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Red Hat Software Linux

Red Hat Tries To Address Criticism Over Their Source Repository Changes (phoronix.com) 117

gatzke writes: Upsetting many in the open-source community was Red Hat's announcement last week that they would begin limiting access to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux sources by putting them behind the Red Hat Customer Portal and publicly would be limited to the CentOS Stream sources. In turn this causes problems for free-of-cost derivatives like AlmaLinux moving forward. Red Hat this week issued another blog post trying to address some of the criticism.

Red Hat's blog this week featured a post by Mike McGrath, the VP of Core Platforms Engineering at Red Hat. In the post he talks up "Red Hat's commitment to open source." Some of the key takeaways include:
"Despite what's currently being said about Red Hat, we make our hard work readily accessible to non-customers. Red Hat uses and will always use an open source development model. When we find a bug or write a feature, we contribute our code upstream. This benefits everyone in the community, not just Red Hat and our customers.
... We will always send our code upstream and abide by the open source licenses our products use, which includes the GPL. When I say we abide by the various open source licenses that apply to our code, I mean it.
... 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.
... 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."

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Red Hat Tries To Address Criticism Over Their Source Repository Changes

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  • Shallow argument (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RemindMeLater ( 7146661 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @04:13PM (#63637906)
    RHEL model was always support. And enterprises do pay. Just like with Ubuntu.
    • I mean... The repo is their support. The code in their repo is available elsewhere, it's just not curated to be reliable and work together as it is in RHELs repo. It's also quite easy for a third party repo to "add support" and then just pass the buck to rhel when it doesn't work.
      • Not really. Some random org isn't going to have anywhere near the depth of resources or expertise that RedHat has. Saying "the repo is their support" is like saying everyone should be able to service their own HVACs because the schematic is online somewhere.
        • Not really. Some random org isn't going to have anywhere near the depth of resources or expertise that RedHat has. Saying "the repo is their support" is like saying everyone should be able to service their own HVACs because the schematic is online somewhere.

          Or tractors for that matter. Oh.. wait..

        • It's red hats resources.... They are a business. They follow the licensing of each package as they are obligated too by pushing commits to an upstream repo. There is nothing exclusive to the red hat repo except the exact state that red hat is shipping.
        • If you have schematics for you HVAC your more likely to succeed but if you want someone else to service it for you then you have to pay them.
      • >"I mean... The repo is their support."

        I wouldn't call that their support. It is just a cog.

        Their support model has been based on technical support (calls, Email, etc) and exclusive support articles and libraries and integration services and training/certification, and design support and specialty (non GPL stuff) software, etc. And that is all good and fine. It has been a valid and proven money-maker.

        Yes, they contribute to FOSS. And FOSS is what makes their business model possible.

        But IBM just wants

        • > But IBM just wants even MORE money and thinks it can monetize the FOSS, itself

          Yup, this is the thing. Those last few dollars they are potentially leaving on the table by the existence of freely available RHEL compatible distributions, they want those too, and they don't mind breaking the open source social contract (if not by the letter, certainly in spirit) by doing an end-run around the GPL and severely harming the community to get at those dollars.

          • Corporate types can never understand that people using a freely available resource will not automagically turn into dollars in pocket if you try, desperately, to curtail the freely available resource in favor of your "give me the money" version. They'll just move on. Frankly, with the way the Linux world works, I'd see this movie ultimately meaning people move away from RHEL derived distros, which won't be a bad thing at all.

      • RHEL has caused me a great deal of suffering and distress in recent years.

        Using licensed RHEL, official repositories and licensed RedHat software including OpenShift, Towers, etc... I have found that they really just don't do a decent job of release management.

        I am currently in a project to refresh the hardware in a major project and when I prototyped the system in VMs and clusters of reliable hardware, I grew rapidly frustrated by the poor quality of recent RHEL builds. And frankly, RHEL has to be the most
    • Absolutely true. This VP does not seem to understand the business model that Red Hat was founded on.  It got them this far, and literally served as the model for a whole industry based on open source. But now it is suddenly an existential threat to that same industry?!
      • by ahodgson ( 74077 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @05:22PM (#63638140)

        IBM is an existential threat to anything they touch. This was inevitable.

        • When IBM bought RH It was explicitly put into the contract that RH would be autonomous. So can't blame IBM this time.

