluent employee, he and I both decided that we had reached the end of our tolerance for license management. We proposed to the bosses that we move to Debian, and the bosses eventually agreed, so we carefully replaced each RHEL server with a Debian server and tested for completeness. After the transition, everything worked flawlessly, and no user experienced any significant downtime.
Fast forward a couple years, and IBM announced the purchase of Red Hat. We had already completed our transition, so we didn't sweat it. However, many of us have experience being IBM customers, and IBM's purchase of Red Hat confirmed to us all that we made the right choice switching to Debian.
Debian, for those who may have been living in a different galaxy, is free for up to several gazillion computers.
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Debian, for those who may have been living in a different galaxy, is free for up to several gazillion computers.
And that's where they get you!
Re: (Score:2)
You reduce potential licensing issues that way, but there are still potential pitfalls if you do things like, e.g., statically linking in GPL'd libraries, or fall for Oracle-like scams like we did here, where we used the "free/open" VirtualBox, but didn't consider that it needs the very much non-free VirtualBox Extensions, for which Oracle ended up bending us over good and hard.
Licensing is tough, and will keep being tough, until our allegedly beneficent overlords finally figure out that you can't stop peop
Re:Red Hat vs Debian (Score:5, Funny)
Debian, for those who may have been living in a different galaxy, is free for up to several gazillion computers.
So there is a hidden catch...
Re: (Score:3)
I'd like to see the licensing discussion:
"Sir we noticed by installing Debian on every computer in the galaxy you've exceeded the free license terms. The first gazillion licenses are free, we noticed you just installed a gazillion and one! As such we will now charge you 1cent per seat."
*looks at coworker*
*pulls out incineration laser, kills coworker, points at coworker's laptop, incinerates computer, puts away laser*
"Will there be anything else?"
Redhat, RIP (Score:5, Interesting)
We had already started to move away from RHEL and Redhat-derived systems when Fedora broke Xen with the Spectre mitigations (and didn't care), but once the IBM announcement was shaping up it was clear that the old Redhat wouldn't survive.
I'm happy to say that our last RHEL/CentOS system was retired in the first week of December after an eighteen-month migration project (not full time, obviously).
Was I mystically prescient? Nope, I just learned a long time ago to never trust IBM.
As much as I disliked Debian back when Fedora Core was announced, for our use cases the positions have completely flipped. Almost everything works better on Debian now. I believe this is because of the "Universal Operating System" ethos vs. the modern Fedora model of "The Fedora Way to do X". Bend like bamboo for strength.
To the really great men and women who made Redhat my distro of choice for two decades (since I left Slackware for it) - so long and thanks for all the hats. I find the Redhat spirit of the bygone era to be alive and well in the Debian community.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And Red Hat as a corporate individual is in fact deceased, having been soundly thrashed by Debian in every enterprise venue that matters.
Yea... thanks but no thanks. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not a fan of the changes with CentOS, and I agree that switching the EoL on CentOS 8 was badly done, but I would hardly say it rises to the level of abuse or spitting.
Re: (Score:2)
When you get abused and treated like crap like this, it is similar to getting burn...
Yes, yes, "they abused and treated us like crap us by not giving us free shit anymore and walking back the statement that they would keep fixing the free shit for ten years."
I say this as someone who believes that this was a BAD move on their part--they should have made changes to the support policy for CentOS 9, and left 8 as-is. But calling it abuse? Jesus, people are entitled assholes.
too late I'm already leaving. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: too late I'm already leaving. (Score:2)
If doing containers, why not just go all the way lightweight with Alpine?
Re: too late I'm already leaving. (Score:4, Informative)
Alpine relies on musl libc instead of glibc. If your binary expects glibc, you may need to jump through some hoops to get it running on Alpine -- at which point it may be easier to just use Debian Slim for the same job. Depending on what you do, your local QA department may not be too happy with you changing libc out from under them (as it may require a completely new QA cycle).
Yaz
It's still only a short matter of time until (Score:2)
It's still only a short matter of time until a RHEL clone like former Scientific Linux or CentOS is made. RedHat/IBM's plan to herd CentOS users into subscriptions will backfire.
Re:It's still only a short matter of time until (Score:5, Informative)
There are at least two organizations already working on new RHEL clones. You have Rocky Linux, a group headed up by a former CentOS team member, and AlmaLinux from the CloudLinux team.
I'm not sure if Scientific Linux is planning on doing an RHEL 8 clone as well. Earlier they said no, but now I'm not so sure because they were planning on standardizing on CentOS. Oops. You also have Oracle Linux as a choice as well, just in case you secretly like the idea of your Linux distribution being beholden to a giant corporate entity with questionable licensing practices.
Re: (Score:2)
Repackaging RHEL is a thankless task, and it's not even like kernel work where there are a large number of companies with enough of a vested interest to pay devs to work on it. The original CentOS failed because it turns out that building and packaging RHEL is not a trivial amount of work, and the "community" are a bunch of ungrateful assholes that do little more than complain about how they would do it better if they were the ones, you know, actually doing the work, whine about how you're not responding t
Re: (Score:2)
This will be done. Nothing prevents it and lots of business models depend on it... for now. But it won't stop the ongoing decline and fall of RHEL.
Sigh... (Score:3)
Rest in peace sweet prince....
IBM destroys all things good. This would have never happened if IBM never acquired Red Hat.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm... 16 servers (Score:2)
CentOS (Score:2)
... had the weight of the particle physics community behind it. Not sure what they're going to do now. https://listserv.fnal.gov/scri... [fnal.gov]
Potential trap - free licenses, until they aren't (Score:2)
Besides the unnecessary friction of having to license the servers (and audit yourself to make sure you don't go over 16), are there any guarantees that RedHat will not change their mind and start charging money? In a couple of years they could announce that licenses cannot be renewed and no new licenses can be issues starting year X, and old licenses will stop working in year X+1. Atlassian just did something similar to all their server products to force everyone to their cloud offering (there are additiona
CentOS 6.5 was a solid OS (Score:2)
All downhill since then.
Re: Starlink expands beta to Canada and UK (Score:2)
Fuck off with your Ferengi lock-in business ventures.
It's just gonna be Verizon, global edition.
It is a profit-maximizing venture, is it not?