Red Hat Continues Pleading The Case For Its CentOS Changes

[Alliancemd]

Used CentOS up to now only to be able to offer support for RedHat(compile binaries on older RedHat basically) without having to spend money to support their distro.
It's a shame

[lethalwp]

Alliancemd
From what i've read, you can get a free developper account and get RHEL for free. With the licensing compromise of no production use.

[Alliancemd]

Used CentOS up to now only to be able to offer support for RedHat(compile binaries on older RedHat basically) without having to spend money to support their distro.
It's a shame

I went and read the blog posts myself. I'll reply to myself
Basically, for CentOS users almost nothing changes with the exception that they are now the guinea pigs for the enterprise version.
Changes are tested on them(like the RedHat patch for the "boot hole" vulnerability that broke systems) and after a period, these are backported to the enterprise version.
My use-case is not affected: CIs and developers that want to build RedHat compatible binaries can still do that. It's not CentOS Stream(just a rolling distro), it's CentOS Stream 8, CentOS Stream 9, etc.

[skeevy420]

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.

No. No I'm not. It's both.

IMHO, the GPL and Linux was originally about, and still is, "I want this. I need this. Fuck you, I'll do it better and open." That describes Linus making the kernel. RMS and everyone behind all the GNU tools. It's the reason behind the existence of so many open source projects. "I want this. I need this. Fuck you, I'll do it better and open." It's basically the reason behind Rocky Linux.

I disagree about the GPL encouraging the sale of GPL'd software. A lot of the consumer devices that run Linux run a custom user-space with non-permissive licenses or they run some form of BSD and keep the whole thing closed up. They do that because it is near impossible to monetize GPL'd software. Individual pieces of GPL software is what I mean by that.

The GPL encourages forking software and distributions people sell. That's why it exists. Make an individual piece of GPL software and everyone will figure out how to include it in their distribution. It exists to ensure that if anyone sells, modifies, and commercially uses this software they have to share back and that if they use it for personal use they can do whatever they want. This situation perfectly describes that. Red Hat wants to sell it and turn free users into beta testers but, because we're a passionate community founded upon "Fuck You", others are all "Fuck that noise. GPL Powers Activate" and now we have Rocky Linux.

To me, the GPL encourages selling distributions and services based on free software. Any jackass can compile some package and do some task. Compiling 10,000 packages to do lots-o-tasks with support, bug tracking, and all the benefits of a distribution or service, that's clearly out of the any jackass range, even with Gentoo or LFS. If you're a jackass that can't support yourself, RHEL...or SUSE or Ubuntu or any one of the many paid-for distributions. But if you're a jackass that can support yourself, Rocky Linux...or insert your favorite distribution here. Even Google and Android use GPL software to sell services.

The GPL lets us have our cake and eat it too. It forces RHEL to give us their sources, it allows someone else to throw a free cake Rocky Linux party, and allows all of us to bake our Linux desktops and home servers however we like. Like I said, it's both.

Wanna go into freeloading? FreeBSD and Sony.

BSD lets us have our cake if we buy it from the Sony Bakery. Figure out how to bake a Sony Cake and you get a cease and desist.

duby229

"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"

I honestly thought that covered free to use and free to modify. I was thinking about my kernels with ZFS built-in. I think a native ZFS kernel is neat shit. They're necessary for ZFS on WSL2. I'm free to use it and I'm free to do what I want with it even if that includes making it license incompatible.

[mroche]

Fair enough, but I have never seen a company that runs critical infrastructure on a platform without vendor support.

For the record, I don’t disagree with you in the slightest. I’ve had Red Hat support in the past at a previous employer (it was helpful, but we used it for OCP, not RHEL). I’ve had reasonable support over Bugzilla for free, but obviously you can’t insist on anything there. But welcome to the film industry, very few group are actually giving money to Red Hat, SUSE, or Canonical for the operating systems we use.

Cheers,
Mike

[MarkZuckerbug]

Ive already switched all my desktops and servers to Debian 10. After going through the trouble on installing Centos 8, RH decided to cut support from 9 years to one year. Ridiculous.

Redhat is dead to me. With this move they've destroyed their reputation, pissed off many system administrators, and have decreased the likelihood that for people will pay for Redhat Linux in the future. Fuck em.

[Paradigm Shifter]

CentOS, or RedHat, or IBM, or whatever label they wish to attach to the person writing a blog post can say whatever they like. They can do an about-face and change their minds... but this has stirred up a lot of suspicion and ill-will where previously there was none, or at least very little.

I'm not a fan of RedHat-based distros anyway, from bad experiences with them and server hardware (all hail RHEL/CentOS 5/6/7! A server OS that kernel panics during install on quad-socket G34 hardware) so this only affects me because the systems where I work which I did not set up all have CentOS on, but I will be in charge of moving them to something else.