          • "I Am Altering the Deal, Pray I Don't Alter It Any Further." comes to mind...

          • Yeah, because there's no way the owner of a business can influence it through the board etc. Which appoints the executive including CEO. The contract probably said something about not folding the company into IBM, but I can guarantee it will do exactly whatever IBM tells it to, and certainly not do anything IBM does not want it to do.
            • Do you have any evidence of that? Because to date RH have gone out of their way to point out that they are not IBM, even if IBM acquired them.

              They are marked as a distinct entity. They are even rated separately to IBM.

              If that situation has changed I'm not aware, so would be interested in where you got your information.

      • I think you're close to the truth. Their profit center is drying up. RHEL isn't profitable as it used to be.
      • While I'm jumping ship from RHEL and all derivatives except for IBM tape backup solutions, there is something to be said about the fact that in recent years, open source has become pretty stable in the sense that you don't really need to pay for support anymore.

        I am switching to Ubuntu for a major project. I'm trying to figure out whether it make sense to pay for support. I am absolutely using Ubuntu born and bred products such as MaaS, but unlike RedHat products, they are easy to install and pretty well do
    • Ubuntu was a freemium model, until recently. Now, Canonical changed the bargain and is now bragging that they're not applying security updates but you can buy them for an additional cost. RH should go the opposite way and release debranded ISOs identical to RHEL.
      • That's not really true, they now offer quicker security updates for user packages they don't (and never previously) updated for free. Core security updates are unchanged from what they ever offered.
  • Really its what they are doing not what they say. They can try to spin it anyway they want but they just lost a large part of their community and will in time suffer for it.
    • What are they doing? All the code is available.... Everything in their repo is available for free in other repos. They haven't restricted anything but their actual repo. Other distros have their own repos and distribution model.
      • Re: Too late (Score:5, Interesting)

        by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @04:27PM (#63637956)
        For starters, very probably violating the GPLv3.

        This is an interesting attempt at tivoizing a linux distribution, and the GPLv3 very specifically prevents you from limiting the rights of those you distribute the code to.

        So while putting it behind a paywall is all fine and dandy, retaliating against someone who pays for access to it, and then freely redistributes it is likely a license violation. They've already been taken to task for doing precisely this before, and they caved under threats from the SFC. Doing this again, when Oracle has standing to nuke you from high orbit is brave.
        • Re: Too late (Score:4, Interesting)

          by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @05:52PM (#63638268)

          What I want to know is how RedHat could possibly know which "paying customer" would leak the source file packages to the clones? From what I understand, they would have zero recourse against the people it was leaked to, based on the GPL. And zero recourse against the leaker, except to ban them. In which case, another leaker just steps in.

          If they want to play this game, I don't think it will go well for them. All it is doing is making RedHat look incredibly evil.

          • I think you need two leakers. RHEL could sneak in some extra comments or whitespace or something to identify customer id in the sources, i think. If you have two leakers they can check against each other to make sure its bit for bit the same.
            • >"I think you need two leakers. RHEL could sneak in some extra comments or whitespace or something to identify customer id in the sources, i think. If you have two leakers they can check against each other to make sure its bit for bit the same.

              Great idea/observation.

              Even if they weren't actually contaminating, serializing, or fingerprinting, you would want to do this to ensure it wasn't being done. With a diff, you would not only immediately catch if it was being done, but also know what was being done

      • Not if you're a "bug-for-bug compatible" distribution (Alma, Rocky, etc), it isn't. They use the sources that are now effectively unavailable to build from as the new licencing tems prevent redistribution.

        Furthermore - even though both Fedora and CentOS feed into RHEL, the sources for the individual distributions *won't* be identical at any given point in time - meaning you get statements from the likes of Alma, Rocky, etc explaining their current position:

        (Alma)
        "In the immediate term, our plan is to pull f

  • Say a small developer maintains an application and primarily tests on Debian and possibly Fedora. The developer receives a report that the application does not build and run correctly on RHEL and wants to fix the application such that it build and runs correctly. Apparently the solution for an individual developer is gratis RHEL for individual developers [redhat.com], and the solution for a small ISV is gratis stable RHEL for Teams [redhat.com], alongside CentOS Stream that serves as a preview of the next RHEL in the same way that Debian testing serves as a preview of the next Debian stable release. Do these RHEL subscriptions have serious drawbacks?

