Rocky Linux To Support Upstream Stable Kernels

[sophisticles]

Greetings!
...

I just have one question, what exactly was that 26 million dollar investment for and what about the millions more per years Rocky gets from their sponsors?

More importantly, if you had not decided to base Rocky on Red Hat but instead on Debian or Ubuntu or Gentoo, would you have raised a single penny?

https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/rocky-linux-developer-ciq-raises-26m-to-recreate-centos-for-enterprises/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/rocky-linux-developer-lands-26m-funding-for-enterprise-open-source-push/

https://rockylinux.org/sponsors

It seems Rocky has at least 11 sponsors that donate large sums of money annually to the project, would they be getting that cake if not based on Red Hat?

While you're at it, please consider throwing a couple of million towards the KDE project every year.

Rocky offers spins featuring KDE but according to Nate, project manager for KDE, they are hurting for cash, he estimates he needs at least a million a year to get KDE where he wants it.

Also, i am working on a Rocky rebuild that I plan on marketing as a direct competitor to Rocky, basically i take Rocky, rebrand it and release it with the promise that it will be exactly like Rocky just with a different name.

Do you think we can work out a sponsorship deal where Rocky throws a few bucks my way every year.I don't need a lot, about 750k a year should do it.

Let me know when I can expect the first check.

[sophisticles]

Rocky Linux is an EL distro for the community made by the community and led by the community.

No, Rocky Linux is an Enterprise Linux distro made by Red Hat, stolen by Rocky and used to make tens of millions of dollars.

At the very least be honest with yourself.

[Developer12]

I just have one question, what exactly was that 26 million dollar investment for and what about the millions more per years Rocky gets from their sponsors?

More importantly, if you had not decided to base Rocky on Red Hat but instead on Debian or Ubuntu or Gentoo, would you have raised a single penny?

https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/rocky-linux-developer-ciq-raises-26m-to-recreate-centos-for-enterprises/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/rocky-linux-developer-lands-26m-funding-for-enterprise-open-source-push/

https://rockylinux.org/sponsors

It seems Rocky has at least 11 sponsors that donate large sums of money annually to the project, would they be getting that cake if not based on Red Hat?

While you're at it, please consider throwing a couple of million towards the KDE project every year.

Rocky offers spins featuring KDE but according to Nate, project manager for KDE, they are hurting for cash, he estimates he needs at least a million a year to get KDE where he wants it.

Also, i am working on a Rocky rebuild that I plan on marketing as a direct competitor to Rocky, basically i take Rocky, rebrand it and release it with the promise that it will be exactly like Rocky just with a different name.

Do you think we can work out a sponsorship deal where Rocky throws a few bucks my way every year.I don't need a lot, about 750k a year should do it.

Let me know when I can expect the first check.

Rocky gets money for correcting the perceived injustice committed by redhat, of taking other people's open source code and putting it behind a paywall. Last I checked, redhad didn't employ even close to all the developers of those 20-30,000 packages they ship.

Your distro won't get a cent as the stuff shipped by rocky is already freely available. You don't even have their very thin value-add of going to the trouble of ensuring compat with unavailable sources.

[stack]

Do you mind personal ones?

Within reason ;-)

I wanted to ask why did you personally choose to help Rocky instead of Alma.

This is me before I was in Rocky leadership:

https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind2104&L=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS&P=R831

I loved Scientific Linux and the community there. If SL was still an option, I'd be there. But when they made the decision to no longer support anything past EL7 - well, I had to find something else and until recently Red Hat didn't care about home-labs. I evaluated both Alma and Rocky early on. Rocky's community was far more welcoming and helpful at the time to me. I believe the Rocky community is still very welcoming.

Second question, what benefits specifically made Rocky choose to not be a c(3)? (I know nothing of American law and tax code btw).

https://www.resf.org/faq/is-resf-nonprofit

For a brief over-cap that does a pretty good job of explaining it without getting too detailed into tax law.

Lastly, do you feel that you and other contributors not from CIQ can freely and severely criticise CIQ as a company, their business model, their decisions etc? I'm not saying there is something to criticise, I'm asking that if there WAS would people be comfortable in exposing their disagreements.

[/QUOTE]

Oh. We have already. In fact there's a very public blow-up on Reddit... But internally the Rocky Membership can and has spoken up about concerns. We have a good relationship and everyone wants Rocky to succeed so we work things out as we have that common goal of supporting Rocky long into the future and keeping the promises we made to the community.

I just have one question

Oh really? Just one? Hrm...

what exactly was that 26 million dollar investment for [...]?

Don't know. Rocky Linux didn't get 26 million dollar investment. CIQ did. Ask them. I am not employed by them nor do I have anything to do with their accounting. I work on Rocky Linux.

what about the millions more per years Rocky gets from their sponsors?

Millions? Um. Take another look at the sponsors and what they pay for their tier status. Also, some sponsors donate in other ways then monetary so... look at our finances. It isn't millions. No where close.

