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SUSE is forking RHEL

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Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#51

Post by zvmaz »

imiric wrote: post #20
silisili wrote: post #4

I'm continually baffled that so many companies follow RHEL compatibility to this day. I've been using Linux for nearly 30 years. Admining as a profession for at least a quarter of that. 20 years ago, it made a ton of sense. Today, less so. The 'stable version but we backport patches' mantra doesn't make any sense today. I can't even describe how many things that have broken that you can't even find an answer for beca…

Red Hat offers corporate support contracts, while other distros have community or consultant support at best. This is attractive to executive managers in corporations, as they can be seen as investing into a mature technology, and the systems are contractually guaranteed to keep running by a 3rd party, so shifting blame is easy.

> so shifting blame is easy.

But are the contracts actually useful? I wager that to have support from Red Hat is really useful beyond what you may view as "corporate politics".

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#52

Post by b112 »

usrusr wrote: post #36
b112 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'stable version but we backport patches' mantra Just because Redhat handles this poorly (like pretty much everything), does not make the model bad. For example, almost every single security update on Debian, is backported when not handled by upstream. And there is a lot of that. You lose so much stability, if you track all-new. In fact, you literally spend more time chasing underlying bugs, instead your bugs, and…

Makes me wonder who they are, the nameless heroes who run into all those bugs so we don't have to.

Anyone running Debian testing, and filing bug reports, is your hero.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#53

Post by pgeorgi »

GlacierFox wrote: post #34
gigatexal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol no. This is a wholly disingeneous move. "[SuSe] ... announced it is forking publicly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and will develop and maintain a RHEL-compatible distribution available to all without restrictions." How will they confirm that their fork is compatible? Probably using RedHat supplied UBI docker/container images. So they're just becoming another add-no-value clone. Wow, give whoever came…

Totally agree, that was my first impression after reading. If anything, it seems antagonistic and petty. I mean, why would you not just focus on your own product rather than put resources towards this strange 'Look we're helping! Red Hat Bad!' stance that offers no value to anyone.

SUSE has customers with mixed-distro deployments that were supported by SUSE Liberty Linux. Those customers might have had questions about what happens now. This seems to be one part of the answer.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#54

Post by drumhead »

xinayder wrote: post #9
saw-lau wrote: post #5

I guess the unwritten part of that press release is the fact that Red Hat are taking RHEL in some sort of proprietary direction? Is anybody able to TL;DR me an explanation of what's going on?

Red Hat announced that they are no longer providing updates to the downstream repo at git.centos.org and blamed that a lot of people are taking the sources and not contributing back, essentially just rebuilding and rebranding "their code". To obtain access to the git repo you now need to subscribe to Red Hat Developer Portal, but there are other ways to obtain the package sources as Rocky Linux is going to do in the…

They chose a business model built on open source, and now they don't like it because they can't suck enough profit from it. Maybe they should just build their own proprietary operating system from scratch.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#55

Post by getoffmyyawn »

zvmaz wrote: post #51
imiric wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Hat offers corporate support contracts, while other distros have community or consultant support at best. This is attractive to executive managers in corporations, as they can be seen as investing into a mature technology, and the systems are contractually guaranteed to keep running by a 3rd party, so shifting blame is easy.

> so shifting blame is easy. But are the contracts actually useful? I wager that to have support from Red Hat is really useful beyond what you may view as "corporate politics".

Yes, very. I previously worked for RH and there really wasn't a top end of support options. I knew of companies with a contract that had RH maintaining custom kernel patched for them. Another paid for a highly skilled SRE to be in their office ready to help anytime. A small number of companies are willing to pay a lot of money for these kinds of options.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#56

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

gigatexal wrote: post #6
mariuolo wrote: post #2

Clever idea. They will gradually lure users their way.

Lol no. This is a wholly disingeneous move. "[SuSe] ... announced it is forking publicly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and will develop and maintain a RHEL-compatible distribution available to all without restrictions." How will they confirm that their fork is compatible? Probably using RedHat supplied UBI docker/container images. So they're just becoming another add-no-value clone. Wow, give whoever came…

RedHat also built their business on the backs of other peoples work, sure they make contributions back but I’m sure they’re minuscule when compared to profit. They read, understood and accepted licences for the products they on-sell and are now throwing their toys out of the pram when the free market does what it was always inevitably going to do with their in-house tech.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#57

Post by CrLf »

What is this supposed to be? SUSE responding to Red Hat obstructing RHEL clones by creating a new RHEL clone? Or are they forking RHEL into something that will try to remain compatible, while not being a clone?

The latter is what Red Hat seems to want: a broader ecosystem that competes with Debian on community, while allowing Red Hat to sell RHEL with an "original recipe" sticker.

SUSE coming out with an announcement that effectively cannibalizes its existing enterprise distribution kind of makes Red Hat's move look risky, but perhaps not dumb after all.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#58

Post by drumhead »

dspillett wrote: post #30
xinayder wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Hat announced that they are no longer providing updates to the downstream repo at git.centos.org and blamed that a lot of people are taking the sources and not contributing back, essentially just rebuilding and rebranding "their code". To obtain access to the git repo you now need to subscribe to Red Hat Developer Portal, but there are other ways to obtain the package sources as Rocky Linux is going to do in the…

> and blamed that a lot of people are taking the sources and not contributing back Yet when commercial entities take code and don't contribute back, it is “just how things work”. While I appreciate that RedHat has been a good player overall compared to many others, this comes across as the kid at school happy to throw icy snowballs at everyone else moaning because they got hit by return fire. How unfair of the open s…

They contributed because it's in their best interest, and they also took down a route with Systemd that went against the philosophy of nix systems. If we're not careful we'll end up losing control of Linux or large parts of it to profit seeking corporations that don't have the free and open software movement on their agenda at all.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#59

Post by neurostimulant »

zvmaz wrote: post #51
imiric wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Hat offers corporate support contracts, while other distros have community or consultant support at best. This is attractive to executive managers in corporations, as they can be seen as investing into a mature technology, and the systems are contractually guaranteed to keep running by a 3rd party, so shifting blame is easy.

> so shifting blame is easy. But are the contracts actually useful? I wager that to have support from Red Hat is really useful beyond what you may view as "corporate politics".

Maybe not, but when your certification requires using supported OS and patching know exploits as soon as possible, then you don't have much distro options to choose from if you want easier time to pass an audit.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#60

Post by ossusermivami »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #56
gigatexal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol no. This is a wholly disingeneous move. "[SuSe] ... announced it is forking publicly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and will develop and maintain a RHEL-compatible distribution available to all without restrictions." How will they confirm that their fork is compatible? Probably using RedHat supplied UBI docker/container images. So they're just becoming another add-no-value clone. Wow, give whoever came…

RedHat also built their business on the backs of other peoples work, sure they make contributions back but I’m sure they’re minuscule when compared to profit. They read, understood and accepted licences for the products they on-sell and are now throwing their toys out of the pram when the free market does what it was always inevitably going to do with their in-house tech.

> but I’m sure they’re minuscule when compared to profit.

how can you be so sure? Do you have insights on Red Hat finance we don't know about?

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