    • by lordlod ( 458156 )

      Do these RHEL subscriptions have serious drawbacks?

      How do you integrate a RHEL system with manual per instance account registration into a public CI test pipeline?

      • Extensive configuration management of machines in tiers that aren't production but are managed equivalently. Some code and apps cannot be deployed until engineers check them for signoff by regulations, so certain kinds of testing has to occur in production.
    • Yes. This is how to win customers. Not by locking up the toilet paper and soap behind a paywall like it's a prison commissary. There is already the case of mega customers running tens of millions of instances of CentOS without paying for RHEL. What would convince them to do anything other than run free software except for critical uses such as accounting database servers?
  • by taustin ( 171655 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @04:29PM (#63637968) Homepage Journal

    "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."

    For a not-insignificant portion of the open source community, that is the goal. They would prefer that no one make money from software, especially open source.

    It's a defensible philosophical position, but not a very realistic one.

    • Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @07:28PM (#63638556)

      I don't think that is the goal for many people at all. Part of the reason working at a place like Red Hat used to be appealing is that you could simultaneously earn a paycheck while giving back to the community. Now it's just working for IBM.

      Red Hat has made such a habit of violating the trust of the open source community in recent years with their attempts to monopolize Linux that we ought to boycott all of their technologies. I wasn't anti-systemd for technical reasons but now I can't trust any distro that it ships with because at any moment Red Hat might declare that, "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Same goes for Flatpak.

      It's also clear that Canonical has been attempting the same shenanigans with Snap.

      For the enterprise, that leaves SUSE. Personally, I think the best thing enterprise environments can look at are firms that provide support for FreeBSD, like Klara Systems. [klarasystems.com] Since they don't make a "distro" and FreeBSD is a full OS controlled by a foundation, your support guys can't pull the rug out from the open source community. Plus, since they don't own the system, their bug fixes go to the foundation, not their fork of it. Allowing the support guys to own the code is a recipe for disaster—they're incentivized to lock you in and implement Oracle-style anti-customer tactics. Unfortunately, the guys who pay the bills tend to like the IBMs and Oracles of the world.

      • If you go to Launchpad, Canonical's bug tracker, and search for snapd bugs, you're likely to find that most of them are reports of issues encountered while uninstalling it. Admittedly, one of them I opened, as that's the first thing I do on a fresh install of Ubuntu.

        On the plus side, while installed by default, it is not a necessary part of the server OS and is easily removed.

        snapd remove lxc; snapd remove core20; snapd remove snapd; apt-get purge -y snapd; apt-mark hold snapd

  • by Anonymous Coward

    When I say we abide by the various open source licenses that apply to our code, I mean it.

    But if your not paying for access to RHEL source you'll never be able to prove otherwise! Nyer! Nyer!

  • You have to redistribute the open source part to who ever you are distributing under opensource licenses (e.g GPL etc)...Then if i buy one of their licenses i get the code and i am free to redistribute everything which is under opensource licenses right ?
    So all they want is that extra few hundred dollars per year for 1 license which AlmaLinux, RockyLinux etc can share all opensource codes. What a doofus.

    This is the whole point of opensource you IBM dingo...you redistribute with or *without* any value added

  • I'm on RedHat's side here. And I'm a open source purist, by and large. The FOSS community is perfectly capable of producing a robust operating system [debian.org] without the assistance of Red Hat or any other for-profit entity.

    If you want to run a free operating system, run one that was produced by the FOSS model. If you need enterprise support or binary compatibility with RHEL, then give Red Hat some money.

    • Re: I have to say (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RegistrationIsDumb83 ( 6517138 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @04:52PM (#63638034)
      $800/yr per server, with none of that money going to the original devs who created the software. =\
    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I feel that what they did was probably legal. And it's a very good reason not to do business with them. It's strengthened my support for the AGPL.

      OTOH, my opinion doesn't really matter, because I stopped doing business with them because of the way the handled the termination of the professional edition over a decade ago.

    • I would be on Red Hat's side if they didn't spend decades building up community goodwill with a business model where this action seemed inconceivable. The whole point of trusting Red Hat over Microsoft was that you believed that they couldn't do this. As it stands, it's debatable whether or not they have violated the GPL by doing this. I'm not a lawyer so I'm not going to comment on whether they actually violated the GPL, but I think it's pretty clear that the general understanding that the public had regar

      • >"Well, we'll have to migrate to something else and when the time comes we'll pay whoever supports that system. "

        It is premature to count AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux out of the game so soon. Let's see what happens.

