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Keeping Open Source Open

rockylinux.org

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221–230 of 253 posts

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#221

Post by isignal »

bonzini wrote: post #15
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…

> 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…

It would make sense if they started out building a proprietary os (for which, btw, the count of people you mentioned is not enough, Microsoft employs vastly more people). If they contribute to open source projects and then cry for compensation, it makes no sense. They can expect compensation for services sure, but not for their open source contribution code. Those are the rules they are playing by. Not to mention that there’s vastly many more contributors who aren’t getting compensated.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#222

Post by geerlingguy »

mackca wrote: post #187
geerlingguy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the open source social contract is downstreaming too. You can't just take, promise to give back, and then hoard what you've built.

downstreaming ? How is the open source social contract anymore than making source code available?

That's what I mean. Not putting up a EULA dam. They don't have to build CentOS or assist anyone, but they can't block the code from flowing downhill.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#223

Post by geerlingguy »

mackca wrote: post #183
geerlingguy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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",…

So Red Hat is saying that CentOS Stream is how RHEL is built, you are saying it is not. Can you show the difference in packages from CentOS Stream and RHEL? Rocky says they pull packages from CentOS Stream, and with their project goal remaining 1:1 binary compatibility then that must be the case.

So far I have talked to two individual developers who have not been able to reproduce a RHEL 9.2 build only using what's available in Stream.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#224

Post by toyg »

bonzini wrote: post #206
toyg wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Obviously by then it will be too late to do anything about it.

It's like when they bought CentOS - some people started making plans, fearing they would discontinue it. Others went "call me back when it happens". Then it happened.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#225

Post by gbraad »

gbraad wrote: post #201
raesene9 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Note: I am not talking about 'individual contribs' but those representing the projects.

Alma at least addresses this: https://almalinux.org/blog/our-value-is-our-values/

Rocky?

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#226

Post by nhanlon »

piaste wrote: post #179
nhanlon wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL Nothing I write is useful.

Carl George, a principal SWE at Red Hat, claimed to have found exactly one code contribution from the Rocky Linux or Alma projects back to RHEL - a two-line bugfix in a .spec post script. https://old.reddit.com/r/redhat/comments/14jq5i7/red_hats_co... (Which is only what I, an ignoramus, would expect - if the project aims for "bug-for-bug compatibility", then it doesn't really gain much value from fixing bugs, while…

Yes, I am aware of Carl and his biases.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#227

Post by mackca »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #211
mackca wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But according to Red Hat in the interview linked below all of RHEL is built from CentOS Stream, is having the source code available in CentOS Stream Gitlab not adhering to GPL ?

Nope. Centos Steam is merely upstream of RHEL. GPL stipulates that when you give someone else a binary, you also give them the source to that binary, not something similar.

Isn't that the whole issue here? Customers and people with Developer licenses can get the exact RHEL binaries "behind the paywall". And even then if something is upstream does that not mean that the same code flows down stream?

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#228

Post by jrm4 »

bonzini wrote: post #192
pravus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you should be well aware of community expectations. And so should Red Hat.

Community expectations aren't necessarily correct and probably won't help paying the salary of thousands of engineers.

Sorry, but the people who started this in no way were prioritizing anyone's salary. They had a vision of freedom, and THAT VISION -- more than "someone trying to do a company" -- is what got the best parts of this software going. One company that can't make the numbers work ain't my problem.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#229

Post by mackca »

geerlingguy wrote: post #222
mackca wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

downstreaming ? How is the open source social contract anymore than making source code available?

That's what I mean. Not putting up a EULA dam. They don't have to build CentOS or assist anyone, but they can't block the code from flowing downhill.

According to Red Hat the source of RHEL is publicly available on CentOS Stream Gitlab, without a EULA.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#230

Post by bonzini »

jrm4 wrote: post #228
bonzini wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Community expectations aren't necessarily correct and probably won't help paying the salary of thousands of engineers.

Sorry, but the people who started this in no way were prioritizing anyone's salary. They had a vision of freedom, and THAT VISION -- more than "someone trying to do a company" -- is what got the best parts of this software going. One company that can't make the numbers work ain't my problem.

And you're wrong. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

"Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development". Paying salaries is a way to fund developers. Ergo, distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds to pay the salaries of free software developers.

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