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CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

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Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#121

Post by ghaff »

beermonster wrote: post #109
ghaff wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, unlike many other projects, Linux is not licensed GPLv2 or later and doesn't have copyright assignment. This makes changing the license unilaterally at least problematic. Not necessarily impossible but, at least some would argue the permission of all the contributors would be required which would be basically impossible.

Yes, Linus himself mentioned they'd all need to be contacted and agree. He also said he saw the GPLv3 draft and so it was an early and conscious decision to not have a 'GPLv2 or later' license.

There were differences of opinion at the time. Eben Moglen said something to the effect that it could probably be relicensed on the theory that its history suggested it could be treated as a collective work. But it would have been controversial and Linus didn't want to anyway so discussions never went further than that.

Here's something I wrote at the time: https://www.cnet.com/news/linux-to-gplv3-a-practical-matter-...

Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#122

Post by JeremyNT »

s5ma6n wrote: post #14
cpach wrote: post #5

An alternative distro is being developed here: https://rockylinux.org/

This is good news but due to the nature of widely adopted open-source projects, they are still vulnerable to a similar situation. It is listed that AWS is one of the sponsors of the Rocky Linux. Recently we have seen what happened between elastic and AWS. So, AWS could also pull an IBM and decide to drop it or tie it tightly with AWS services etc. It is a difficult situation in general and it is a shame that this was…

> Recently we have seen what happened between elastic and AWS. So, AWS could also pull an IBM and decide to drop it or tie it tightly with AWS services etc.

There's a lot of reason to distrust Amazon, but this isn't what ended up happening with Elasticsearch and Kibana. Ultimately, the company Elastic took open source projects, moved them to more restrictive licenses, and Amazon came in and committed to maintaining proper open source forks.

Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#123

Post by turminal »

pmarin wrote: post #107
turminal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just asked GP to clarify what he meant. My original comment was exactly about the ways canonical, SUSE, Debian and others are dependent on RedHat. Canonical attempted to develop upstart as their in house systemd alternative but they failed. Exactly the same thing happened with their attempt at their own graphics stack. I don't know a lot about SUSE, but iirc their distro is also systemd based. Edit: Suse's package…

upstart predates systemd by 4 years.

I know. My comment was poorly worded and it reads as if it was the other way around but that doesn't invalidate the fact that they had their own tool and it failed.

Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#124

Post by mynameisash »

adamcstephens wrote: post #20
Frost1x wrote: post #8

Large corporation undermines a group of people to make a buck, news at 11... Businesses aren't your friends , repeat it with me, no matter how much propoganda they regularly spew out. Sometimes their goals may be temporarily aligned with yours in which case you can leverage their resources but never forget their goals can shift to be misaligned with yours at any point, making them a partial or direct enemy of your go…

Businesses aren’t your friends. Employers aren’t your family. Be wary of either group selling them as such.

I am hopeful that the idea of a B-Corporation[0] will catch on. While not perfect, my impression is that it would confer more benefit to their workforce and society as a whole than traditional S- and C-corps.

For the uninitiated, B-Corps "must receive a minimum score from an assessment of 'social and environmental performance', [and] integrate B Corp commitments to stakeholders into company governing documents".

Patagonia, for example[1][2], seems to be a trailblazer in being transparent about and actively improving their business in terms of logistics (monitoring "the cost of materials that have the potential to be Fair Trade Certified against the volume of materials that are purchased in a Fiscal Year"), corporate culture ("[encourage] work-life balance, as well as a focus on an individual’s physical and mental health"), end products (their "criteria for the best product rests on function, repairability, and, foremost, durability"), and so on.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification)

[1] https://bcorporation.net/directory/patagonia-inc

[2] https://www.patagonia.com/stories/benefit-corporation-update...

Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#125

Post by cardiffspaceman »

HunterWare wrote: post #28
_joel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, are the Rocky Mountains about to collapse? Also this is a sentimental name, chosen well imho. > "Thinking back to early CentOS days... My cofounder was Rocky McGaugh. He is no longer with us, so as a H/T to him, who never got to see the success that CentOS came to be, I introduce to you...Rocky Linux"

No, it's because rocky shores were very hazardous to shipping, and a ship "on the rocks" was either close to, or in, immediate peril. The homage seems lovely, but doesn't (unfortunately) change the fact that to the vast majority of english speakers "rocky" means unstable/dangerous... In fact, one of the most common expressions referring to an unstable/bad relationship is "their relationship is on the rocks" or "they…

You can't stop people from interpreting names as they will.

