OwlThoughts on RHEL going closed source ?
canpolatI wouldn't expect it to impact Fedora, but this will probably be significant for Rocky/Alma.
saplyngGreat, I've got an alma ec2 instance with like 5 different services at work, I wanted to avoid changing it for at least a while =/
KnusperWell, users and contributors of Fedora might stop doing said things...
lhxYup. Transitioning off of fedora for multiple machines next few weeks.
PrivateNoobAbsolute L move from them. Atleast it makes the choice easier if future distrohopping urges will haunt my zoom zoom brain.
AceFourBlueification of Red Hat . . . sad times
curtismchaleI'm newish to Fedora and admit I don't understand the whole developer/governance structure of it vs RHEL, but the news did make me wonder about continuing to use Fedora.
Reading some comments here, maybe it's a non-issue. Guess I'll have to dig more.
Fellow Fedora user here. I find this is a little concerning, but overall, I'm not too worried. Fedora is their test bed for stuff, although it is a very stable, well maintained test bed.
EamonnMRHave they given a reason? The blog post doesn't list one.
I saw in a comment yesterday this is about distros that are "bug for bug" compatible with RHEL. They aren't contributing upstream while benefiting from all of Red Hat's work.
Great response to the discussion, as this 2012 article lays our their path many years ago. Lots of very economically valid reasons for changing, and it seems to have worked even if it is a shame to see. It makes me wonder if the changing economy is going to put more pressure on other favorites to monitize or fail. I say this given that volunteers are showing a decline so without people spending free time, then open-source software will face further challenges.
I don't want to digress too much, but I can't help but juxtapose the slow change and monetization RH has done very well as compared to the idiocy that Reddit is doing.
The discussion on the LWN post gives some insight into why this is probably happening. Most likely due to Rocky/Alma not contributing upstream while benefiting from Red Hat's work.
promitheasI.e. the reality of linux since its inception?
My immediate thoughts as a fedora user: Fedora is looked at as a bleeding edge testing distro for what eventually goes into red hat. By using fedora, I am sort of a beta tester for ibm, and am in some ways contributing to the improvement of a distribution (red hat) that goes against what I believe a Linux distribution should do. Given that, should I distro hop?
Or is my brain just trying to make me distro hop again?
blackstratYou have to make up your own mind.
Personally the association with IBM or Oracle would put me right off a distro. But you can find evil in all these big companies, so pick your poison.
InternetCitizen2How does Oracle play into this?
They're an evil corp with a linux distro, like IBM
projectazarYou aren't the only one. Ive been on Fedora for a few years because I liked what Gnome was doing, I liked the updated Kernel, and I was annoyed by canonical. Now I'm not really sure where to go, as both Pop and Mint do not, in their current forms, work well with my hardware.
cinaed666Not to revive any lame memes, but have a look at Arch Linux! I've been daily driving it for 10 years. It's way more "updated" than fedora is.
does it have same interface? Fedoras gnome is unmatched (...to me, as far I tested around distros).
Or is there any other equivalent, similar to fedora and its gnome?
A CatFedoras gnome is just default gnome lol
Arch doesn't come with an interface, the idea is you build it up from the bare minimum yourself
Wouldn't recommend if you just want a usable desktop os
As for gnome, gnome is gnome you can get it on any distro
Will try, just for novelty as second pc..see where it goes
I think it’s time to distro hop again
OpenSUSE maybe?
Go NixOS man it's the one that finally convinced me to ditch windows entirely and stop hopping
undefined> Given that, should I distro hop?
Yes
Yes, you should. Try something debian based like Mint. Hell, try Arch, which I use btw.
You could just use Fedora and not submit any bug reports as that would help them. Just quietly leech.
It's nice if you can find something that both does what you need and agrees with your philosophy...but usually some compromise is required.
ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρєDo it, you coward! Hop with me!