I don't deny that RedHat have had their fingers in a lot of open-source pies, for better or worse, but I look at RedHat this way: they have made billions (I have - somewhere - an old Linux Format UK magazine with "Make a Billion Dollars the RedHat Way!" on the cover from... oh, early 2000's?) from taking something which is free, slapping commercial branding, IP and copyright on it^H^H, sorry, their logo, and "selling support".

Now, to my understanding (and I may be wrong, and would be happy to be corrected if so) they get around the issue of selling something which explicitly says in the license that it must be free by "selling support". (edit: "free" in this case means "openly and publicly available". Apologies for confusion.)

What if you don't need support?

Well, then you're safe in the knowledge that you've paid for something you don't need, and will never use.

That's what CentOS was. Not a "trial" version of RedHat. Not a "freeloader" version of RedHat. It was always released much later than RedHat because making sure that it was as-close-to-100% binary identical to RedHat. They used different branding, and didn't "sell support", so it was free - supported by donations. I'm sure that it wasn't so long ago that people have forgotten how long it took CentOS to release 8? They were months behind the released of RHEL.

CentOS existed because the law required that RedHat make available the source code of the open source projects that it used, and people who didn't need support didn't see the point in paying for something they would not use. Equally, RedHat could stop releasing the source code of the projects it works on, charge money for them rather than support... but then the Linux community would drop them like a red hot coal.

I'd be less frustrated with this if there was more notice. Something like, "We'll support CentOS 7 to original EOL, CentOS8 to original EOL, and there will be no CentOS 9." Possibly contract the support for CentOS8 to 7 years? But killing off a supposedly long-term support OS with a little more than a years' notice is... well, charitably it's ill-judged and less charitably it's designed to force people to act without sufficient time to fully investigate all of the potential options, and advantages or disadvantages therein. I suspect they hope most will just say, "OK, we'll buy a RHEL license."

One thing I do find quite funny is that an Oracle competitor has actually made an unforced error which makes Oracle look, well, if not good then at least less bad. Also causing me some bemusement is that in investigating other options for my boss, I've actually tested Oracle Linux and found that the "unbreakable" (haha, challenge accepted!) kernel is pretty good. Being newer, it actually provides a compelling reason to choose Oracle over the other options, as we do have a couple of boxes which are too new to play nicely with older kernels.

[bridgman]

I don't deny that RedHat have had their fingers in a lot of open-source pies, for better or worse, but I look at RedHat this way: they have made billions (I have - somewhere - an old Linux Format UK magazine with "Make a Billion Dollars the RedHat Way!" on the cover from... oh, early 2000's?) from taking something which is free, slapping commercial branding, IP and copyright on it^H^H, sorry, their logo, and "selling support".

Now, to my understanding (and I may be wrong, and would be happy to be corrected if so) they get around the issue of selling something which explicitly says in the license that it must be free by "selling support".

Just a couple of nits...

#1 - the magazine articles you referenced uses "making" to describe revenues, while that term normally refers to income (what you have left over after paying salaries etc..). RH revenues have been over a billion dollars a year for quite a while (since 2012 I think), but their income is much (much much) less since they pay so many people to develop and support the products. If you add up their net income across all the years it's definitely over 1 billion but I'm not sure it adds up to 2 billion yet.

#2 - the license absolutely does not say that it must be free - it just says that anyone distributing it must also make source code available, which RH does. That source code availability is what makes downstream distros like CentOS, Scientific Linux and Oracle Linux possible.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Just a couple of nits...

#1 - the magazine articles you referenced uses "making" to describe revenues, while that term normally refers to income (what you have left over after paying salaries etc..). RH revenues have been over a billion dollars a year for quite a while (since 2012 I think), but their income is much (much much) less since they pay so many people to develop and support the products. If you add up their net income across all the years it's definitely over 1 billion but I'm not sure it adds up to 2 billion yet.

#2 - the license absolutely does not say that it must be free - it just says that anyone distributing it must also make source code available, which RH does. That source code availability is what makes downstream distros like CentOS, Scientific Linux and Oracle Linux possible.

Thanks.

#1 - yes, thank you for pointing out that I should have expanded/clarified that.
#2 - the license says the source must be available. If the source is public, it's free. So poor choice of words on my part.

[duby229]

Thanks.

#1 - yes, thank you for pointing out that I should have expanded/clarified that.
#2 - the license says the source must be available. If the source is public, it's free. So poor choice of words on my part.

Concerning #2, that's not true in the sense that you think it is. It's not about being free of charge, it's about being free to modify. If you use their products in any way then you -should- pay them for it.

I think CentOS, Rocky, SuSe, Mandriva, Oracle, etc they all owe Redhat Billions of dollars...