Red Hat Continues Pleading The Case For Its CentOS Changes

[castlefox]

I really have to commend Michael on this post. It's really balanced and informative, on a subject that has been pretty contentious.

Re: "But the move less so for those looking for a free lunch in the form of CentOS (non-Stream)." that was my initial take too, but I think the one exception is that people using CentOS didn't get the full RHEL experience: you always had to wait a long time for the latest release, and sometimes there'd be a delay before patches came out. (I don't have hard numbers on how long it'd take for a security patch though) Paying by waiting a bit is not a very high price to pay for a full enterprise OS that you weren't contributing to though. A RHEL subscription also gave you access to docs and support. Just saying that you didn't get the exact same lunch experience as those that paid.

I personally think CentOS stream makes a lot of sense: the freeloaders now contribute back by providing some advance testing, (but shouldn't expect major breakage) and in exchange get a stable (in ABI terms) OS target and earlier releases. They still get something more stable than Fedora, and it's still free.

I agree... but this I think IBM really shot themselves in the foot by blind siding the news of changing CentOS 8's end-of-life date from 2029 to a grave much sooner, in 2021. People specifically went to with CentOS for its long End of Life schedule. If they were smart they wouldnt have changed CentOS8 EOL so drastically, and given the community a reasonable amount of time to deal with the changes.

IMHO: Getting blind sighted with this news would get me angry enough to put in a good amount of work to transition to other options.

[wizard69]

The community is also subject the knee jerk reactions devoid of any reason. I can’t say if Redhat is right or wrong here, I’ve used Fedora for years and really haven’t even looked at this version. Frankly fewer versions of Redhats distro makes sense to me.

This project depends on its community and the majority of the community dislikes this move. What more needs to be said about this to say that it's a bad move?

[Alex/AT]

The community is also subject the knee jerk reactions devoid of any reason.

It is possible, but the point is, either you succumb to it or get the community moving away from you.
It i.e. does not matter for me what I am on, CentOS, OEL, whatever, because we're perfectly capable of supporting these systems and not requiring any third party support.
So I will just ditch CentOS which becomes beta tester ground and move to OEL, which is still the same unsupported territory, but without major beta testing involved.
Eventually I may obtain a few OEL support licenses and start posting bug reports there instead of CentOS, the same would be with other software where I'll post miscellaneous information related to OEL environment, and not CentOS.
Ymmv, of course, but the general idea is: community moving out is not a good thing, you won't even get many meaningful reports about how stuff works in your environment in the end.

[Danielsan]

Another example of when corporate needs diverge from community needs... That's why you should never depend by corporate unless you are actually a paying customer and you have all the rights to complain or demand. No matter what how a company can be committed to free and opensource, at a certain point, economic needs or interests prevail toward values or ideals.

However if you base your project upon true community distro and support their ecosystem, without owning it, is really hard to be "betray" by those. This apply also if you are a simple end-user.

I think CentOS-Stream is pretty cool, however a lot of people just used to look at CentOS as the free version of RHEL, and really didn't care about the Stream version until now... If companies wants a resilient distribution like Debian but want to have control over it, they start thinking to begin and fund a community project as well as those fund the Linux Kernel...

[siyia]

Plead all you want, most of us don't like it, however you are free to do as you please with your products, but also expect to lose a lot of support from the community regarding this. We don't owe red hat any money since their code is gpl2+, although we do appreciate their hard work and commitment to free software.

[jo-erlend]

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.)

You're still wrong about this. The GPL specifically says that you do not have to make the source code public, but that you must make it available to whoever you give a copy of the software to. So, it's perfectly ok to hide the source code in a customer portal that requires a valid username and password. Other people have no right to demand any source code from you. But your customers are allowed to share their copies of your source code and in fact must do so if they give someone a copy of the program.

It is important to understand that the GPL only applies when you have received a legal copy. For instance, I have lots of install images on my keyring. If you steal that keyring, you have no right to install Ubuntu from it, because you haven't got a legal copy and so the GPL doesn't apply to you. It would be impossible to _prove_ that you were using a pirated version of Ubuntu, but you would be.