        >"Canonical and SUSE are probably throwing parties right now."

        I have not trusted Canonical any more than RedHat, and that still stands. SuSE, I am not sure about.

        • It is premature to count AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux out of the game so soon. Let's see what happens.

          This is true, I guess I'm bracing for the worst since IBM seems pretty determined here. At the very least, when it comes time to upgrade from AlmaLinux 8 to 9, we'll probably look at that as an opportune time to transition to something else.

          I have not trusted Canonical any more than RedHat, and that still stands. SuSE, I am not sure about.

          I also do not trust Canonical, but I have to imagine this move by RedHat will benefit them. Think how many home labs, small businesses, and general tinkerers are going to ditch a Red Hat clone in favor of Debian or Ubuntu. That means more people will be familiar with the

          • >"I guess I'm bracing for the worst since IBM seems pretty determined here."

            I wouldn't underestimate the determination of what might be the entire FOSS community to back AlmaRocky though :) I got into some of the ideas in other posts.

            >"At the very least, when it comes time to upgrade from AlmaLinux 8 to 9, we'll probably look at that"

            That is certainly sensible.

            >"I also do not trust Canonical, but I have to imagine this move by RedHat will benefit them"

            It might. Or it might also have people wonder

            • by myrdos2 ( 989497 )

              I will switch to Mint LDE (which is based on Debian) :)

              Interesting! I'll give it a shot the next time Debian doesn't have drivers in Stable or Testing.

    • > I'm on RedHat's side here. And I'm a open source purist, by and large

      Purist my ass. A corporate bootlicker is what you are.

      > The FOSS community is perfectly capable of producing a robust operating system [debian.org] without the assistance of Red Hat or any other for-profit entity.

      The existence of Debian and other capable distributions is completely besides the point.

      The point is that Red Hat is trying to do a legal end-run around the GPL, and other free software licenses, violating the spirit if no

    • I'm on RedHat's side here. And I'm a open source purist, by and large. The FOSS community is perfectly capable of producing a robust operating system without the assistance of Red Hat or any other for-profit entity.

      These two things are mutually exclusive. You can't be a purist believing in GPL's "vampire" nature and still be on Red Hat's side.

      If you want to run a free operating system, run one that was produced by the FOSS model.

      RHEL *is* FOSS software.

      If you need enterprise support or binary compatibility with RHEL, then give Red Hat some money.

      The business model of RHEL *is* support. That's why people pay and why they will always pay.

      Really what is going on here is some wanker with a business degree is copying other peoples work, profiting off of that work and then getting all hot and bothered that people are copying their work.

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @04:42PM (#63638006)

    He is talking right past it, though.

    "We will always send our code upstream and abide by the open source licenses our products use, which includes the GPL. When I say we abide by the various open source licenses that apply to our code, I mean it."

    This has absolutely nothing to do with what people are complaining about (and I'm sure he knows that fully well). And while doing this does benefit "non-customers", more to the point it greatly benefits Red Hat. If they weren't submitting their changes upstream, can you imagine the work they'd have to do to continually merge all future upstream changes on thousands of packages with their own Red-Hat-only modifications?

    Basically what he's saying is "hey we're not violating licenses, isn't that noble of us?" Yeah, it sure is noble of you to not want to get sued out of existence.

    • by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @04:55PM (#63638044)
      Ya, he's a fuckstain.

      They likely are violating the GPLv3, though.
      Or more specifically- are threatening to violate the GPLv3, by "reserving the right to terminate your subscription if you [exercise your own non-terminable rights under the GPLv3]"

      You're allowed to paywall the source if you paywall the binaries.
      However, preventing someone who has paid from freely redistributing is a no-no.
      • You're allowed to paywall the source if you paywall the binaries. However, preventing someone who has paid from freely redistributing is a no-no.

        This, 100% this. I am cool with RedHat/IBM doing whatever, but they can't prevent you from redistribution, provided you aren't redistributing their copyrighted materials (easy to remove). This is the very disingenuous part. RedHat/IBM have also failed to read the room and responding to the users of cloned versions as freeloaders really is a bit on the nose, given how much they have also freeloaded. Hopefully once the "shock" and "emotion" settles down, the cooler heads will have figured out how to work wi

        • RedHat/IBM have also failed to read the room and responding to the users of cloned versions as freeloaders really is a bit on the nose, given how much they have also freeloaded.

