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Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

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Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#131

Post by dizhn »

pjmlp wrote: post #65
Timon3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many startups can only dream of being as long and influential as IBM is. Okay? Do you feel attacked because I wrote something negative about IBM? Not sure how that is relevant to my point. > Also note that IBM contributions to Linux kernel in 2000, was one of the reasons it actually took off. And that influences the motivations behind their current decisions how exactly?

Me attacked, not all. HN loves to hate Oracle, IBM, SAP, Adobe and friends, without getting the point that many startups that go through HN programs never achieve half of what they produce.

We seem to even be hating on RedHat now. (I was bummed about the Centos thing too). People on this thread are acting like Redhat doesn't even release any free software.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#132

Post by Phrodo_00 »

mroche wrote: post #83
pavon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RHEL X.Y isn't a simple snapshot of CentOS Stream X at a specific point. It is a fork of CentOS Stream, with cherry-picks and so on. The specific details of what patches made it into RHEL and when and how to create reproducible builds are now only being provided to customers. In the past, customers have been able to redistribute the RHEL repos freely. I assume that will remain the case as long as CentOS Stream is ope…

> In the past, customers have been able to redistribute the RHEL repos freely. I assume that will remain the case as long as CentOS Stream is open source. There's a duality here. Yes, by the nature of the distribution, GPL, and licensing general, Red Hat cannot stop or prevent a customer from distributing RHEL packages and software to third parties. However, Red Hat reserves the right to terminate any existing subscr…

> Red Hat cannot stop or prevent a customer from distributing RHEL packages and software to third parties. However, Red Hat reserves the right to terminate any existing subscriptions a customer may have as a result of their package distributing.

IANAL, but not so sure about that. From GPLv3:

> You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it.

That sounds like a further restriction.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#133

Post by reidrac »

pietro72ohboy wrote: post #74
phpisthebest wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you mean anti-copyleft.

Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same, despite the philosophical differences. The issue here is against the copyleft (GPL and AGPL).

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#134

Post by phpisthebest »

StillBored wrote: post #104
phpisthebest wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know there move to CentOS Stream cost them my business, Since that announcement 2 years ago I have replaced all Licensed RHEL servers with Ubuntu Servers...

Which is an odd choice when comparing RH and Canonical. The former has been almost religious about living to the open source ideals, going so far as open sourcing products they purchase, and making sure new products they create have opensource upstreams. I don't think the same can be said of Canonical which seems at every turn to in need of $ so they try desperate ploys to monetize new projects they work on by develo…

>>The former has been almost religious about living to the open source ideals

Pre-IBM sure... Post IBM hardly

>>its hard to point to another company that does more across as much of the opensource ecosystem. Maybe google these days?

Really, you think google is a good example of Open Source... wow how far we have come..

Google worse than Microsoft when it comes to the EEE model

You are correct Canonical is not ideal, but I find them to be more ethical and upfront than Post-IBM RedHat and for sure google

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#135

Post by Cu3PO42 »

acatton wrote: post #102
soraminazuki wrote: post #75

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…

> I wish this encourages companies to look for more alternatives to RHEL and its clones. The issue is that there is no alternative. I'm not aware of any distro with its base and all its packages working seamlessly with SELinux enabled. Setting up SELinux in any other distro is, in my experience, an uphill battle. You need to become an SELinux expert to do so. > The worst part about the packaging work is, the tools us…

I have run SELinux on Fedora without too many issues. Of course, Fedora being rather closely related to RHEL that shouldn't be too surprising.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#136

Post by phpisthebest »

reidrac wrote: post #133
pietro72ohboy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think you mean anti-copyleft. Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same, despite the philosophical differences. The issue here is against the copyleft (GPL and AGPL).

>>Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same,

No ... no they are not

>>despite the philosophical differences.

And those differences are HUGE and make them incompatible

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#137

Post by axus »

PeterZaitsev wrote: post #120

I wonder if you're RedHat Subscriber and Customer and have access to the source what is the license ? In general though it is clear what RedHat does not seems to want to play Open Source game any more, at least when it comes to RHEL. Similar to Amazon/AWS RedHat seems to be moving to Open Source of convenience, where you have portions of your software Open Source when it helps your business, and not so much if it doe…

I'm interested in how IBM will try to refuse selling to Alma/Rocky/Oracle. You'd think those guys would already have a paid Red Hat subscription. The lawsuits between Oracle and IBM will be epic.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#138

Post by reidrac »

Aaron2222 wrote: post #71
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).

Besides it isn't true they don't contribute. As you say, they are filling the gap left by CentOS, and that helps sustaining an ecosystem that benefits RHEL.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#139

Post by glutee »

RedShift1 wrote: post #51

Looks like this will be the end of the road for RHEL based distros for me... I love using AlmaLinux, always super stable and everything just works (at least for what I use it). I guess the next best option will be SUSE?

Isn't 'everything just works' because it is a rebuild of RHEL sources? I don't know how else it claims to have 1:1 ABI compatibility witb RHEL otherwise?
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