More importantly, if you had not decided to base Rocky on Red Hat but instead on Debian or Ubuntu or Gentoo, would you have raised a single penny?
It seems Rocky has at least 11 sponsors that donate large sums of money annually to the project, would they be getting that cake if not based on Red Hat?

The point of Rocky was to fill the void left by CentOS when they transitioned to Stream. These two related questions makes no sense.

While you're at it, please consider throwing a couple of million towards the KDE project every year.
Rocky offers spins featuring KDE but according to Nate, project manager for KDE, they are hurting for cash, he estimates he needs at least a million a year to get KDE where he wants it.

I'd have to check. I don't recall if KDE is on the list. But two things: there are active conversations within the community for financially supporting other projects, and we actively contribute upstream where we can and I believe one of our members is already doing so for KDE (though to what extent I'd have to inquire). Despite the trolls saying otherwise, we are not swimming in disposable money - thus we contribute upstream with time, code, reports, ect. However, there are times when a donation can do more - we just need to figure out what that looks like in a sustainable way (again, active conversations but we are still figuring things out). So not out of the realm of possibility. Become a member and convince others for KDE to be a recipient.

Also, i am working on a Rocky rebuild that I plan on marketing as a direct competitor to Rocky, basically i take Rocky, rebrand it and release it with the promise that it will be exactly like Rocky just with a different name.

Do you think we can work out a sponsorship deal where Rocky throws a few bucks my way every year.I don't need a lot, about 750k a year should do it.

Let me know when I can expect the first check.

Check out Peridot. It's our build system. We have and continue to help others do rebuilds. We've said from the beginning that everything we are doing is Open Source and should something unfortunate happen we want the community to be able to pick up where we left off or even clone/fork and go a different direction. Start your project and make a case for it. If things go the way I want with legal then there might be related and exciting news soon.

There's nothing at all stopping you from taking everything we are doing and building a competing OS. As I've said - we've already assisted other groups doing that very thing!

No, Rocky Linux is an Enterprise Linux distro made by Red Hat, stolen by Rocky and used to make tens of millions of dollars.

At the very least be honest with yourself.

You know this is a straight up lie. In fact, it's so outlandishly stupid and easily refutable that I'm editing my post to ask - what could you possibly hope to achieve with such blatant stupidity?


Rocky Linux is attempting to fill in what CentOS used to be. Rocky Linux uses Open Source software - it isn't stolen by any stretch. Everything Rocky Linux does is Open Source and Rocky Linux does not have tens of millions of dollars..

You are only making yourself look foolish with such blatant misinformation. It's so wrong that it doesn't even make for a good troll...

Which leads again to - what do you hope to accomplish with such ridiculously false statements?

[sophisticles]

Rocky gets money for correcting the perceived injustice committed by redhat, of taking other people's open source code and putting it behind a paywall. Last I checked, redhad didn't employ even close to all the developers of those 20-30,000 packages they ship.

Your distro won't get a cent as the stuff shipped by rocky is already freely available. You don't even have their very thin value-add of going to the trouble of ensuring compat with unavailable sources.

Two things:

Perceived injustice does not equate to actual injustice.

Whether you like it or not Red Hat is one of the reasons that Linux is at the place it is right now, Red Hat has contributed significant amounts of money and code to improving the Linux ecosystem and in increasing Linux's market presence,

The also have spent lots of money building a business that employs lots of people and contributes significantly to the global economy.

These people's sole purpose is to ride those coat tails without actually doing any of the work,

As for my distro, fine, I won't get a penny, what about KDE, Gnome, or even the Linux Foundation?

Do you think Rocky Linux is going to share any of that tasty 26 million dollar cake with them?

No, because this is about stealing tens of millions of dollars that would have gone to Red Hat and not about anything else, no matter how you or they try to spin it.

[sophisticles]

First of all i love fishing and I really love when I get a fish that fights all the way because then I know that he knows he's caught.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/rocky-linux-developer-lands-26m-funding-for-enterprise-open-source-push/

Are you stating that the article linked above is wrong?

CIQ has landed $26 million in funding to support its plans to expand the use of Rocky Linux in the enterprise space.

Last year, Red Hat decided to stop supporting CentOS 8 and shifted focus to CentOS Stream. CentOS had some huge enterprise users, among them Disney, GoDaddy, RackSpace, Toyota, and Verizon.

In response, Greg Kurtzer, one of CentOS's founders, kicked off Rocky Linux in December 2020. Seven months later, the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF) released the first stable release of Rocky Linux 8.4.

And now Kurtzer's firm, CIQ, the founding sponsor and services partner behind Rocky Linux, has secured $26 million in Series A funding led by Two Bear Capital. It's the "lion's share" of the $33 million CIQ has raised previously, according to Kurtzer.

So saying that Rocky Linux does not have 26+ million dollars is extremely misleading.

The person that started Rocky Linux got tens of millions of dollars to promote Rocky Linux.

So perhaps the Rocky Linux Foundation doesn't have the actual cash but the person that started the project received the cash.

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

It reminds me of the Clintons, it is estimated that they control 1.5 billion dollars in cash. They don't actually have it in their bank accounts but the control legal entities that in turn control the cash via a web of interconnected corporations.