          Absolutely.
          Not to say that RH doesn't do a lot of work... but literally 99.9+% of the code that turns into the binaries they ship is "freeloaded"

    • I disagree, he is addressing it.

      He clearly says that IBM/RH think Alma and Rocky and CentOS before them are stealing from them so they will do whatever they can to kill them like they killed CentOS before.

      As we all knew already, RH wants to be the MS of open source, and IBM didn't invest over $30 billions for nothing, but at least now it's official.

  • by Stonefish ( 210962 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @04:57PM (#63638056)

    This is just noise, actions speak louder than words. IBM is behaving badly and want to pretend that it's not.

    Redhat freeloads from open source developers and has done since Redhat's inception. That is their value proposition, by using other people code they can distribute and support an operating system at a lower cost than their competitors. IBM bought Redhat knowing this and probably paid too much, this is just a poor business decision of their part.
    In the past Redhat has recognised this technical debt and has participated with the community in a manner which has been positive, sponsoring projects and making the source code available in an efficient cost effective manner which is easy for others to consume.
    This has changed, there is a belief in the current ownership that people who use RHEL clones are freeloaders, they're not they're simply users of "Free" software, just as Redhat is a consumer of "Free" software. This "freeloader" mindset has driven behaviour which is increasingly at odds with the underlying Free sofware licenses. This type of behaviour has a lot in common with the approach used by Putin and Xi which will ultimately crater their economies.
    Rather than trying to force users to adopt RHEL why not try to encourage them with value and innovation, I like Redhat as a company and we use RH clones as our desktop workstations, while we'd like to bring these under the RHEL support umbrella there's no real value in this approach. We're already looking at moving to debian simply because in many ways it's a better resourced platform with more relevant packages without the negative actions. For example we needed to use latex recently and the RHEL latex packages are woefully incomplete.
    We build systems using both RHEL and clones for clients, we generally recommend that they buy support for their installation however recently when this is mentioned it immediately devolves into a discussion of IBM's poor behaviour which makes it a difficult sell.

    IBM you've just made it even more difficult with this ham-fisted approach, whoever's name is on this decision isn't worth their salary.

  • by SIGBUS ( 8236 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @05:01PM (#63638066) Homepage

    I still have an official retail copy of pre-RHEL Red Hat Linux (5.1). I wonder where they would be today if nobody had bought copies back in the day? I know that they lost me the day they stopped shipping retail boxes.

    Don't throw around the "freeloader" crap. I'd be happy to be able to buy a retail box again. I'd not be happy to dick around with license servers and activation schemes and phoning home and "Mother, may I?" whenever I boot my system.

    • by G00F ( 241765 )

      I to have a few versions (4.x and 6.x at least) and yea, this really pissed me off, but we thought this was going to happen when redhat bought centos, then we KNEW it was a for sure thing when IBM bought out redhat.

      The company I work for (large bank) might actually migrate from RHEL to SUSE or Ubuntu(and yet still do business with other parasites like oracle/ibm/salesforce/bcm)

      Funny we've been migrating off of mainframe and AIX to redhat and before we complete those start migrating off RHEL too. (granted s

    • by kriston ( 7886 )

      Some service providers who held onto RHEL 5.x to this day are full of regret. Many have moved to Ubuntu.

  • >... 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.

    >... 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 op

    • What's amusing about this is that IBM/RedHat is screwing themselves for mid-size businesses. I use CentOS 7 for my Dev/Test servers and RHEL 7 for my Production ones. It allowed the place where I worked to have a supported environment without making the licensing fees unaffordable.

      Now that they cutting off support for CentOS and are doing their best to break 100% binary compatibility for the alternatives like Rocky Linux and Alma Linux, I'm going to need to choose a new Linux distribution that's guaranteed

  • We're sorry, we've made systemD have a hard requirement to connect to our repo, sorry! So sorry, but the only way to use systemd now is to subscribe to our service, so sorry. Sorry
  • https://www.redhat.com/en/blog... [redhat.com]

    two quotes NOT mentioned in article:-

    There was a time, not too long ago, that Red Hat found value in the work done by rebuilders like CentOS. We pushed our SRPMs out to git.centos.org in a neat package that made them easy to rebuild; we even de-branded it for them. More recently, we have determined that there isn’t value in having a downstream rebuilder.

