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I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

jeffgeerling.com

61–70 of 410 posts

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#61
post #40

Could somebody who maintains a particularly important open source software change the license to say basically “you must release your source code to anyone who requests it free of charge whether they are a customer or not”? Yes Redhat is a for profit company, but them deciding to make a business off of software that has licenses that might change to their detriment is their problem. Oh wait is that what they are doin…

You can just as easily change your license to one which does not allow corporate use. This has the same result, the last previously licensed version of your project is forked by corporations. I.e. if your goal is to stop providing free use of your future work you're always welcome to it, but don't hold your breath that these companies will suddenly clamor back as a result.

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#63
post #55
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the fact that they are pedaling GPL software, and thus they are inclined to be offering it for free to the whole world, definitionally.

> offering it for free to the whole world, definitionally That's definitionally not true. Quoting https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html ] if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it. ... ] Except for one special situation, th…

[deleted]

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#64
post #35

>Red Hat seems to be upping the limit to 240 sockets per developer as of this writing -- EDIT: I read twitter, seems it may mean number of machines as opposed to open sockets. But a very confusing post. I stopped with RHEL 2 months ago at work, I use Slackware at home. What does that quote mean, if I get a RHEL developer license, am I limited to the number of open sockets ? That almost goes back to the per user licen…

Slackware ftw. Came back to Slackware on pretty much all workstations/laptops around 10 years ago. Some servers are also running it but mostly I've switched to OpenBSD.

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#65
post #40

Could somebody who maintains a particularly important open source software change the license to say basically “you must release your source code to anyone who requests it free of charge whether they are a customer or not”? Yes Redhat is a for profit company, but them deciding to make a business off of software that has licenses that might change to their detriment is their problem. Oh wait is that what they are doin…

Free has never meant monetarily free. Open-source means you can recompile, and thus maintain after the EOL of the provider, and code secrets aren’t secret. This is already a step above proprietary software. For example: Wordpress themes are OSS. You must pay the gatekeeper, but you can inspect the code. But free lunch is something else. Which OSS developers can also require, I’m not discussing that.

Open source means you can redistribute the code having received it. If you aren't allowed to do so, the program is 'source-available', not open source.

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#68
post #10
post #7

I'm surprised at all of the drama surrounding Red Hat's decisions. Red Hat is a for-profit company and not a charity. They (Red Hat) don't make any claims of offering RHEL for free to the whole world. If you want that, Canonical's Ubuntu may be a better option for you. Am I missing something?

You’re missing the fact that they are pedaling GPL software, and thus they are inclined to be offering it for free to the whole world, definitionally.

No, you are very much encouraged to sell GPL software:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#70
Glad to see redhat go down the shitter. I was never a fan, but that's not the reason to hate on redhat. Everything is behind a paywall or a license. They just seemed like another Microsoft, especially when they started licensing Linux on at a per CPU core level. I think the only thing going for it is their support, but in my 20 years in the industry I've only ever used vendor support like once or twice, I've usually overcome obstacles on my own. At a previous workplace we had Ubuntu without licensing or support. The company tried to make us switch our infrastructure to redhat because they wanted indemnification. So we instead purchased Ubuntu support/licensing and again - never once did we use it or need it. Virtually everything we built we figured out ourselves. So when it comes to vendor support, I usually don't give a shit.
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