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Open Source Linux

How AlmaLinux's Community Supported RHEL Binary Compatibility (linux-magazine.com) 41

Posted by EditorDavid from the group-effort dept.
Linux magazine interviewed an AlmaLinux official about what happened after their distro pivoted to binary compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux rather than being a downstream build: Linux Magazine: What prompted AlmaLinux to choose ABI over 1:1 compatibility with RHEL?

benny Vasquez, chair of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation: The short answer is our users. Overwhelmingly, our users made it clear that they chose AlmaLinux for its ease of use, the security and stability that it provides, and the backing of a diverse group of sponsors. All of that together meant that we didn't need to lock ourselves into copying RHEL, and we could continue to provide what our users needed.

Moreover, we needed to consider what our sponsors would be able to help us provide, and how we could best serve the downstream projects that now rely on AlmaLinux. The rippling effects of any decision that we make are beyond measure at this point, so we consider all aspects of our impact and then move forward with confidence and intention.

LM: How did AlmaLinux's mission of improving the Linux ecosystem for everyone influence this decision?

bV: We strongly believe that the soul of open source means working together, providing value where there is a gap, and helping each other solve problems. If we participate in an emotional reaction to a business's change, we will then be distracted and potentially hurt users and the Enterprise Linux ecosystem overall. By remaining focused on what is best (though not easiest), and adapting to the ecosystem as it is today, we will provide a better and more stable operating system.

LM: What opportunities does the ABI route offer over 1:1 compatibility?

bV: By liberating ourselves from the 1:1 promise, we have been able to do a few small things that have proven to be a good testing ground for what will come in the future. Specifically, we shipped a couple of smallish, but extremely important, security patches ahead of Red Hat, offering quicker security to the users of AlmaLinux... This also opens the door for other features and improvements that we could add back in or change, as our users need. We have already seen greater community involvement, especially around these ideas.

LM: Does the ABI route pose any extra challenges?

bV: The obvious one is that building from CentOS Stream sources takes more effort, but I think the more important challenge (and the one that will only be solved with consistency over time) is the one of proving that we will be able to deliver on the promise... We will continue on our goal of becoming the home for all users that need Enterprise Linux for free, but in the next year I expect that we will see an expansion in the number of kernels we support and see some new and exciting SIGs spun up around other features or use cases, as the community continues to standardize on how to achieve their goals collectively.
Linux magazine notes that in August AlmaLinux added two new repositories, Testing and Synergy. "Testing, currently available for AlmaLinux 8 and 9, offers security updates before they are approved and implemented upstream. Synergy contains packages requested by community members that currently aren't available in RHEL or Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL, a set of extra software packages maintained by the Fedora SIG that are not available in RHEL or CentOS Stream)."

The article also points out that "On the upside, AlmaLinux can now include comments in their patches for greater transparency. Users will see where the patch comes from, which was not an option before."

Vasquez tells the magazine, "I think folks will be seriously happy about what they find as we release the new versions, namely, the consistency, stability, and security that they've come to expect from us."
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How AlmaLinux's Community Supported RHEL Binary Compatibility More

How AlmaLinux's Community Supported RHEL Binary Compatibility

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  • This is exactly what RHEL wants for every downstream build. This is why they made the changes to Centos not getting access to RHEL. This is why RHEL EOLed version 7 shortly thereafter. I commented when those changes were made [slashdot.org] that this was all about shutting down the open source community in favour of a commercial model. In another couple years, RHEL will be the new SCO as some downstream distribution tries to hold on and RH gets increasingly forceful about anyone using that distro in any way shape or form giving them money.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pizza ( 87623 )

      Please get your facts straight.

      Red Hat EOL'd CentOS 8 prematurely, in favor of CentOS Stream 8. That was *two years ago*. Nothing changed with CentOS7.

      Meanwhile. CentOS7 will be EOL'd in mid-2024, when RHEL7 enters its extended support period (ie the latter five years of its ten year lifecycle. Just like CentOS6 was EOL'd when RHEL6 entered extended support. And version 5 before that. And version 4 before that.

      Red Hat has _never_ publicly provided binaries or sources to non-customers for these extend

      • Small correction: RHEL7 was released in 2014... it'll be 10 years since its release date and 15 years when extended support ends. AFAIK the 10 year support window hasn't changed for 8 and 9.

      • Absent a contract stating otherwise, nothing entitles you or I to any of Red Hat's products or services. Just as nothing entitles me to your current (much less future) work.

        They complain people are leeching off the work their Red Hat employed developers do, but their entire distro is based on monetizing leeching off the work of the open source community who are much, much bigger than RedHat. What we technically call hypocrisy, to use a polite term.

        I'm sure IBM has many lawyers dedicated to the letter of open source rather than the spirit, but I for one will be happy to see them as a footnote in history, and I'll do my best to support that goal. I say that sadly as a RH us

        • You have a very poor understanding of who is actually doing a large proportion of Linux development. You think it's all enthusiasts at home doing it for love, don't you?

          • You have a very poor understanding of who is actually doing a large proportion of Linux development. You think it's all enthusiasts at home doing it for love, don't you?