    Ultimately, we do not find value in a RHEL rebuild and we are not under any obligation to make things easier for rebu

  • Pot to Kettle (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thecombatwombat ( 571826 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @05:47PM (#63638242)

    If the demand for RHEL code is disingenuous, then RHEL's demand for every single open source component they use is disingenuous, even if they do contribute to them. (And they do. In huge amounts. For now.)

    The whole notion of "copyleft," of the GPL, is essentially share alike. You don't take huge components like Linux and GNU and Apache and nginx and Python and . . . then go "but our hard work, our changes, are just for our customers" -- you share just as freely as they did if you want to be an open source leader. As soon as I hit the "abide by the open source licenses our products use" I knew some real nonsense was coming. It's basically "we do the bare minimum our lawyers think we can get away with us, so hey, don't be mad at us."

    As a long-time RHEL guy, and an RHCA, typing this on a Fedora desktop, I'm just so pissed off at this point.

    • Re:Pot to Kettle (Score:4, Insightful)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @06:46PM (#63638458)

      Mod this up. Absolutely true. Come on, Red Hat. You built your business on doing exactly the thing you are decrying. You took software, rebuilt it, sometimes adding to it, sometimes not. Your work has always benefited others and even allowed others to profit just as you have profited. That's the way open source works. As far as I know RH has been highly successful and profitable. Yet that's not enough apparently. All the cynics who predicted this sort of thing when IBM bought RH are proven right.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      It's been over a decade since I tried SUSE, are the docs still all in German?

      • Docs? You don't need no stinking docs, it's Linux!!

      • The docs where available in english 20 years ago.
        • by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Some of them were. But following details lead to links to German. I used it for a few weeks, but kept running into "blind alleys". I forget whether I switched to Mandrake or Debian from that, and was reasonably satisfied. (OTOH, at that time I did a lot of distro-flipping, trying out a bunch of them. So there might have been a way around it if I'd been sufficiently motivated.)

    • by chrish ( 4714 )

      I'm just a lowly desktop user, but I was going to try Fedora on my next system. On the assumption that Fedora is next on IBM's enshittification hit-list, I'll give OpenSUSE a go instead.

      I came to my current Linux system because I got sick of the enshittification of Windows (and Linux is just so much more comfortable for hobbyist development), it's a shame to see it happening to major distros.

  • I'm more of a Debian guy, but I always thought that people used Red Hat derived downstream distros exactly because they are basically the same thing as their coorporate offerings, and the win-win was that those users would eventually maybe upgrade to 'real' Red Hat with support and all that?
    So users would get a taste for the Red Hat universe, and Red Hat would get tons of beta-testers and potential future clients, at basically zero cost.
    So why would they change this? If they really pass their changes on u
    • Does postfix run on Debian yet? When I tried Debian 10 to replace my CentOS server, the postfix binary from the debian repos was dead in the water, and I did not want to get into trying to fix it - I had no time for that. I would love to move to Debian, but I need postfix to run on it.
      • FWIW I use postfix on Debian 11 and havenâ(TM)t encountered any problems.

        • Awesome news. I was hoping they got it working. Migrating a server is such a pain, I did not want to go through it again only to find that a key program does not work. I guess I should have researched it and asked around before trying Debian 10. With this news I feel like I will have better luck trying Debian 11.
  • by stikves ( 127823 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @06:33PM (#63638406) Homepage

    "the best kind of correct".

    I am pretty sure the lawyers looked at all the possibilities, and crossed all the dots, and dotted all the t's, or whatever. And FSF or any other open source community will not be able to sue them for it.

    Apparently, they give zero f's about what the community thinks. They have no income from the community. Let us be real, what is the last time any of us, personally, bought Red Hat? (Not talking about corporate deals).

    So, they have doubled down. The not only cut off regular free loaders (like home labs, small shops, research labs), but they also get to suffocate Oracle. Yes, it is not well publicized, but Oracle has been repackaging and rebranding RHEL as Oracle Linux with free access.

    Two birds with one stone for IBM, loss for all of us who actually liked CentOS and its descendants.

    • Let us be real, what is the last time any of us, personally, bought Red Hat? (Not talking about corporate deals).

