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Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

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Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#11

I've been hearing the "boring" comment a lot lately, and I totally agree. I don't want the exciting filesystem (btrfs which just took me for a ride), or the exciting programming language/library that will strand me in 6 months with multiple man-years of work. No, what I want is boring. That means everything works as I expect it too, and it doesn't create drama every few months when the cool kids decide that the old w…

Also people don't remember how the old proprietary Unixes were very boring Few things changed between versions and they would tell you exactly what would change between versions so you could be prepared. (however I have much less trust in a distro running SystemD, it is not stable or reliable)

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Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#12
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that OpenShift is more of a superset of k8s vs. a fork. I don't think the situation is going to be as bad as you are implying.

A fork can imply many things, but all supersets are forks. I realize that RedHat doesn't like calling OpenShift a fork, but it fundamentally is. The only people that will maintain their additional functionality is RedHat themselves. If you manage to avoid all of their added functionality then you can avoid the vendor lock in. But you can't avoid the delays in getting upstream features/bug fixes. If Kubernetes was sup…

The thing is some people want super stable, improvements are great but the ability to plan is also great. That breaking change that prevents Redhat from integrating Kubernetes into Openshift is just as likely to be a breaking change for Company X using Kubernetes

That's why they pay Redhat, so they can plan.

Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I would add a second question to your first: What are the risks of implementing this into production? Get them thinking as a matter of habit about both of those in tandem - what's the customer benefit, and what are the risks of doing it, and does the former justify the latter? Also, all programmers have a burning desire to build stuff from scratch, which is part of what's driving yours to incorporate cool new…

The burning desire to build from scratch is simply because it is easier and because it tend to be more verbally valued by management then working on older product which tend to be snarked at as merely maintennance. The moment management praise also people working on less new and gives them appropriate salaries and autonomy, burning desire changes - except in few people who are truly naturally like that. It is win win…

I'm starting to have doubts about this line of reasoning. It just doesn't explain enough of the risky behavior I see.

I'm starting to think it might be the same thing that gets young developers to put up with 10+ hour days. That feeling you get when you lose yourself in a problem for hours and hours.

Being in a Flow state is seductive. Nobody gets that feeling when looking through the bug database or knowledge base, or hunting through the source of an OSS module trying to figure out how to ask it the right questions. But they do get that feeling when trying to rewrite it themselves. All that open space to run as fast as you can... in the wrong direction.

It's thrill seeking. BASE jumping for programmers.

Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#14

I've been hearing the "boring" comment a lot lately, and I totally agree. I don't want the exciting filesystem (btrfs which just took me for a ride), or the exciting programming language/library that will strand me in 6 months with multiple man-years of work. No, what I want is boring. That means everything works as I expect it too, and it doesn't create drama every few months when the cool kids decide that the old w…

Amen.

Sadly it seems in a sense RH is funding both sides at the same time, as many of their employees are the very source of the "exciting" developments happening in the Linux ecosystem these days.

Thing is though that in a sense the Linux community has painted itself into a corner. Thanks to the likes of RHEL, Ubuntu LTS and Debian Stable, there is little reason for the upstream to be anything but "exciting".

Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#15
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fork can imply many things, but all supersets are forks. I realize that RedHat doesn't like calling OpenShift a fork, but it fundamentally is. The only people that will maintain their additional functionality is RedHat themselves. If you manage to avoid all of their added functionality then you can avoid the vendor lock in. But you can't avoid the delays in getting upstream features/bug fixes. If Kubernetes was sup…

The thing is some people want super stable, improvements are great but the ability to plan is also great. That breaking change that prevents Redhat from integrating Kubernetes into Openshift is just as likely to be a breaking change for Company X using Kubernetes That's why they pay Redhat, so they can plan.

You're sort of twisting GP's point by saying that because K8s is not super stable, Red Hat will provide stability via OpenShift. I mean yes, Red Hat will certainly provide a more stable version, but it's a double-edged sword, because K8s might leave OpenShift in the dust with some incompatible change, and then a few years down the line you could end up with serious buyer's remorse when K8s is an order of magnitude better and OpenShift is left in some well-maintained purgatory.

Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#16
post #5

OpenShift is a fork of Kubernetes. Case in point. OpenShift has functionality called a Route. That isn't in Kubernetes. Kubernetes of course went and added something similar called ingress. This means that anytime Kubernetes does a release that RedHat has to manage merging all those changes in with their local changes that aren't part of their project. This is exactly the same sort of thing that RedHat does with thei…

It is important to note OpenShift predated Kubernetes. RH reimplemented the underlying platform by adopting Kubernetes only a few years ago.

Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is some people want super stable, improvements are great but the ability to plan is also great. That breaking change that prevents Redhat from integrating Kubernetes into Openshift is just as likely to be a breaking change for Company X using Kubernetes That's why they pay Redhat, so they can plan.

You're sort of twisting GP's point by saying that because K8s is not super stable, Red Hat will provide stability via OpenShift. I mean yes, Red Hat will certainly provide a more stable version, but it's a double-edged sword, because K8s might leave OpenShift in the dust with some incompatible change, and then a few years down the line you could end up with serious buyer's remorse when K8s is an order of magnitude be…

Yup, when I talk about stability I'm not talking about stability of function, which I presume is what people buying OpenShift want. I'm talking about stability as in few changes. Anyone doing things in the Container space shouldn't be expecting lack of changes, even if you're using OpenShift.

Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#18
post #16
post #5

OpenShift is a fork of Kubernetes. Case in point. OpenShift has functionality called a Route. That isn't in Kubernetes. Kubernetes of course went and added something similar called ingress. This means that anytime Kubernetes does a release that RedHat has to manage merging all those changes in with their local changes that aren't part of their project. This is exactly the same sort of thing that RedHat does with thei…

It is important to note OpenShift predated Kubernetes. RH reimplemented the underlying platform by adopting Kubernetes only a few years ago.

That is a fair point. I'm only talking about the "Kubernetes" implementation within OpenShift. It's modified from the upstream one and includes things that aren't part of upstream Kubernetes.

Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#19

Redhat might be doing well but many open source projects clearly aren't. There are routine SOS posted here about projects in dire straits. So how much of this revenue does downstream see? Something as critical as Gnupg was recently in trouble and got funding from Stripe and Facebook. Companies like Redhat acquire projects or hire project leads for influence but few really seem to 'support' open source. Docker is a VC…

Redhat supports the community by providing tons of maintainers/maintenance of projects. So, they may not support $PROJECT with dollars, but for a few thousand projects they base their business on, they provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in year in engineering time fixing bugs, or updating things which are bothering their customers. Particularly on all the unsexy portions of the OS that everyone else has moved on from.

Re: Red Hat is pretty good at being Red Hat

#20

I've been hearing the "boring" comment a lot lately, and I totally agree. I don't want the exciting filesystem (btrfs which just took me for a ride), or the exciting programming language/library that will strand me in 6 months with multiple man-years of work. No, what I want is boring. That means everything works as I expect it too, and it doesn't create drama every few months when the cool kids decide that the old w…

Amen. Sadly it seems in a sense RH is funding both sides at the same time, as many of their employees are the very source of the "exciting" developments happening in the Linux ecosystem these days. Thing is though that in a sense the Linux community has painted itself into a corner. Thanks to the likes of RHEL, Ubuntu LTS and Debian Stable, there is little reason for the upstream to be anything but "exciting".

Out of curiosity, what are the exciting developments happening in the Linux ecosystem these days?
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