There is a good discussion on this topic over on the Slack channel at hpc.social I would urge anyone on this list to join up there - you will find a home. hpcsocial.slack.com
On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 at 19:27, Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf < beowulf@beowulf.org> wrote: > 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 > > 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/ > > 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 >
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