      We are a large reason why many of those corporate deals exist. Many guys were first introduced to Linux by purchasing a box from Staples or some tiny computer store. Then when startups hired these guys to come up with technical solutions, they used the technology they were familiar with. This is why Ubuntu has been so successful despite being consistently technically inferior and run by doofuses.

      Being the technology of choice for hobbyist nerds leads to wide-scale corporate adoption. This is why PHP runs th

      • >"Being the technology of choice for hobbyist nerds leads to wide-scale corporate adoption. "

        Yes, this ^^^^^

        It is about mindshare. CentOS lead to a huge mindshare for RedHat. It is something you *can* put a price tag on. Business is willing to spend money on actual support and training and certification. it is why RHEL became so successful. It isn't RHEL itself, it really was CentOS that anyone could play with, use on projects, use at church or some charity, teach in school, play with in a lab or at

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, it is not well publicized, but Oracle has been repackaging and rebranding RHEL as Oracle Linux with free access.

      It most certainly has been well publicized, from the git-go. Oracle's position has been to make money on support of their products. Oracle "Unbreakable" Linux was an attractive choice for PHBs high on the OSS feel-good but still with a room full of Sparcs running insanely important stuff and covered by a long term support contract as well as counting for a majority of their paycheck. Linux also was way ahead on this Cloud Thing. So Oracle fashioned a Linux product. Smart move, and their cloud numbers prove

  • "In order to save open source, we must close it."
  • This was predictable.

  • by lordlod ( 458156 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @07:04PM (#63638496)

    I've been pondering this and I'm torn between two options

    A) This is a carefully planned maneuver. They have quantified the expected additional profit and the cost of the moral and reputation hit. The downsides are probably worse than expected but there's a crack team of MBA grads trying to re-quantify the outrage, how much it will be mollified by a back down, and choosing the most profitable path for Redhat.

    B) Some senior manager made the decision without consulting anyone. Now they are locked in, their back is against the wall, egos are in play and jobs are on the line.

    I can see evidence for both. I'm not sure which is worse.

    • It can be both. It's a terrible decision long term, but if you're concerned with short term profits and pumping up your stock before retirement, then it makes sense.

    • Trust once lost is a difficult thing to regain.

      And this is not the first time IBM / Dead Hat have pulled shenanigans.

      And its competitors have pulled shenanigans also. (Snaps?)

      I'm more and more grateful that I run mostly Gentoo at home. It isn't what I'd recommend for high-value production servers (that would have to be Debian now) nor for nontechnical users. But it meets my needs very well, and there is no corporate entity that could easily kill it.

  • The subscription agreement clearly states that the Software, not to be confused with software, which cannot be redistributed is that which is Red Hat branded. Only a handful of SRPMs from the subscription RHEL are actually Red Hat branded and of those, most are also available without needing a subscription as part of their freeware UBI repo available publicly here: https://cdn-ubi.redhat.com/con... [redhat.com]

    The remaining packages which are not covered by these two combined loopholes are neutral documentation and a
  • So if a developer builds an application with the RHL files, and a client asks for the source, what does the developer do? Refuse to release the source files they got from Red Hat and breach the GPL, or release the full source and break their contract with Red Hat?

    From here it looks like Red Hat have just worked themselves into a corner where using their Linux becomes a legal minefield.

  • by cardpuncher ( 713057 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @02:49AM (#63639130)

    "Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat"

    Being able simply to rebuild the code as you see fit is a fundamental principle of Open Source software. Remind me where Red Hat got the majority of this code from in the first place?

  • 1. We need to quit referring to them as RedHat. RedHat as well all know and think of it no longer exists. This is a division of IBM (the Big Blue we all know and loathe) and we need to refer to it as such. Doing so will clarify everything they are doing. 2. All you need to know about this statement is this phrase: "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
  • by whitroth ( 9367 ) <whitroth@@@5-cent...us> on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @11:20AM (#63640366) Homepage

    What profit would that be? The volunteers rebuild and package, AND REMOVE RHEL-branded packages. Everywhere I worked, or know about, ALWAYS have at *least* one, if not more (depending on the size of the organization) RH license for support.

    • by os2mac ( 135525 )
      That would be Oracle and OEL. Likely the real target here. Alma and Rocky are just collateral damage.
  • IBM made no mention on the new product name either: Robin Hood Extortionist Ltd.

    Seems very appropriate.

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