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Keeping Open Source Open

rockylinux.org

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Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#201

Post by gbraad »

raesene9 wrote: post #184
piaste wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trusting Carl George's words here: https://old.reddit.com/r/redhat/comments/14jq5i7/red_hats_co... Those Rocky Linux repos are either not code (website, wiki, etc.), and a few are tools for repackaging/rebranding an existing Linux distro's source code bug-for-bug - an activity which, by definition , does not and cannot offer anything more than the original code already did.

If I'm reading that reddit comment correctly it referred to contributions to RHEL not contributions to open source, which if I'm reading it correctly was what your original comment stated. It seems that Rocky Linux have contributed code as open source, just not directly to RHEL.

... or related upstream.

not migrate2rocky, or almalinux-deploy. But if you look closely, they are mostly 'infrastructure' tooling to sync sources or deal with build nodes.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#203

Post by luma »

bonzini wrote: post #99
jillesvangurp wrote: post #92

The solution here is forking and accepting that IBM just doesn't want to share. The whole value of the Red Hat eco system is lots of people using the down stream variants. Actual direct licensees of Red Hat are not where most of the action is. The value creation is actually distributed across the ecosystem. People encounter issues, report them, and fixes are distributed. If you break that cycle and get IBM out of the…

> IBM will grumble a bit and then ultimately join the foundation because their alternative will be just writing off the investment they made in Red Hat and watch from the sidelines how most of the ecosystem stops depending on IBM's Red Hat. You could have said that if they switched to using CentOS Stream, and that would even have been my favorite outcome as a Red Hat employee. However, Rocky Linux is neither a siblin…

And without the GPL and all the code that came with it, there would be no RH. Rocky is making use of the same legal protection that RH is. Yes, RH spends more on development but they are doing so using the tools and existing codebase given to them, for free, by others.

Rocky is doing something no different than what RH is doing, and if this is problematic for RH's hopes of sucking in a few $B, that's more a problem with RH's business model than it is Rocky's. They have made $Bs selling support for free software, some large part of which they didn't author, and now they want to squeeze the entire ecosystem for more.

I have zero sympathy for RH and fully support Rocky's approach here. This is a problem of RH's own creation and trying to deflect the blame onto Rocky is absurd.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#204

Post by toyg »

mrweasel wrote: post #129
toyg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't easily do that without really risking to break the gpl. Btw, Rocky, Oracle and Alma cannot fork; their entire value proposition is being RH-compatible. What could happen is a new giant trying to displace RH as the reference Linux platform, poaching significant amounts of devs from RH. That would require years and billions of dollars though.

> They can't easily do that without really risking to break the gpl. Why wouldn't they be able to do that? Sure, they can't patch the kernel or any of the existing stuff, but what would prevent them from writing a Grub replacement or a Red Hat shell? It has to be free of GPL code, but the operating system as a whole isn't what's under the GPL, it's the individual components, some of which aren't GPL, but BSD, MIT, IS…

Red hat does a lot of work in kernel, subsystems, and libraries, where linking is necessary. They can, more or less, happily ignore the legal landscape as long as they stay open, because those licenses are interoperable; the minute they started closing things, they would have to pay a lot of attention not to break gpl constraints.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#205

Post by bonzini »

luma wrote: post #203
bonzini wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IBM will grumble a bit and then ultimately join the foundation because their alternative will be just writing off the investment they made in Red Hat and watch from the sidelines how most of the ecosystem stops depending on IBM's Red Hat. You could have said that if they switched to using CentOS Stream, and that would even have been my favorite outcome as a Red Hat employee. However, Rocky Linux is neither a siblin…

And without the GPL and all the code that came with it, there would be no RH. Rocky is making use of the same legal protection that RH is. Yes, RH spends more on development but they are doing so using the tools and existing codebase given to them, for free, by others. Rocky is doing something no different than what RH is doing, and if this is problematic for RH's hopes of sucking in a few $B, that's more a problem w…

> Rocky is doing something no different than what RH is doing

Count the contributors to Rocky and RHEL. Then tell me how they can be "doing the same thing".

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#206

Post by bonzini »

toyg wrote: post #123
bonzini wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> somehow redhat isn't entitled to give back to Linux So it's not enough to employ more than 1000 people working on upstream/Fedora/CentOS Stream, have a strict upstream first policy for features that go into RHEL and their other products, donate to a bunch of foundations and sponsor conferences, maintain the main repository of firmware updates for Linux, be consistently in the top three contributors to Linux, open s…

They established all that when they had other priorities. Clearly they've changed their mind about a thing or two, so you can expect a lot of that to wash away, slowly.

Ok, call me back when it does.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#207

Post by mindslight »

piaste wrote: post #136
titannet wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a large part of the appeal. "Binary compatible with RHEL" sells Rocky, not "another Linux".

Regardless of the reasons, Rocky Linux does not contribute a single line of useful code to the world. Red Hat has benefited from previous contributors, but then added a ton of open source work of their own. RH are open source contributors; Rocky Linux are mere users.

Rocky routing around Redhat's attempt to hack the GPL is itself a useful contribution to the world.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#208

Post by bonzini »

luma wrote: post #174
bonzini wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 announ…

Post-IBM RH always falls back on this: we took a free operating system and made billions from selling it to others, and now we're extra-mad that somebody else is doing the same.

Why the fixation with "post-IBM"? Ever heard of PNAELV?

https://lwn.net/Articles/578768/ for the history (up until 9 years ago).

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#209

Post by rowls66 »

rodgerd wrote: post #18
cosmiccatnap wrote: post #12

It's sad to see a post like this get so much hate in the comments section. We all benefit greatly from an organization maintaining a stable Linux ecosystem and the idea that somehow redhat isn't entitled to give back to Linux as much as they have benefited from OSS goes to show just how much coolaid HN has been drinking as of late. These corporate concerns are not some law of nature and it's up to us to support peopl…

Can you explain what you think Rocky are giving back to the community?

What Rocky is giving the community is a check on Red Hat's ability to charge nearly anything they want to for RHEL. That is worth quite a bit.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#210

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

throw_a_grenade wrote: post #180
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #88

There’s one thing I don’t understand. They keep saying GPL this, GPL that. Meanwhile there has been this huge push to use permissive licenses for like two decades now, because GPL bad (you don’t have to go far, just look at any discussion around licensing here on HN). There’s nothing in .spec files that says they have the same license as the software they cover. Fedora contributions are required to come with a MIT-li…

No, it's the other way around: GPL requires that all pieces required to compile the binary (the exact binary that triggers requirement for distributing source) needs to come along. IIUC if they distribute source as SRPMs, the .spec needs to be included and without limitations (legal or technical) that would prevent user from rebuilding the original software.

Well, nothing prevents you from rebuilding the upstream tarball, or tarball with RH's patches applied even, using upstream's instructions. Doesn't have to be the identical RPM package, does it?

I don't really know how this might or might not work. My gut says that since the .spec is meaningless without the sources, it's a Modification of the work and thus the spec, patches, and the resulting SRPM is definitely a Derived Work. But every time anything quasi-legal is being brought up here or anywhere else, it gets drowned in the arguments over what the meaning of the word "is" is, so I don't know how you can twist it, legally.

But then, the elephant in the room is that IBM may decide to give away only the GPLed SRPMs, and say a big fuck you to anything more permissive. People rallying against copyleft have made quite an impact, and the GPLed landscape is shrinking.

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