My reading of the name "Rocky Linux" is similar to my reading of the name "Rocky Balboa". It could be just a name, like "Foo" or it could signify toughness, as "Rocky" does as a nickname in many cases. In two non-fiction cases of boxers, "Rocky" is a diminutive of "Rock" or "The Rock".

Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#126

Post by vetinari »

cheph wrote: post #42

The title is a bit misleading IMO. > What was the specific change? It seems that Red Hat said it would invest in Stream but not CentOS. CentoOS Stream is still CentOS to me. Better to say Red Hat will not invest in CentOS point releases, as that is a lot less confusing.

> CentoOS Stream is still CentOS to me. Better to say Red Hat will not invest in CentOS point releases, as that is a lot less confusing.

But the point releases will be still there - but only for RHEL.

The sad thing, which makes Stream unusable is, that RHEL does rebase packages between point releases. With the old CentOS you knew, that if there are breaking changes, they would be during point release upgrade. With Stream, you will get them randomly (and they did already happen several times since announcement).

Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#127

Post by tehbeard »

s5ma6n wrote: post #14
cpach wrote: post #5

An alternative distro is being developed here: https://rockylinux.org/

This is good news but due to the nature of widely adopted open-source projects, they are still vulnerable to a similar situation. It is listed that AWS is one of the sponsors of the Rocky Linux. Recently we have seen what happened between elastic and AWS. So, AWS could also pull an IBM and decide to drop it or tie it tightly with AWS services etc. It is a difficult situation in general and it is a shame that this was…

AWS wouldn't use it to compete with rocky foundation/group, they'd use it to offer a RHEL derivative on their platform.

Funding it to get a pathway to onboard RHEL-like workloads without the costly licence? Worth the change they put down for it.

Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#128

Post by vbezhenar »

beermonster wrote: post #83
Ottolay wrote: post #78

I don't understand the heartburn people are having about this. If you want to use a free distro, why not just move to one of the many distributions which are not tied to a for profit company?

Which other distros are there which have 10 years support? It looks like there's only Oracle Linux left currently? That is like being caught between a rock and a hard place ;-)

If you're small, use RHEL developer license. If you're big, buy proper RHEL license.

Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#129

Post by cheph »

vetinari wrote: post #126
cheph wrote: post #42

The title is a bit misleading IMO. > What was the specific change? It seems that Red Hat said it would invest in Stream but not CentOS. CentoOS Stream is still CentOS to me. Better to say Red Hat will not invest in CentOS point releases, as that is a lot less confusing.

> CentoOS Stream is still CentOS to me. Better to say Red Hat will not invest in CentOS point releases, as that is a lot less confusing. But the point releases will be still there - but only for RHEL. The sad thing, which makes Stream unusable is, that RHEL does rebase packages between point releases. With the old CentOS you knew, that if there are breaking changes, they would be during point release upgrade. With St…

> With the old CentOS you knew, that if there are breaking changes

What manner of breaking changes would these be?

AFAIK (may be wrong, please correct if I am) by default RHEL is not locked to minor release versions (i.e. no subscription-manager release --set 8.x), but to major release versions (i.e. 8), and I have always used RHEL like this and never had serious issues with minor version updates.

In this sense CentOS stream is really just what I was already doing, CentOS stream is also split by major versions AFAIU (there is 8 stream, and will be 9 stream)[1].

EDIT:

[1]: https://centos.org/distro-faq/#q6-will-there-be-separatepara...

Re: CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat refused to invest in it

#130

Post by vetinari »

cheph wrote: post #129
vetinari wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CentoOS Stream is still CentOS to me. Better to say Red Hat will not invest in CentOS point releases, as that is a lot less confusing. But the point releases will be still there - but only for RHEL. The sad thing, which makes Stream unusable is, that RHEL does rebase packages between point releases. With the old CentOS you knew, that if there are breaking changes, they would be during point release upgrade. With St…

> With the old CentOS you knew, that if there are breaking changes What manner of breaking changes would these be? AFAIK (may be wrong, please correct if I am) by default RHEL is not locked to minor release versions (i.e. no subscription-manager release --set 8.x), but to major release versions (i.e. 8), and I have always used RHEL like this and never had serious issues with minor version updates. In this sense CentO…

Stream is already at 8.4 kABI (kernel modules ABI). If you have any binary kernel modules that are not compatible, too bad. (For example, ZFS is still on 8.3).

Poppler is going to be rebased from from 0.66.0 to 20.11.0. If you have anything linked to it, it will break; you need new binaries linked against the new soname. There is a surprising number packages linked against it, and third-party ones too (e.g. GDAL, used by all geo apps out there).

Similar thing will happen with other rebased packages.

RHEL users will get that packaged in 8.4, with release notes. Stream users are getting these breakages randomly.

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