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CIQ, Oracle, SUSE Create Open Enterprise Linux Association

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Re: CIQ, Oracle, SUSE Create Open Enterprise Linux Association

#13

Post by colechristensen »

1MachineElf wrote: post #11

I suppose this is both good and bad. I wonder if Red Hat/IBM anticipated this, and how they will respond to it.

Eh, it's good. IBM didn't want to continue supporting community things and so here we are, the RedHat business model was a bit tricky and increasingly so because of cloud computing.

The great value of RedHat was supported software. You could buy one of those $10,000 per seat software packages for some engineering discipline that was guaranteed to work by RedHat and the vendor and if it wasn't they were quite motivated and helpful in fixing your problem quickly.

RedHat also was trusted to monitor and fix security problems quickly, and was in the privileged position of getting notifications about them before they were public so they could be fixed.

The question is how do you get people to fund these two things?

Re: CIQ, Oracle, SUSE Create Open Enterprise Linux Association

#14

Post by lbhdc »

1MachineElf wrote: post #11

I suppose this is both good and bad. I wonder if Red Hat/IBM anticipated this, and how they will respond to it.

I am curious how they feel as well. It seems like it won't impact their support contracts since things built with openela will be rhel compatible. But surely they cut people off for moat reasons.

Why do you think this is a bad change? I was thinking additional players in the space would make for a more robust ecosystem.

Re: CIQ, Oracle, SUSE Create Open Enterprise Linux Association

#15

Post by mfer »

infamouscow wrote: post #4

I wish they went for a 501(c)3 non-profit, rather than a 501(c)6 trade organization. The incentives between these two structures make a world of difference.

You will find that many of the open source backing non-profits are trade organizations. Some notable examples:

- The Linux Foundation (which includes the CNCF and OpenJS Foundation)

- Rust Foundation

- Bytecode Alliance

I don't mean to provide an opinion on incentives (and they are different as the parent suggests). I just mean to share that trade organizations are already common.

Disclaimer: I work for SUSE but not on OpenELA. I am also a maintainer of CNCF projects and on the CNCF TOC.

Re: CIQ, Oracle, SUSE Create Open Enterprise Linux Association

#17

Post by CrLf »

This is United Linux 21 years later. But this time, instead of building a distribution to compete with Red Hat, it's based on Red Hat (in practice, it is Red Hat).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Linux

> "No subscriptions. No passwords. No barriers. Freeloaders welcome."

I'm sure they're trying to be cheeky. But it also comes off as confirming Red Hat's position. OpenELA isn't about community, it's about having a base (i.e. bug-for-bug RHEL clone) upon which to sell support contracts.

If you really want to stay in the Red Hat ecosystem, I'd suggest going with AlmaLinux instead. They seem to have a more honest understanding of what "community" means.

Some people are throwing the word "freeloaders" around. It seems clear that "freeloaders" are not people running RHEL clones, but indeed there are some "freeloaders" in the community.

Re: CIQ, Oracle, SUSE Create Open Enterprise Linux Association

#19

Post by nhanlon »

infamouscow wrote: post #4

I wish they went for a 501(c)3 non-profit, rather than a 501(c)6 trade organization. The incentives between these two structures make a world of difference.

It's incredibly difficult (read: impossible) for this type of organization to be a true 501(c)3.
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