What's the difference?

If I have 1 million dollars in the bank or a company I own gives me a credit card that i can use as i see fit that has a limit of 1 million dollars, other than tax implications what is the difference?

To say you have exhibited significant amounts of intellectual dishonesty, deflecting and misleading is an understatement.

[sophisticles]

Rocky Linux is attempting to fill in what CentOS used to be. Rocky Linux uses Open Source software - it isn't stolen by any stretch. Everything Rocky Linux does is Open Source and Rocky Linux does not have tens of millions of dollars..

Rocky isn't stealing software, it's not possible to steal GPL'd code.

What Rocky is stealing is business.

As i said, if Rocky was based on Gentoo or Debian or Fedora no money would have been raised and no one would care about another spin.

But as soon as name Red Hat came into play, the cash started flowing.

[stack]

As i said, if Rocky was based on Gentoo or Debian or Fedora no money would have been raised and no one would care about another spin.

But as soon as name Red Hat came into play, the cash started flowing.

You've made your point. You are so entrenched in your own world that you don't care what reality is anymore nor what the truth actually is. It's unfortunate your lies hurt others but you clearly don't care. Every time you intentionally conflate CIQ and Rocky Linux - which are very different things - you show that you have no intention of understanding the truth and will repeat any lie that already fits your narrative so you can remain in your rage.

There are a number of CEO's who sit on the boards or are presidents of non-profits. I'm willing to guess you don't rant about them. I'm willing to guess you never ranted about CentOS (nor the companies that used CentOS to make a profit). I'm willing to guess you don't rant about any of the other EL clones either. You just don't like CIQ/Rocky/Greg/whoever and you are so stuck on one detail that your rants come off as lunacy.

Further, you keep ranting about money. I've said already, Rocky Linux doesn't have the amount of money you keep trying to push. And with what we do have, we do a LOT of support in upstream funding already (with more coming in) including sponsoring Fedora and CentOS Stream at some of the highest tiers possible. But since that doesn't fit your narrative, I'm sure you'll ignore those facts too.

As it's clear you only want to rant, rage, and lie - I'm not going to bother responding anymore. I don't see it as helpful or beneficial to anyone.

Should anyone else have legitimate questions - feel free to ping me.

[sophisticles]

You've made your point. You are so entrenched in your own world that you don't care what reality is anymore nor what the truth actually is. It's unfortunate your lies hurt others but you clearly don't care. Every time you intentionally conflate CIQ and Rocky Linux - which are very different things - you show that you have no intention of understanding the truth and will repeat any lie that already fits your narrative so you can remain in your rage.

There are a number of CEO's who sit on the boards or are presidents of non-profits. I'm willing to guess you don't rant about them. I'm willing to guess you never ranted about CentOS (nor the companies that used CentOS to make a profit). I'm willing to guess you don't rant about any of the other EL clones either. You just don't like CIQ/Rocky/Greg/whoever and you are so stuck on one detail that your rants come off as lunacy.

Further, you keep ranting about money. I've said already, Rocky Linux doesn't have the amount of money you keep trying to push. And with what we do have, we do a LOT of support in upstream funding already (with more coming in) including sponsoring Fedora and CentOS Stream at some of the highest tiers possible. But since that doesn't fit your narrative, I'm sure you'll ignore those facts too.

As it's clear you only want to rant, rage, and lie - I'm not going to bother responding anymore. I don't see it as helpful or beneficial to anyone.

Should anyone else have legitimate questions - feel free to ping me.

What exactly have I lied about?

You are the one trying to mislead the general public.

Did Greg Kurtzer start Rocky Linux in December 2020? Yes/No?

Does Kurtzer own or partly own, CIQ? Yes/No?

Did CIQ raise 33 million dollars, 26 million of it specifically related to Rocky Linux? Yes/No?

What exactly am I lying about?

For the record, I have also taken Alma Linux to task as well because they brag on their website that they have dozens of sponsors including one that gives them a million dollars a year and they would not be getting that of they were not based on Red Hat.

For the record you are the one lying and attempting to deceive with double talk.

You claim that CIQ is a separate entity than Rocky Linux but CIQ owns Rocky Linux and only raised those millions of dollars so they could promote its use.

How about you stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes, the truth is so evident that Ray Charles could see it.

[sophisticles]

One more thing, just to show everyone how full of it CIQ and Rocky Linux are, stack and company want to pretend that what they did they did for the good of the open source community because they believe in the GPL so much, but here's a quote from the article;

https://www.zdnet.com/article/rocky-linux-developer-lands-26m-funding-for-enterprise-open-source-push/

"We are very open source, to the point we usually prefer non-copyleft licenses. We usually prefer MIT and BSD license. Everything we're releasing is going into MIT or BSD," says Kurtzer.

Right from the horse's mouth.

They don't care about the GPL, it wasn't about some ideology, it was about screwing over Red Hat and stealing some of their business from them.

After all, Rocky Linux's founder, Greg Kurtzer is also one of CentOS's founders.

This is about stealing, pure and simple.