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I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

jeffgeerling.com

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

#341

Post by dmix »

lproven wrote: post #205
dmix wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that said, as far as I know, one guy used the term "freeloaders" and the context wasn't clear at all who he was talking about, and certainly not clear whether that is one person's opinion. Yeah, Red Hat wasn't the one that called them "freeloaders", this was language The Register used in an article: >> Having given the move time to successfully eliminate most of the clones, Red Hat then killed off its own offic…

Hi there. I am the author of the Register article that you quote: > this was language The Register used in an article So, in response to that, I'd like to point out a few things. 1. This is, I feel, now widely and well-established language in this discussion. For example, note its use in the comments to this article about the discontinuation of CentOS Linux three years ago: https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-c…

Thanks for the clarification. I'd just like to add it wasn't a knock on your journalism or a suggestion it was a pureposeful misrepresention, just wanted to re-cite the authors citation in his Youtube video here

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

#342

Post by symlinkk »

freedomben wrote: post #307
symlinkk wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re running something in production you’re almost certainly making money off of it, so maybe you should send some of that money to RedHat for licenses?

> If you’re running something in production you’re almost certainly making money off of it That is an extremely incorrect premise. There are tons of things in production that people don't make money on. Tons of new products don't make money for many years. And even if it is profitable, profit margins are often thin and RHEL is not cheap. I have about 10 services in public-facing production right now (on Alma), and on…

So what if a company isn’t profitable? Do you think that companies don’t need to pay for electricity or rent just because they’re not profitable?

As for your “personal/private services”, aren’t those covered for free under the RHEL individual developer subscription?

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

#343

Post by Yeroc »

ruraljuror wrote: post #329
jlbooker wrote: post #78

The IBM MBAs have finally taken over Redhat. Anything to squeeze another dollar out, even if it's counterproductive in the long term. We knew it would happen. Honestly I'm surprised it took this long.

I hear a lot of this sentiment, but from what I see both internally at rh and news publicly available there is nothing to back up what you are saying. The decision seems to have been made by many long-tenured folk. So what if the opposite of what you’re saying is true?

Perhaps long-tenured folk that are now incentivized differently from how they were previously?

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

#344

Post by bzt »

error503 wrote: post #255
microtonal wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but that doesn't mean that Red Hat does have to give you the source code. They only have to provide the source code to customers to which they distribute the binaries. Of course, for GPL code, their customers could redistribute the source code. AFAIK, the current kerfuffle is about providing RHEL source packages through git.centos.org. They currently only provide RHEL through a subscription and they fulfill th…

>Of course, for GPL code, their customers could redistribute the source code. The fact that the subscription agreement does not allow this is exactly what we're discussing here.

> The fact that the subscription agreement does not allow this is exactly what we're discussing here.

There's nothing to discuss. What Red Hat is trying to do IS ILLEGAL and GPL explicitly grants the right to all their subscribers to gave RH the finger.

From GPL Section 8 "If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term."

It is obvious that the "subscription agreement which denies the right to redistribute" is a "further restriction" that GPL legally allows users to simply ignore.

Also Red Hat violating GPL is unquestionably clear from the Preamble: "To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others."

RH asking users to surrender their rights and revoking any subscription for redistributing is clearly violating its responsibilities as demanded by the GPL.

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

#345

Post by evan1107 »

bvrmn wrote: post #318
mattdm wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no any guarantees Stream doesn't break ABI compatibility. This is incorrect. Or, sure, there are no _guarantees_, but any such break would also break a future RHEL release, and is therefore a bug. 2. Five years.

> Five years So basically 2 times less, nice.

Isn’t that the same amount of time Rocky would be supported?

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

#346

Post by LaSombra »

solamarpreet wrote: post #231
neverartful wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is Red Hat not abiding by the license? My understanding is that Red Hat is making the source code available to their users via their customer portal. I don't think that they have an obligation to make their source code available to non-users.

They have an obligation under the GPL to allow end users to redistribute. Terminating the subscriber agreement for redistribution is punishing the user for exercising his right granted to him by the GPL.

End users are allowed to redistribute the source they received from Red Hat at their hearts content. What Red Hat is terminating, from my understanding, is the future access to new binaries and sources due to the service contract becoming void.

Your server will keep running, you'll have the sources for all the server's binaries, but no more support.

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

#347

Post by LaSombra »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #276
LaSombra wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto makers, TV makers, and others use GPL software left and right and they don't, or rarely, offer a easy way to obtain it. How's it different?

> Auto makers, TV makers, and others use GPL software left and right and they don't, or rarely, offer a easy way to obtain it. To be clear, if they don't provide source code of GPL software to customers, that's an actual outright violation of the license.

Correct. But don't you have to be an owner of their products to ask for the GPL'ed code?

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

#348

Post by LaSombra »

Stranger43 wrote: post #271
dmix wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will turn people off Red Hat Will it turn paying customers off Red Hat? (Honest question)

Not directly but it might cause some upstream vendors and projects to rethink weather they want to recommend Red Hat as preferred platform and if the hosting vendors turn off the Red Hat clones that's going to ripple back to Red Hat, as a lot of corporate linux users will gravitate to the distro that's recommended by the application vendors. Part of how canonical challenged Red Hat is that they deliberately made it r…

I'm still waiting on their IPO to find out how well this strategy is working for them.

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

#349

Post by [deleted] »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #186
jzb wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me preface this by saying, Jeff owes Red Hat nothing and he's free to stop "supporting" RHEL for any or no reason at all. That said, "grab a copy of Linux" seriously, gloriously, hilariously handwaves away so many things that Red Hat does to create a RHEL release. Red Hat pulls together hundreds or thousands of upstreams to create RHEL, participates in many of them, tests all that together , helps partners certif…

I think the main thrust of all of this is to de-commodify Linux. To make RHEL really be in people's minds it's own operating system outside of Linux. It's hard to do when it's really just a ball of generic open source components. Hence, this hostile behaviour. They don't want to be Linux, they want to be RHEL and ask not about the man behind the curtain.

[deleted]

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

#350

Post by phone8675309 »

adrian_b wrote: post #319
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose RHEL uses basically the same kernel, with patches that don't alter its interface too substantially. So I presume that a driver in source form, or even partly in binary blob form, should build and work approximately equally well with any stock kernel. No, I think that's exactly the difference; Linux (in)famously has no stable ABI for drivers, and regularly makes changes that break things if you don't recom…

Yes, exactly this. Maintaining any kernel modules that are not in the Linux kernel tree is extremely painful. Almost every new kernel version breaks the older kernel modules, e.g. device drivers, by moving definitions between kernel headers, by adding or deleting function parameters, or by adding or deleting structure members. Most of these changes are very poorly documented, so anyone who does not follow daily the k…

The kernel devs argue that the goal should be to get in-tree so these changes are taken care of for you by the people driving the ABI changes, and I happen to agree with them in that regard.
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