There's nothing to "get around". The GPL specifically says it's ok to sell copies of GPL software. And because the GPL only applies once you have received a legal copy, nothing prevents me from making up terms and conditions that you must agree to before you get the software. For instance, as an ISV, you are free to present the largest distributors with a contract saying that they receive a right to distribute your software under the GPL on the condition that they charge a minimum fee and give you your cut. You may also say that they must not allow any forks of your software in their distribution. So while those who purchase a copy of your app from Ubuntu or Fedora or whatever would have their GPL rights, the distros themselves would still be contract bound not to.

I really wish distros would choose to enable people to make a living developing FOSS. It's great when people do things non-commercially, whether it's for fun or charity, but everyone would be better off if more people were able to support themselves writing good software. And it is very difficult to make a living through FOSS as long as distros give away everything for free.

[duby229]

You're still wrong about this. The GPL specifically says that you do not have to make the source code public, but that you must make it available to whoever you give a copy of the software to. So, it's perfectly ok to hide the source code in a customer portal that requires a valid username and password. Other people have no right to demand any source code from you. But your customers are allowed to share their copies of your source code and in fact must do so if they give someone a copy of the program.

It is important to understand that the GPL only applies when you have received a legal copy. For instance, I have lots of install images on my keyring. If you steal that keyring, you have no right to install Ubuntu from it, because you haven't got a legal copy and so the GPL doesn't apply to you. It would be impossible to _prove_ that you were using a pirated version of Ubuntu, but you would be.

There's nothing to "get around". The GPL specifically says it's ok to sell copies of GPL software. And because the GPL only applies once you have received a legal copy, nothing prevents me from making up terms and conditions that you must agree to before you get the software. For instance, as an ISV, you are free to present the largest distributors with a contract saying that they receive a right to distribute your software under the GPL on the condition that they charge a minimum fee and give you your cut. You may also say that they must not allow any forks of your software in their distribution. So while those who purchase a copy of your app from Ubuntu or Fedora or whatever would have their GPL rights, the distros themselves would still be contract bound not to.

I really wish distros would choose to enable people to make a living developing FOSS. It's great when people do things non-commercially, whether it's for fun or charity, but everyone would be better off if more people were able to support themselves writing good software. And it is very difficult to make a living through FOSS as long as distros give away everything for free.

Yes!, So true! You said it better than I ever could have. Well said!

[evasb]

You know what, I think I'm starting to change my mind... All of you guys that are pissed because you can't mooch off of an outdated so called "stable" but -actually- unstable distro, maybe you -should- move to mooching off of Oracle.... Go ahead make that switch.... Mooch away....

EDIT: If Redhat died, what exactly do you think would happen to CentOS, Oracle, SuSe, etc.... None of them can be what Redhat is, none of them care about Open Source like Redhat does...

SUSE has nothing to do with Red Hat. SLES is not a RHEL clone.

[eva2000]

They're still trying to convince us that this is good for CentOS Stream (and maybe it is), but, fact is, nobody cared about CentOS Stream before and nobody does now.
People want CentOS, not CentOS Stream.

Exactly ! CentOS 8 is dead and CentOS Stream should just be renamed Redhat Stream so CentOS users can grieve and move on!

[Paradigm Shifter]

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...

Then the entire Linux ecosystem owes Linux Torvalds and those other early developers, along with others like Eric S. Raymond and Richard Stallman every penny they've ever made. That game can be played forever if you wind the clock back enough...

Do RedHat pay for every project they use? I know they provide monetary support to some of the bigger ones which are an integral part of the RedHat experience, like Gnome. Not every project details monetary supporters publicly. But the Linux community seems often seems to accept community participation, bug reporting and code fix contributions as payment (although obviously money is still nice). At what point does the occasional bug fix repay the use of a project which is absolutely critical for what you use it for? But that is a whole other can of worms...