I'll have more to say later and to me the irony of this situation is Red Hat has become what they were created to prevent*.
-- Doug * per conversations with Bob Young back in the day > Beowulfers, > > By now, most of you should have heard about Red Hat's latest to > eliminate any competition to RHEL. If not, here's some links: > > Red Hat's announcement: > https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-stream > <https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-stream> > > Alma Linux's response: > https://almalinux.org/blog/impact-of-rhel-changes/ > > Rocky Linux's response: > https://rockylinux.org/news/2023-06-22-press-release/ > > Software Freedom Conservancy's anaylsis of the situation: > https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/ > <https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/> > > I'm writing to get your thoughts on this situation, as well as see what > plans of action you are considering moving forward. > > Here are my thoughts: > > This is Red Hat biting the hands that feed them. Red Hat went from a > small company operating out of a basement to a large global company > thanks to open-source software. My first exposure to Linux was Red Hat > Linux 4 in December 1996. I bought a physical, shrink-wrapped version > with the commercial Metro-X X server to start learning Linux at home in > my spare time shortly after graduation from college. I chose RHL because > everything I read said RPM made it super easy to install and manage > software (perfect for noobs like me), and the Metro-X X-server was far > superior to any open-source X-server available at the time (which was > just Xfree86, really). I felt good about giving RH my $40 for this not > just because it would make it easier for me to learn Linux, but because > it seemed like Red Hat were really the company that was going to take > this underdog operating system and make it famous. > > They certainly achieved that goal, but along the way, I've seen them do > a lot of anti-open-source things that I didn't like, leading me to > change my image of them from champion of the underdog to the "Microsoft > of Linux" to whatever my low opinion of them is now (Backstabber? > Ingrate? Hypocrite?): > > 1. When they weren't making any money off a product they were giving > away for free (Red Hat Linux, and "duh!"), they came out with an > "Enterprise" version, that would still GPL-compliant, but you'd have to > pay for subscriptions to get access to their update mechanism. To get > people to buy into this model, they started spreading fear, uncertainty, > and doubt (FUD), about "non-enterprise" Linux distributions, saying that > any Linux distribution other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) wasn't > reliable for use in any kind of enterprise that needed reliability. > > 2. When spreading FUD didn't work, RH killed of RHL entirely. If you > wanted a free version of Red Hat, your only option was Rawhide, which > was their development version for the next generation of RHEL, which was > too unstable and unpredictable for enterprise needs (of course). > > 3. After RH starting contributing funding to GNOME development, the next > major version of RHEL didn't install other desktops during the install. > I remember RHEL saying this was a bug, but I've always suspected it was > a deliberate act to reduce KDE market share and and give RH another area > of the Linux ecosystem it could control. This, to me, was identical to > Microsoft including IE with the OS to kill off Netscape. Now if you > excuse, me, I need to go fashion a hat out of tin foil... > > 4. RH takes over control of CentOS, which at the time was the only > competitor to RHEL. There used to be Scientific Linux (SL), which was > maintained by the DOE at FermiLab, but FermiLab decided that the world > didn't need both SL and CentOS, since they were essentially the same > thing. Not long after, RHEL eliminates CentOS as a competitor by > changing it to "CentOS Stream" so it's no longer a competitor to RHEL. > CentOS Stream is now a development version of sorts for RHEL, but I > thought that was exactly what Fedora was for. > > 5. When Alma and Rocky pop-up to fill the void created by the killing of > CentOS, RH does what it can to eliminate their access from RHEL source > code so they can't be competitiors to RHEL, which brings us to today. > > Somewhere around event #3 is when I started viewing RHEL from as the MS > of the Linux world for obvious reasons. It seems that RH is determined > to make RHEL a monopoly of the "Enterprise Linux" market. Yes, I know > there's Ubuntu and SLES, but Ubuntu is viewed as a desktop more than a > server OS (IMO), and SLES hasn't really caught on, at least not in the US. > > I feel that every time the open-source community ratchets up efforts to > preserve free alternatives to RHEL, RH ratchets up their efforts to > eliminate any competition, so trying to stick with a free alternative to > RHEL is ultimately going to be futile, so know is a good time to > consider changing to a different line of Linux distro. > > The price of paying for RHEL subscriptions isn't the only concern. > Besides cost, one of the reasons Linux has become the de facto OS for > HPC was how quickly/easily/cheaply it could be ported to new hardware. > Don Becker wrote or modified many of the Linux Ethernet drivers that > existed in the mid/late 90s so they could be used for Beowulf clusters, > for example. When the Itanium processor came out, I remember reading > that a Linux developer was able to port Linux to the Itanium and got > Linux running on it in only a matter of hours. > > With RH (and IBM?) so focused on market dominance/profits, it's not a > stretch to think they they'll eventually "say no" to supporting anything > other than x86 and POWER processors, since the other processors don't > have enough market share to make it profitable, or compete with IBM's > offerings. I mean, right now it's extremely rare to find any commercial > application that supports anything other than x86_64 (other than Mac > applications that now support Apple's M processors, which is a > relatively new development). > > My colleagues here agree with my conclusions about the future of RHEL > and, we are certainly giving the thought of moving away from RHEL some > serious consideration, but it's certainly not going to be cheap or easy. > What are you thinking/doing about this? > > -- > Prentice > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > -- Doug _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
