Red Hat Continues Pleading The Case For Its CentOS Changes

[kpedersen]

All you guys that are pissed about it can move on to Oracle...

Heh not likely. You see, open-source is about more than being a "freetard" and receiving handouts. It is about ensuring choice. The community will basically just re-make a CentOS2 in time. Really not hard, mostly infrastructure and then search and replace. There are also *zero* unknowns in this because it has already been done before .

The original founders behind CentOS (before IBM/RedHat infiltrated them) have started up basically CentOS 2. Check it out here: https://rockylinux.org/

As for people who are upset about this change... I can only assume they are not CentOS users. It was fairly obvious that RedHat was taking over the project about 4 years ago. Remember the big announcement that they started collaborating? Most in the community (who had a little bit of foresight) left at that point. Lets use this as a learning experience and hopefully RockyLinux will remain "corporate bias" free this time .

The *only* move that RedHat can pull now is try to fragment the community a little so no single replacement project gets together. And we will thrash around for a while. Quite how they are going to do this I am not sure. Perhaps pretend to rethink CentOS Streams for a couple of years?

[computerquip]

Oracle really isn't a viable alternative if you care about open-source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=34m7s
They have zero track record that says they're good to open-source and all the track record that says they don't care about open-source. You're naive and/or blind if you say otherwise.

[skeevy420]

yes. It has been confirmed by several reliable sources that this has been a RH move not imposed by IBM. And this make it even more unexplainable.

Not really. CentOS basically split the RH community in two because RHEL isn't a free distribution. If one actually needs RHEL and they can't afford it then they can sign up for a free RH account and get RHEL for free...that isn't right out on their main page, but it is an option. If that's asking too much then they can use CentOS Stream.

I wish they'd just rebrand it as RH Stream. That's how they're treating it. I think most people are just upset that it keeps the CentOS name and putting it under the RH umbrella would remove that soreness.

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And all y'all blabbing on about freeloaders sound stupid. That's one of the biggest selling points of Linux, BSD, and free software in general and why all these CentOS replacements popped up the second this was announced. Yes, "all these other folks did neat shit so I can take it, e.g. freeload, and do this other neat shit for my own personal use" is one of the biggest features of open source software. I reckon that's why almost all of us got into Linux and using open source software to begin with.

[computerquip]

Not really. CentOS basically split the RH community in two because RHEL isn't a free distribution. If one actually needs RHEL and they can't afford it then they can sign up for a free RH account and get RHEL for free...that isn't right out on their main page, but it is an option. If that's asking too much then they can use CentOS Stream.

I wish they'd just rebrand it as RH Stream. That's how they're treating it. I think most people are just upset that it keeps the CentOS name and putting it under the RH umbrella would remove that soreness.

---

And all y'all blabbing on about freeloaders sound stupid. That's one of the biggest selling points of Linux, BSD, and free software in general and why all these CentOS replacements popped up the second this was announced. Yes, "all these other folks did neat shit so I can take it, e.g. freeload, and do this other neat shit for my own personal use" is one of the biggest features of open source software. I reckon that's why almost all of us got into Linux and using open source software to begin with.

No. You're confusing free speech and free beer. People got into open-source because of free speech. You're advocating for free beer which is not what things like GPL or Linux was originally about. GPL, in various ways, encourages the sale of GPL'd software. Just because you don't see it that way, doesn't mean people don't need to put food on the table.

[duby229]

And all y'all blabbing on about freeloaders sound stupid. That's one of the biggest selling points of Linux, BSD, and free software in general and why all these CentOS replacements popped up the second this was announced. Yes, "all these other folks did neat shit so I can take it, e.g. freeload, and do this other neat shit for my own personal use" is one of the biggest features of open source software. I reckon that's why almost all of us got into Linux and using open source software to begin with.

That's total nonsense, it's not at all about being free of charge, it's all about being free to modify... Lets see how far that gets you when there is nothing to modify...

[MadeUpName]

There are people in this thread making it sound like RH writes every single line of code in a RH distro. I hate to burst your bubble but if very one else is a freeloader then so is Redhat.

[mroche]

That said, if you as a company relied on CentOS 8, you probably don't have much of an excuse to not have an active RHEL subscription and should just be using RHEL 8 anyways.

Unfortunately, that statement only applies in an ideal world. There are a lot of businesses and units out there that run CentOS _specifically_ because they cannot afford RHEL licenses but still need the compatibility due to industry reasons (and yes it's Linux, but not everything running on it is open source and rebuildable). For example, my current employer has been running CentOS for years now (after transitioning from Fedora Core), and a reason they're not using RHEL is that the former parent company would absolutely not give them the funding for it. It's a similar situation for people in areas like HPC or Academia, or different business units where they don't have a say in where funds are allocated.

With our new parent company we are investigating the ability to transition to RHEL (as a few other business units do use it, but another group just finished transitioning from RHEL to CentOS), but it's not a guarantee. And with how our funding is allocated, that could be a potential major hit to funding that could have otherwise been applied to hiring several people in key positions we are presently lacking (and from my teams perspective, desperately need).

We also don't really need the Red Hat support and do just fine on our own, but you aren't allowed to use the Self-Support licenses (which would save some money) in a production environment.

Cheers,
Mike

[andyprough]

Michael, who is this RedHat company you keep speaking of? All that legally exists is IBM, for well over a year now.

[torsionbar28]

Michael, who is this RedHat company you keep speaking of? All that legally exists is IBM, for well over a year now.

False. It is still Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat is still its own legally incorporated entity. The difference is that now IBM owns this entity, rather than Red Hat shareholders. Google "wholly owned subsidiary" for more information.

[torsionbar28]

Unfortunately, that statement only applies in an ideal world. There are a lot of businesses and units out there that run CentOS _specifically_ because they cannot afford RHEL licenses but still need the compatibility due to industry reasons (and yes it's Linux, but not everything running on it is open source and rebuildable). For example, my current employer has been running CentOS for years now (after transitioning from Fedora Core), and a reason they're not using RHEL is that the former parent company would absolutely not give them the funding for it. It's a similar situation for people in areas like HPC or Academia, or different business units where they don't have a say in where funds are allocated.

With our new parent company we are investigating the ability to transition to RHEL (as a few other business units do use it, but another group just finished transitioning from RHEL to CentOS), but it's not a guarantee. And with how our funding is allocated, that could be a potential major hit to funding that could have otherwise been applied to hiring several people in key positions we are presently lacking (and from my teams perspective, desperately need).

On the plus side, your organization is 100% Microsoft-free, as MSFT doesn't offer any free Windows distros either. Must be nice working in a totally Windows-less world!

Edit: I find it difficult to believe that self-support RHEL server licenses at $349 each would be any impediment to hiring. Even with 100 licenses, that's under $35k per year, not even enough to hire a single "key position" type person. You can barely hire one McD's burger flipper for that price.