            Not at all, for the kernel it is mostly large companies, but RH is still not particularly special in this regard, as much as they think they may be.

            https://news.itsfoss.com/huawe... [itsfoss.com]

          • Yes, but let's look at what RH gave back (sponsored to a large degree if not completely) in the last two decades: Pulse Audio, systemd, Wayland, loads of Gnome stuff I and other non-users don't care about, ... The one thing most if not all of those have in common is that they twist how stuff used to work, got foisted upon unsuspecting users, most distribution makers found no way around them, and they got people to invest in the RH way, creating a division in the Linux ecosystem. They deserve all complaints.

      • Absent a contract stating otherwise, nothing entitles you or I to any of Red Hat's products or services.

        A big chunk of Red Hat's most important products are based on other parties' work, and are covered by the following contract clause:

        6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.

        Exactly what constitutes a "restriction" would seem to be a gray area. Obviously, IBM's lawyers think that ghosting the recipient doesn't count as a "restriction". OTOH, it does seem to pretty effectively prevent the software from getting redistributed in the real world, which would pretty much be the definition of a restriction.

        Of course IBM's lawyers will probably win the arg

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pizza ( 87623 )

          Exactly what constitutes a "restriction" would seem to be a gray area. Obviously, IBM's lawyers think that ghosting the recipient doesn't count as a "restriction".

          First, the GPL gives you rights to the complete corresponding source code of the software you have in your hand RIGHT NOW. It _explicitly_ says you are not entitled to any warranty or support on that software (though it may be "provided for a fee"), nor does it say that you are owed any _future_ versions of that software. Indeed, the GPL says that a user exercising source rights can be used as grounds for ceasing warranty/support (section 6, paragraph 6, IIRC).

          Secondly, just because you have the right to

          • How dare you share your actual knowledge and common-sense here in a place where people don't read the source articles and comment without having a clue? In all seriousness, thanks for being one of few here talking any sense on this topic.
          • Where Redhat MIGHT get bitten in the ass is higher up in the license though.

            Say they terminate my account for any reason, they are still bound by the GPL to give me the source code, compilation scripts, and all needed things to compile for ALL of the GPLv2 binaries that were available at the time of the termination, for three years after that date. If they "clean up" their source repos to get the old cruft out? Too bad, that's then an actionable violation.

            Do they have to give me the source code for binaries
            • Red hat would not have any issue complying to this.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Pizza ( 87623 )

              Red Hat complies with the GPL primarily by providing sources through the same distribution mechanism as binaries. This is sufficient to satisfy the GPL's source requirements, even if you don't actually download the sources at the time you downloaded the binaries.

              However, if you let your subscription lapse (or if you were never a customer to begin with) and you don't have access to Red Hat's customer portal, they also include a written source offer, applicable to everyone, that essentially says "Send us $5 a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jmccue ( 834797 )
      Wish I had mod-points. But this is probably the "first shot across the bow" in the Corporate take over of Linux. There is way to much $ involved with Linux for large companies to want a piece and to totally control it. IMO, I expect many of these large companies would be fine with Microsoft to running the show.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        First shot across the bow?

        RH's rather peculiar view of open source, and the marketing tactics they are using with RHEL have been happening for 15 years or more. People were expressing concern way back then as well. The only thing that changed recently was the closing of the git repo that RH started using around the time of Centos 7. RH sources have always been questionably limited by the terms of their service contracts. RH has always used their contracts to discourage customers from exercising their rig

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pizza ( 87623 )

          I think the best thing that could happen would be for Oracle, Rocky, and SuSE to get on board with Alma's methodology.

          I quite agree! Alma's approach is precisely what Red Hat said they wanted, with upstream and downstream participation, investment, and differentiation. Unlike Rocky (and Oracle, bah) whose goal to rely entirely on Red Hat engineering for all the actual work, and undercut Red Hat's pricing with "support" contracts that are little more than filing bug tickets against RHEL)

          (Though in fairness to Oracle they at least provide their own kernel on top of their 1:1 RHEL rebuild, and do a decent amount of upstream

          • Funny watching you defend RH while saying fuck Oracle. As if they are not both very douchey companies.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Pizza ( 87623 )

              *every* bit of software Red Hat produces is released under F/OSS licenses. They have consistently been one of the top few, if not the top, contributor to Linux, toolchains, desktop and server plumbing, and various applications etc for nearly their entire existence -- they literally spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year contributing to F/OSS, including directly hiring key people to to work on stuff that RH doesn't directly benefit from.

              Oracle, on the other hand, has been one of the scummiest corporat

              • *every* bit of software Red Hat produces is released under F/OSS licenses. They have consistently been one of the top few, if not the top, contributor to Linux, toolchains, desktop and server plumbing, and various applications etc for nearly their entire existence -- they literally spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year contributing to F/OSS, including directly hiring key people to to work on stuff that RH doesn't directly benefit from.

                Most of Red Hat or any other Linux distro is written by others. They are happy to take the work of thousands of OSS developers and profit off it, but they don't like other people doing that to them. So no, they are not good open source citizens and if every Linux distro acted like them the whole thing would become one giant clusterfuck. That you may not have noticed IBM has made them a pariah does not change the fact.

