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Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

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Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#31

Post by trufas »

marwatk wrote: post #18
BossingAround wrote: post #4

I don't get what's the big deal--essentially the only thing being lost is a pointer to commit that marks the difference between RHEL X.Y and X.Y+1..?

RedHat spends a lot of time back-porting security updates to older software (e.g. RHEL7). Stream is always only the latest RHEL version, I believe. The whole point of RHEL is the long term support (the back-porting), which is what they're going to stop publishing.

CentOS 7 is supported and will be EOL at the same time as RHEL 7.

Stream does have major versions so you can continue to use CentOS Stream 8 and get backports. You only lose anything if you're tied to some minor version of EL for some reason.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#32

Post by throwaway12245 »

a2tech wrote: post #3

I don’t understand what game IBM is playing with Red Hat. I was under the impression they were profitable prior to the acquisition so I’m not sure why they’re squeezing so hard and ruining the great brand and good will Red Hat had built up.

IBM bought Lotus 1-2-3. Looks like the same playbook.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#33

Post by taeric »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #14
Timon3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM is stuck in a cycle of constant re-invention, because they somehow manage to always re-invent themselves in ways that are even worse and more complicated for customers, which they try to fix by re-inventing themselves again. Even if they initially planned on leaving Red Hat alone, every re-invention is a chance for some executive to make the decision to squeeze a little tighter on existing customers. So the quest…

Yet they're still way older than most tech companies. I'd wager they will outlive 99.99% of those unicorn startups yet.

How much of that is lingering brand value, though? That and simple ties into existing and old industries.

You are also comparing to startups? Which... yes, most things die. Sometimes, it is the old things that die. Often taking a lot of other younger things with them.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#34

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move:

> Since the earliest days of Linux or MySQL, there were companies set up to profit from others’ contributions. Most recently in Linux, for example, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux both promise “bug for bug compatibility” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while contributing nothing toward Red Hat’s success. Indeed, the natural conclusion of these two RHEL clones’ success would be to eliminate their host, leading to their own demise, which is why one person in the Linux space called them the “dirtbags” of open source.

> If there are any real parasites, it's Oracle Linux.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Linux

> Oracle Linux (abbreviated OL, formerly known as Oracle Enterprise Linux or OEL) is a Linux distribution packaged and freely distributed by Oracle, available partially under the GNU General Public License since late 2006.[4] It is compiled from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code, replacing Red Hat branding with Oracle's.

I had no idea that Oracle Linux was essentially RHEL with %s/Red\ Hat/Oracle/g and Oracle has a market cap of $330bn

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#35

Post by Timon3 »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #30
Timon3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM is stuck in a cycle of constant re-invention, because they somehow manage to always re-invent themselves in ways that are even worse and more complicated for customers, which they try to fix by re-inventing themselves again. Even if they initially planned on leaving Red Hat alone, every re-invention is a chance for some executive to make the decision to squeeze a little tighter on existing customers. So the quest…

I think you are being very pessimistic. All of their acquisitions are used to fund reinventions but due to their existing mainframe and other support contracts it makes a moat that people have a hard time crossing. I could see Oracle being merged or bought by IBM.

I definitely am pessimistic, but that is probably due to my time working for them :) I can't remember any acquisition during my time there that didn't get significantly worse. Red Hat was the one hold-out, but this thread is example enough for me to know that nothing has changed since.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#36

Post by bonzini »

chasil wrote: post #9
BossingAround wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CentOS Stream source code is available.

CentOS stream is not RHEL, and that is what will be needed by Rocky, Alma, and Oracle. I don't think it will be much more difficult to obtain.

IIUC (I work for Red Hat but not on how sources are distributed), there is absolutely no change in practice.

CentOS Stream RPM sources are stored in GitLab therefore the whole history is available including past minor releases of RHEL. The only change is that the repositories will not be mirrored to git.centos.org.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#38

Post by godzillabrennus »

a_subsystem wrote: post #28
a2tech wrote: post #3

I don’t understand what game IBM is playing with Red Hat. I was under the impression they were profitable prior to the acquisition so I’m not sure why they’re squeezing so hard and ruining the great brand and good will Red Hat had built up.

IBM is slowly ruining everything they produce. Their systems are incredibly secure because it's extremely difficult to even run them normally as an operator, much less hack in. The byzantine/circular documentation and downloads pages on their site are woefully inadequate in enabling developers. Web searches reveal little information if you have a problem, as not many people run these systems. You generally have to pa…

I heard from a former employee at IBM that management has been offended the media used FAANG to describe big tech, because they are delusional and still think they are relevant enough to be big tech…

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#39

Post by jmclnx »

I find it hard to believe RHEL will get away with this. I hope the Linux Foundation weighs in, but it seems to have been bought by IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and many other large corps.

All the drama in Linux with Wayland, RHEL sponsored init, snap/flatpak and now IBM/RHEL has been causing me to seriously evaluate the BSDs. I have been doing that for a couple of years.

I would be fully on OpenBSD now, but the hardware I have is one of those with 2 videos, integrated and Nvidia. And that system does NOT allow me to disable the Nvidia Chip.

When using Nvidia, that chip is correctly ignored by OpenBSD, but it gets so hot I can almost fry an egg on it. I have some mitigations in place, but it still gets rather hot, CPU and disk stays normal.

The same is true with NetBSD, I have not tried FreeBSD yet.

This RHEL thing may be the last straw, I may bite the bullet and see if the heat causes failures and if so evaluate this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36292831

FWIW, I did add paste, a full cleaning. And this was purchased used rather cheaply 2 years ago. It is 9 years old now.

Why am I bothered by this ? This seems to be a weak first step of companies making Linux go proprietary. Already we need many proprietary blobs.

And funny, NASA just signed a contract with Rocky and CERN went with AlmaLinux,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36417968

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