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A response to the git.centos.org changes

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Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#91

Post by fatrat »

housemusicfan wrote: post #35
dsr_ wrote: post #11

It's nice that they are clear, now: No Red Hat unless you pay them for it. If you pay them for it, you can't redistribute it.

> If you pay them for it, you can't redistribute it. Citation please? I've sat in enough conference rooms full of lawyers to know the GPL explicitly forbids this, so it would be bordering on insane if this is what they're proposing.

It's more clever than that:

You are allowed (per the GPL) to redistribute the sources that they give you on request with the binaries. But as soon as you do that, they will cancel your support contract so you can no longer get any updates (source or binary) as well as support.

Is it legal? I've read informed opinions both ways

Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#92

Post by orf »

cyberpunk wrote: post #42
orf wrote: post #27

A lot of comments on this topic seem at odds with reality. If you accept that it takes a lot of effort to produce what Red Hat produces and you accept that you cannot buy food with a list of your open source contributions, then the people who work for Red Hat need to be compensated in some way. If your answer to this is that there is a big, distributed pool of people willing to do this work instead of Red Hat then yo…

IBM make a sheadload of money, redhat also was doing absolutely fine on support sales (up 17% in 2022, according to 'el'google) -- if they are suddenly unable to pay their developers then, sure. I don't think anyone is particularly surprised, or will miss them much. It's just kinda sad to see what was a reasonably happy opensource success story end with a giant corporation shutting down some of their releases out of…

You’re not in their sales funnel and lots of things look healthy from the outside that actually are not.

Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#93

Post by mmanciop »

While the post is mostly correct and one can agree with most of it, it’s very hard to believe that, unless more people pay for RHEL, it would cease to exist. What’s more believable, is that this is a matter of wanting more money for sales targets. Very legitimate and all, but don’t cry over the long hours and don’t try to sound like misunderstood heroes. RHEL is valuable, it contributes to the ecosystem well, and execs want it to churn out more cash.

Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#94

Post by orf »

rektide wrote: post #84
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting because if RHEL had no value add nobody would pay for it and nobody would be angry about this change. All of these angry posts are proof in a way that they are putting in valuable work.

RHEL was only used & adopted because everyday people could use it. Then when they had jobs at their enterprise, they could bring what they knew with them. If RHEL is only for paying people, as McGrath from the pulpit so expounds, most people are gonna leave. The value was having a community, a good path, that extended from open source to paid support. If McGrath blows up one end of the continuum, the other end will c…

Do everyday people need an enterprise Linux distro? Why not use one of their other everyday-people focused distributions?

Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#95

Post by u_boredom »

housemusicfan wrote: post #35
dsr_ wrote: post #11

It's nice that they are clear, now: No Red Hat unless you pay them for it. If you pay them for it, you can't redistribute it.

> If you pay them for it, you can't redistribute it. Citation please? I've sat in enough conference rooms full of lawyers to know the GPL explicitly forbids this, so it would be bordering on insane if this is what they're proposing.

I believe it’s their Terms and Conditions of using their portal to download the source.

Sure, GPL will let you redistribute but their T&Cs say that if you do, you’re cut off from their portal (or something similar to that effect)

Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#96

Post by mmanciop »

cmiles74 wrote: post #75

Regardless of your or my opinion, the Vice President of Core Platforms Engineering at Red Hat seems to think that this is a fantastic idea. They read the negative coverage and thought the best move was to educate people on _why_ they are so convinced this is a fantastic idea. I can't help but wonder what this person is thinking. I get that they look at Oracle Linux (or maybe even Rocky Linux) and think, "there's mone…

Don’t forget they also urgently needed to paint themselves as victims of the ecosystem they shaped and nurtured for decades.

Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#97

Post by _cenw »

orf wrote: post #92
cyberpunk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM make a sheadload of money, redhat also was doing absolutely fine on support sales (up 17% in 2022, according to 'el'google) -- if they are suddenly unable to pay their developers then, sure. I don't think anyone is particularly surprised, or will miss them much. It's just kinda sad to see what was a reasonably happy opensource success story end with a giant corporation shutting down some of their releases out of…

You’re not in their sales funnel and lots of things look healthy from the outside that actually are not.

it seems to correlate more with the ibm acquisition

Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#98

Post by sudosysgen »

wmf wrote: post #79
ilyt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They gotta eat, how do you propose to feed them? They managed to do that just fine pre IBM acquisition

Commercial pure open source was a ZIRP phenomenon.

No, it isn't. Selling support is actually profitable. Red Hat is an example of that, in 2018 they had a very healthy 13% profit margin, and they are still profitable to this day. Red Hat wasn't in debt either, it had net assets. I don't see how the end of ZIRP had a disproportionate negative impact on Red Hat's financial, they were and are doing just fine.

Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#99

Post by iDemonix »

busterarm wrote: post #48

It's funny. We have something like 10^5 machines all on CentOS and a decent chunk where support is important and we pay for RHEL as well. I've been through a few firms like this all operating this way since 2007 or so... We were looking at Rocky Linux, but that no longer makes sense in light of recent news. So along with moving all of that CentOS infrastructure to something else, it no longer makes sense to stick wit…

Similar boat here, and know of many other companies in the same situation (although we chose Alma).

We thought we were on a good proven path of paying for support where we need it, and using the downstream alternatives when we didn't. Turns out we should have more seriously considered a move to Debian...

I'm not really shocked Red Hat are trying to squeeze more money out of their existing audience, everything they offer is eye-wateringly expensive nowadays. I almost choked when I got a quote back for the Ansible automation platform, before installing AWX for free.

Re: A response to the git.centos.org changes

#100

Post by fariszr »

belltaco wrote: post #6

> Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity Doesn't Red Hat do the same thing for many packages? Do they substantially contribute to every single project they distribute? I wonder if this w…

A GPLv4 forbidding that wouldn't be matching the Open source definition. What is the condition going to be called? You have to make your source open for everyone, even if they don't use your products?

Also, RHELs main point is giving a much longer support life cycle than the original dev, so they are contributing for sure. Heck Python 2 is still supported on RHEL 8, even though It's now EOL.

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