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Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

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Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#71

Post by Aaron2222 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

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 conclusi…

Regardless of your views of cloning a commercial Linux distro like that, alling Rocky Linux and Alma Linux 'dirtbags' misses the point of the entire reason they exist in the first place, RedHat discontinuing CentOS (and drastically shortening the support window on CentOS 8).

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#72

Post by greedo »

chasil wrote: post #43
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

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 conclusi…

It has a few add-ons. The "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" includes full btrfs, extensive device support (that is removed from the stock kernel), is tuned for the eponymous database, and is always more current. There are several scenarios where it is very attractive. Oracle bought K-Splice several years ago, which was the first rebootless patch solution for Linux. It's only available with a premium license; Kernelcare…

OEL is dependent on RHEL for patches, so how can it be "always more current."?

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#73

Post by josefx »

pjmlp wrote: post #17
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…

Many startups can only dream of being as long and influential as IBM is. Also note that IBM contributions to Linux kernel in 2000, was one of the reasons it actually took off.

> IBM contributions to Linux kernel in 2000

That was quarter a century ago.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#74

Post by pietro72ohboy »

phpisthebest wrote: post #62
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

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 conclusi…

This is only true it RHEL was self contained OS Project with no Upstream sources itself... That is not the case, RHEL is not possible with out the wider ecosystem, and to say Rocky Linux is a "dirtbag" for repacking RHEL, would be like saying RedHat is a "dirtbag" for packaging any number of free software projects they consume into their product. It completely antithetical the free software movement for which Linux i…

> However it is perfectly on brand of the "Open Source" corporatist movement that seems to be supplanting free software

This has been happening on HN too. The vilification of GPL and AGPL as ”not free in the truest sense of the word”, the usage of RMS and his personal image to label the free software movement outdated/fanatical/toxic is a testament to how corporate rebranding efforts have succeeded in replacing free software with open-source — software that is conveniently licensed so that corporations can bake it into their product without a single concern for the longevity or well-being of the developer or the software itself.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#75

Post by soraminazuki »

I wish this encourages companies to look for more alternatives to RHEL and its clones. There are certainly cases where the stability of RHEL makes sense. But too often teams use them when they need latest versions of software, resulting in pointless packaging work.

The worst part about the packaging work is, the tools used to create RPM packages is showing its age. RPM macros, the language for describing packages, is based on text substitution which makes it tricky to write. [1] RPM builds don't do build-time sandboxing, so a package won't build consistently across machines without extreme care taken in both the package descriptions and the build environment. Even if the package itself builds and runs on the same machine, it isn't guaranteed to run on other machines too because it lacks a way to ensure reproducibility.

[1]: For example, commenting out a macro might not work as expected because the expanded text might include a newline.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#76

Post by JohnFen »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

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 conclusi…

> which is why one person in the Linux space called them the “dirtbags” of open source.

That's funny, because that's how I tend to feel about Red Hat.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#77

Post by MattSteelblade »

ghaff wrote: post #29
MattSteelblade wrote: post #10

Will this prevent o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ legal derivatives of RHEL?

There are no "official" derivatives of RHEL. (And that was true even after Red Hat acquired/acqui-hired CentOS).

I have edited my question from official to legal (at least from a US-perspective). Another commenter in this thread has stated that it would be against their TOS.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#79

Post by chasil »

greedo wrote: post #72
chasil wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has a few add-ons. The "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" includes full btrfs, extensive device support (that is removed from the stock kernel), is tuned for the eponymous database, and is always more current. There are several scenarios where it is very attractive. Oracle bought K-Splice several years ago, which was the first rebootless patch solution for Linux. It's only available with a premium license; Kernelcare…

OEL is dependent on RHEL for patches, so how can it be "always more current."?

The UEK is more dedicated to following long-term-release kernels. Oracle's re-wrap is known as the "Red Hat Compatible Kernel."

v7-rhck-3.10.0-1160.92.1.0.1

v7-uek-5.4.17-2136.320.7.1

v8-rhck-4.18.0-477.13.1

v8-uek-5.15.0-102.110.5

v9-rhck-5.14.0-284.11.1

v9-uek-5.15.0-102.110.5.1

Kernel version 3.10 has always been stock rhel7's version, but the UEK has jumped through v4 to v5.

Red Hat made a big deal about io_uring availability in v9, but I am guessing that it is available in v8's UEK.

I will say that the Oracle database group's support for v9 is very poor at this point; for some reason, they are holding to v8, and releasing few products for the newer platform.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#80

Post by xyst »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

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 conclusi…

Yup. One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

I avoid anything Oracle. Their licensing model is hell. Their products are usually terrible compared to competition. Cloud products are subpar. Products tend to require a support contract since it’s proprietary dogshit.

Some tidbits of Oracle and Larry Ellison (founder, CEO):

- in the early days of Oracle DB, it was benchmarked and compared against other RDBMS and Oracle DB was found to have poor performance. Ellison and Oracle tried to get the professor fired and introduced language into their EULA preventing benchmarking [1,2]

- then there is the growing list of controversies documented on Wikipedia [3]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150313140846/https://starcount... (2015, archive.org)

[2] https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation

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