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Keeping Open Source Open

rockylinux.org

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Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#141

Post by smarx007 »

smarx007 wrote: post #140
geerlingguy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote this a couple days ago, sums it up: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/gplv2-red-hat-and-you tl;dr - GPLv2 requires no restriction on free/paid recipients of binaries to also freely redistribute source code. Red Hat EULA says your subscription will be canceled if you redistribute the source code. Is that a restriction? A couple OSS laywers I spoke to said no. Common sense says it feels an awful lot like i…

But they do make all of that source code available under CentOS Stream. GPL does not require an SLA for providing source code of all bugfixes and security patches free of charge in under 24h. Just embargoing security patches for 1-2 weeks from Stream would be a good enough move for RH to signal to enterprise customers that Rocky/Alma are not a drop-in gratis replacement for RHEL in production systems.

I think what RH did is ethically questionable but is a great development for the use of GPL in the enterprise (for releasing SW under GPL that would otherwise remain closed-source): there is now a path for respecting GPL freedoms (in a slightly round-about way) without necessarily making the product gratis.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#142

Post by bonzini »

pipo234 wrote: post #139
bonzini wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could be done to improve it (while keeping in mind that Red Hat needs $$$ to continue development)?

Okay, let's start with the software itself being free. That is, no-one pays for distribution or use, creation is sponsored voluntarily (contributions, donations) but this is not sustainable. Customers may want to pay for training and consultancy, managed hosting, hardware, feature development, hand holding, insurance, productizing, etc. This is the business that RedHat is in, but so are MontaVista, AWS, vmware, Googl…

So two free distros are not enough, got it.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#143

Post by happymellon »

worthless-trash wrote: post #106
zingplex wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like GPLv3 was written to counter tivoization, I’d love a GPLv4 to kill what RedHat is doing before they do irreparable the entire free software ecosystem.

In this case, is the change you imagine GPLv4 would say "you cant prevent anyone, at any point from downloading the source code from a project you create" because that is super slippery slope? I'd also like to ask, what damage do you see this change in behavior doing to free software ecosystem ?

It seems pretty mad. Apparently Redhat doing all of their work as GPL'ed OpenSource and upstreaming everything so that everyone benefits, and anyone can take the software and build their own, sell it, etc, isn't good enough.

Is literally the only thing that would make people happy is to give away RHEL for free for people to run their production servers on?

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#144

Post by mroche »

geerlingguy wrote: post #79
musicale wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking rpm in cloud and container instances seems like a losing strategy.

Yeah, instead of just upsetting the downstream 'rebuilders', you start upsetting enterprise customers too.

The use of UBI to gather sources is maddening to me. It actively inhibits opportunities we have to get the UBI package set expanded, something I'm working on for my industry. Their use of UBI for this purpose is getting in the way of enabling officially provided and unencumbered containerized RHEL for public consumption.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#145

Post by happymellon »

giamma wrote: post #125
worthless-trash wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not at all in conflict with the upstream first, if so please tell me how you see it being in conflict.

The blog post says: "Previously, we obtained the source code for Rocky Linux exclusively from the CentOS Git repository as they recommended. However, this repository no longer hosts all of the versions corresponding to RHEL. Consequently, we now have to gather the source code from multiple sources, including CentOS Stream, pristine upstream packages, and RHEL SRPMs." Why would you need RHEL SRPMS if the upstream pack…

That's not "upstream first".

They are going upstream because of a zero day patch that RedHat have, and is also upstreamed. Hence why they are going upstream, to get the upstreamed patch that CentOS has not merged yet. So your entire argument appears to be that RedHat are doing upstream first.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#146

Post by account42 »

bonzini wrote: post #132
pipo234 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, who can? RH is still leading and sponsoring a lot of Linux development — that's the goodwill part. But maaaann, for quite a while RHEL has not been a very welcoming and inviting distro (unless you're the one checking the boxes on the corporate procurement form).

What could be done to improve it (while keeping in mind that Red Hat needs $$$ to continue development)?

They seem to have been able to fund development before. So what changed? Just the new corporate overlord that wants a return on their investment?

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#147

Post by dogben »

Jedd wrote: post #87

Free. That word does not appear at all in TFA. In the IBM/RH blog post it references[1] the word appears once, disparagingly, in the gratis sense. I appreciate the beer / speech distinction can get tiring to explain repeatedly, but it feels like the move to distance themselves from the deeper implications & obligations of free is, shall we say, very carefully calculated. [1] https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hats-co…

This makes me feel very uncomfortable.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#148

Post by bonzini »

account42 wrote: post #146
bonzini wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could be done to improve it (while keeping in mind that Red Hat needs $$$ to continue development)?

They seem to have been able to fund development before. So what changed? Just the new corporate overlord that wants a return on their investment?

Quoting Reddit: "The problem of rebuilders has been around forever. Things heated up a couple of months ago when we detected what we think was a continued bad-faith action from one of the rebuilders, not on the code/engineering side but on the commercial/money making side of their house. That's as far as I'll go publicly. After that it was just a matter of discussion on what to do about it, so we landed on the announcements I made last week."

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#149

Post by geerlingguy »

solarengineer wrote: post #109
musicale wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making it obvious ...that no one gives a flying f*k about "free as in freedom" because all the uprising was always about either the free beer Indeed - Red Hat is making it obvious that IBM (like most large companies) views open source as free beer - or rather free labor. It's great when they get other people's labor for free, as long as they don't have to give away any of their own.

Per this link: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source-program-office/c... "Communities we contribute to Red Hat is a proud contributor to all aspects of the software stack, from the operating system and developer toolchain to middleware, desktop, and cloud. We financially support a number of open source organizations who help us create and maintain better open source software. We also contribute to a wide range…

I've seen plenty of posts on Twitter, Medium, on the Fedora mailing list, and elsewhere by individual contributors and industry veterans (some of whom had storied careers at Red Hat) who are not happy with Red Hat's decision.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#150

Post by geerlingguy »

worthless-trash wrote: post #106
zingplex wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like GPLv3 was written to counter tivoization, I’d love a GPLv4 to kill what RedHat is doing before they do irreparable the entire free software ecosystem.

In this case, is the change you imagine GPLv4 would say "you cant prevent anyone, at any point from downloading the source code from a project you create" because that is super slippery slope? I'd also like to ask, what damage do you see this change in behavior doing to free software ecosystem ?

The damage is corporations could now determine whether they classify downstream use of open source code as "valuable" or "not valuable", and determine (according to their own rubrics) whether to effectively end the open source gravy train in their own ecosystem, or be a member of the open source community and share alike.

Despite every attempt by Red Hat employees to call out CentOS Stream as being "Red Hat sources", it is not. If they wish to participate in the open source ecosystem, they can't coerce customers (paid or not) into a particular (very proprietary) usage pattern with their software. No matter how many tens/hundreds/thousands of employees they hire to code for open source projects.

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