Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en# 👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/ Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp 👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/ 🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com 🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd Red Hat, their goal is to make money. Nothing wrong about that. I run a company, my goal is to make money. How you make money is what matters to people: is it ethical, or not. Are you selling your soul, lying, selling your community out, or not. And now, it's pretty clear that Red Hat IS doing that. They're enforcing the signature of a license agreement when you create the account that lets you access RHEL, and that agreement is definitely against the values of free software, as it prevents you from redistributing or building your own product based on it By the way, the legality of this is not something I can discuss, I'm not a lawyer, but there's clearly a potential contradiction between the license of the code, and what the license of the developer portal lets you do, so I guess someone will look into that Red Hat lied, and they disrespected the open source community by saying "we contribute a lot, our 1:1 rebuilds don't, so we're going to prevent them from easy access to our work". That's completely against the spirit of open source and free software, there's no 2 ways about it You can't build your own distro on the backs of upstream's work, and then refuse to do the same with downstream. Even if you don't see any value in it, someone does, it's not up to you to decide that, or you have missed the point of open source entirely That's what companies like Microsoft do, or what Apple does: they prevent competitors from even existing, or from being as good. The truth is, I think Red Hat just has lost the plot. Like Canonical did when they basically abandoned the desktop and all the projects they were working on. They're acting like a rational capitalist company, which is NOT what the open source community wants. We hold companies that work in our sphere to a higher standard, and these companies are now failing to meet them And the real problem isn't really how Alma or Rocky will survive, they'll have more work to do, but they'll manage with the CentOS Stream code. The real issue is that acting like that will in the end, harm Red Hat's business. Why? The advantage of Linux is that it's open source. In enterprise, you want to combine that freedom to customize and tweak, and have many resources accessible to do what you want, but you also want support from a company that knows what they're doing, and can help in case of a problem. And Red Hat flat out lying about how they'll handle things in the future makes them utterly untrustworthy for businesses: are you going to base your business decision on what a company said today, when they already screwed you over twice? No. And you're also probably not going to stay in the ecosystem around these distros, because with these kinds of moves, you don't know if Alma or Rocky will still exist as-is in 5 years. So, you move to community-run distros, and you start getting used to Debian, or Nix, or whatever else for your own stuff, you want to use that at work as well, and if you're in a position to push that, you'll do so. Except in the long run this also hurts Linux. Because if Red Hat starts making less money, they'll hire less people, and contribute less to the linux kernel, GNOME, systemd, and other various systems And this makes the experience worse for everyone, not just Red hat and red hat clones users. Everyone. So, Red Hat: stop acting like a capitalistic company. You're not that, you work in a very specific industry, with very specific expectations, and a very specific feedback loop where the community, contributors, users, hobbyists, enterprise and companies all depend on each other. If you break the link somewhere, you're breaking it for everyone, not just you. Start acting responsibly. Make your code public again. We expect better from you.

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Red Hat, their goal is to make money. Nothing wrong about that. I run a company, my goal is to make money. How you make money is what matters to people: is it ethical, or not. Are you selling your soul, lying, selling your community out, or not.

And now, it’s pretty clear that Red Hat IS doing that. They’re enforcing the signature of a license agreement when you create the account that lets you access RHEL, and that agreement is definitely against the values of free software, as it prevents you from redistributing or building your own product based on it

By the way, the legality of this is not something I can discuss, I’m not a lawyer, but there’s clearly a potential contradiction between the license of the code, and what the license of the developer portal lets you do, so I guess someone will look into that

Red Hat lied, and they disrespected the open source community by saying “we contribute a lot, our 1:1 rebuilds don’t, so we’re going to prevent them from easy access to our work”. That’s completely against the spirit of open source and free software, there’s no 2 ways about it

You can’t build your own distro on the backs of upstream’s work, and then refuse to do the same with downstream. Even if you don’t see any value in it, someone does, it’s not up to you to decide that, or you have missed the point of open source entirely

That’s what companies like Microsoft do, or what Apple does: they prevent competitors from even existing, or from being as good.

The truth is, I think Red Hat just has lost the plot. Like Canonical did when they basically abandoned the desktop and all the projects they were working on.

They’re acting like a rational capitalist company, which is NOT what the open source community wants. We hold companies that work in our sphere to a higher standard, and these companies are now failing to meet them

And the real problem isn’t really how Alma or Rocky will survive, they’ll have more work to do, but they’ll manage with the CentOS Stream code. The real issue is that acting like that will in the end, harm Red Hat’s business.

Why? The advantage of Linux is that it’s open source. In enterprise, you want to combine that freedom to customize and tweak, and have many resources accessible to do what you want, but you also want support from a company that knows what they’re doing, and can help in case of a problem.

And Red Hat flat out lying about how they’ll handle things in the future makes them utterly untrustworthy for businesses: are you going to base your business decision on what a company said today, when they already screwed you over twice? No.

And you’re also probably not going to stay in the ecosystem around these distros, because with these kinds of moves, you don’t know if Alma or Rocky will still exist as-is in 5 years.

So, you move to community-run distros, and you start getting used to Debian, or Nix, or whatever else for your own stuff, you want to use that at work as well, and if you’re in a position to push that, you’ll do so.

Except in the long run this also hurts Linux. Because if Red Hat starts making less money, they’ll hire less people, and contribute less to the linux kernel, GNOME, systemd, and other various systems

And this makes the experience worse for everyone, not just Red hat and red hat clones users. Everyone.

So, Red Hat: stop acting like a capitalistic company. You’re not that, you work in a very specific industry, with very specific expectations, and a very specific feedback loop where the community, contributors, users, hobbyists, enterprise and companies all depend on each other. If you break the link somewhere, you’re breaking it for everyone, not just you.

Start acting responsibly. Make your code public again. We expect better from you.

  • haroldstork@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    I understand the argument, but consider that Red Hat is a huge contributor to more than just RHEL. The biggest contributors to the projects you know and love like Libreoffice, gnome, and Wayland are from people being payed by companies like red hat. I can understand why people disagree with their choice, but when this company profits, they don’t just make RHEL better and support everything dependent on it, they make Linux software better.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      1 year ago

      They are also a huge cause of extra work for the rest of the Linux ecosystem with their ancient software versions in RHEL. And the worst of it, everything you learn by doing work on those ancient versions is useless knowledge.

    • SmokeInFog@midwest.social
      01·
      1 year ago

      You say:

      I understand the argument

      But then say:

      but consider that Red Hat is a huge contributor to more than just RHEL. The biggest contributors to the projects you know and love like Libreoffice, gnome, and Wayland are from people being payed by companies like red hat. I can understand why people disagree with their choice, but when this company profits, they don’t just make RHEL better and support everything dependent on it, they make Linux software better.

      which would indicate that you don’t understand the argument

      • facelessunit@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        I think it’s more constructive and conducive of insightful discussion if you elaborate why you think this person doesn’t understand the argument, rather than just stating as much as if your statement is true without justification.