AlmaLinux 10 Beta Released For Testing

[fotomar]

angry ranting

no likes

[JackLilhammers]

Gladly.

A valid use of open source is as a learning tool, which is what it was originally meant to be,

Open source software was used back in the 70's as a way of teaching engineering students how OSes worked so they could maintain and expand on the code.

I have no problem is Rocky and Alma and all of them were taking Red Hat's code base, reviewing it to learn how to make their own OSes then created a LFS using the knowledge they gained and then tried to compete with Red Hat by offering a new product.

That's not what these people do.

The started out by stating that they would take the Red Hat code base, strip out Red Hat's trademarked logos and name. add their logo and name, and package everything in a manner that was bit for bit identical to what Red Hat offers.

You can see it in action because first they wait for RH to release a new version and then they release their version.

They then use that version to raise millions of dollars from sponsors that would have bought RH licenses if they didn't have a cheaper alternative.

This is was makes everyone involved scum.

Because Rocky and Alma and the rest could have created an LFS or they could have decided to base their offerings on Fedora, or Gentoo or Debian or Ubuntu or any of a number of other offerings, but they didn't.

Why?

Because no one would pay them a dime if they did.

Similarly the douches that sponsor this stealing could just as easily have used Fedora Server if they wanted to save the licensing fees but they didn't.

Why because they see the value in the Red Hat product but don't want to pay Red Hat prices.

While technically you can't really steal GPL code, you can steal the final product and you can steal business and that's exactly what these scum are doing.

But Alma takes the low class even further, because they reeled in sponsors with the promise of steeling Red Hat's work and offering for free and then they pulled a bait and switch and have no changed Alma Linux so that it is still based on Red Hat but no longer 100% compatible.

If these guys had to stand on their own two feet, they would fall flat on their faces.

This post gleefully flies over the first 15 years of CentOS existence, during which Red Hat did pretty well (/s)
Apparently they believed that having a free (as in beer) alternative to their subscription based product would create an ecosystem and that would be a good thing.
I'd say that they were right.

So, imo Alma and Rocky are not stealing anything, quite the opposite, and IBM should acknowledge this, like Red Hat did.
Also it's quite funny that you didn't mention Oracle Linux, which could fit your description a little more, especially with Oracle's history of lawsuits.

PS: Alma didn't bait anyone. IBM decided change its policy and Alma adapted to this change