    • I expect sometime within the next 24 months, once IBM sees that this latest move to destroy the clones has failed, an announcement will come out that CentOS Stream is ending, and all Red Hat source of any kind will strictly be available behind their subscriber paywall. Then they will move strongly against Rocky and Oracle, since (if I understand it correctly) those two are still playing somewhat fast and loose with the for-subscribers-only source RPMs IBM provides.

      It'll be very much against the spirit of op

      • Reality: If Amazon, Azure or any other large cloud vendor gives me a RHEL binary, I can then ask Amazon, Azure etc. for the source code and if they refuse, it is the cloud provider infringing on the GPL, not Red Hat. This loophole guarantees me (and anyone else who wants it) source code access. If Red Hat tried anything to stop Rocky (or any other project) from exploiting this loophole they would find themselves swiftly blacklisted by all the major cloud providers, as RHEL would rightly be perceived as a l

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pizza ( 87623 )

          If Amazon, Azure or any other large cloud vendor gives me a RHEL binary, I can then ask Amazon, Azure etc. for the source code and if they refuse, it is the cloud provider infringing on the GPL, not Red Hat.

          Amazon, Azure, etc don't freely provide RHEL binaries to their customers.

          Note the word "freely". I can't speak for Azure, but Amazon's RHEL instances cost extra -- either you pay up-front for the per-instance RHEL license (and then it's just a regular instance running RHEL) or you pay an amortized fraction of it per instance-hour. Either way, you (ie the customer) has to agree to the RHEL licensing/subscription terms.

    • I think you're right about Red Hat wanting this, but I don't think it will work out well for them. Basically, Alma/CloudLinux, Rocky, and this new thing Suse is putting together will become the new Red Hat. By absorbing all the CentOS customers, they instantly started off with a massive user base and two of the three are already successful commercial Linux vendors.

      RHEL is going to become increasingly the "IBM" OS and like AIX, it won't really be used if you're not buying hardware/cloud from IBM. Red Hat was

      • If they become the new red hat, then who will write and engineer all that code that red hat is writing and engineering today?

        • If CloudLinux becomes the new standard, I don't think they would have a problem writing the software. Being the standard means that governments and corporations mandate the platform. That's why it's been worth it for Red Hat. They may have been writing all of this code for the community in the '90s, but that clearly hasn't been the case in a very long time. The fact that Red Hat was willing to sink so many resources into reinventing wheels suggested they had a serious "not invented here problem" and they in

          • CloudLinux, Rocky, and SUSE are not working on a standard. Where have you read this? If you're referring to the OpenELA group (Oracle, SUSE, Rocky), they are working on making RHEL source code available with no modification to others. None of those organisations are interested in innovation. They are only interested in taking Red Hat's work and making it available for free as a competitive maneuver because none of them are interested in meaningful innovation. SUSE in particular should be embarrassed as spen
      • I think you may well be right. RH started on this division, they will reap what they sow. They were king on their hill, with lots of clone makers looking up. Now they kick them off their hill, and some make their own hill. The more successful the other hills, the worse RH will be off. But, since they're now effectively part of IBM, could hardly have happened to a nicer company, to shoot themselves in the foot like this.
  • Red Hat is going to Red Hat. While people will suggest different, I do feel that RH has fared poorly under IBM. Not sure. RHEL is a wonderful OS, an amazing base. Perhaps the answer here is a "RHEL Core" a bare min OS that the "freeloaders" (as RH likes to call them) can use, but there is little overall engineering cost to RH. RH layers on their more complex tools chains, environments etc. Ubuntu is a decent alternative. However, some tools that are non-OSS, don't work on Ubuntu. A RHEL-Core clone, could

  • I love AlmaLinux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Saturday December 09, 2023 @08:03PM (#64069657)
    I've been using AlmaLinux now since 9 has been released and I really love it. I love it enough to consider writing a book about it.
    • That is good for you, then. In my case, I need to use expensive CAD software that is only supported for few Linux distributions. For example, this is what Cadence is telling me not to do: https://www.cadence.com/conten... [cadence.com]

      I wonder what the IT team will do during 2024, which OS we will migrate to. I do see the OS as a way to run the applications I want so it needs to avoid interfering with what brings revenue to the company.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pizza ( 87623 )

        In my case, I need to use expensive CAD software that is only supported for few Linux distributions.

        I wonder what the IT team will do during 2024, which OS we will migrate to

        Based on Cadence's product roadmap, your organization has a choice of RHEL8, RHEL9, SLES15, and four different versions of MS Windows.

        If your organization is too cheap to run their revenue-generating software on the one of the platforms it requires, then you have some truly braindead decision makers in charge.

        (At $dayjob-2, we averaged about $50K/seat/year to Cadence. RHEL license fees were literally a fraction of a percent on top of that)

  • This has IBM written all over (Score:3)

    by motang ( 1266566 ) on Sunday December 10, 2023 @02:23AM (#64070097)
    How of this was already in the workings before the purchase by IBM I wonder? But seeing how RedHat was before, I am sure this is more of an IBM thing sadly.

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