Anders Rytter Hansen@BuboScandiacus Hm. As far as I know it's not Fedora which is based on RHEL but rather RHEL which is based on Fedora?
ozonedFedora is upstream. CentOS Stream is fed from that. RHEL is fed from that.
RHEL (Stable) <- CentOS Stream (Dev Test Bed, basically RHEL Next) <- Fedora (Cutting Edge)
@ozoned thank you :-)
jellyosaurusWtf?! It's going closed source?
I hate how profit hungry corps will do anything in their power to attack the open source movement. Because it's completely out of their control.
It's still open source.
thatonedude1210Big Blue asserting their dominance. Unfortunately at the cost of some very fantastic community projects.
RHEL hasn’t gone closed source, it still complies with the GPL. If they provide you a binary, they must and will continue to provide you with the source code. I feel like this is like when they announced Centos Stream as a “rolling distro”, their messaging is awful, and the optics are bad. I feel this is more to stick it to Oracle and unfortunately, Alma and Rocky are just getting caught in the crossfire.
beefcatIt has me conflicted. On one hand, fuck Oracle. On the other hand, we need projects like Alma and Rocky.
Yeah, I'm conflicted too. On one hand, fuck Oracle. On the other hand, fuck IBM.
BishmaI've been avoiding all things Red Hat since they became RHEL for this reason. I saw something like this coming, I just didn't expect it to take 20 years...
Now I've been using Debian-based distos on all my servers and desktops for so long that I'm not using Fedora, Rock, Amazon Linux, or CentOS by choice anyway.
They aren't going closed source though? Just not providing source to everyone. But everyone who gets binaries from them still gets access to the source code. Unless I'm missing something?
I am worried about the impact it will have on clone distros like Alma linux.
The code can still be accessed from a free developer account, but I'm not sure about the implications it will have on the legalities and licences.
The code can still be accessed from a free developer account, but I'm not sure about the implications it will have on the legalities and licences.
As someone who admins around 200 Rocky 8/9 and Centos 7 servers, this is a little concerning.
But I have a lot of faith in Rocky and Alma, who are reportedly working together, in coming up with a solution to ensure they continue getting security fixes and updates.
Redhat are steadily turning into every bit as anti-competitive and, well, evil, as Oracle used to be. It's a shame as they used to do a lot for the FOSS world. Now they seem content to profit from it and give nothing back.
vanderbiltThe enshittification brought to you by IBM.
Carl GeorgeNow they seem content to profit from it and give nothing back.
This statement is completely false. Red Hat contributes a ton to open source, to thousands of upstream projects, probably more than any other individual company. Software from Red Hat acquisitions has been transitioned from closed to open source. New open source software is often created by Red Hat engineers. Everything Red Hat does is open source and contributed back upstream whenever possible.
To be clear, me saying this is not an endorsement of the RHEL source export changes announced yesterday. I think that sucks. But it doesn't undo everything else Red Hat does.
Your answer to someone questioning a future strategy that is to be implemented looks mainly to past strategies employed and which are now inconsistent with their clear and public intentions
Interestingly, I've been trying to push my HPC customers towards SLES and Ubuntu LTS. SLES has better extended support for minor releases (that doesn't cost an arm and a leg), and Ubuntu's LTS... for obvious reasons.
manifexHow has Cannonical support been recently? I used Ubuntu Server for a while, but never really needed to use my support contract, but my recollection is that it was fairly light.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
Rocky & Alma were easy targets. Next up thumbscrews on systemd!
Could you elaborate, I didn't get the reference.
The DoctorWho do I have to let sit on my face to eradicate systemfail?
37yr old Richard Stallman
Alan Turing's apple, I shoulda kept my big mouth shut.
tcelyThey've been essentially read-only for years, in my experience. It's stupid to go closed source, but they weren't easy to work with to get things fixed before now either.
staticlifetimeThey can't go closed source. They aren't going closed source. It's not allowed under the GPL, so not sure what you mean by this.
People use rocky/centos because they don't want to deal with the hassles of licensing while also keeping the door open to an upgrade to RHEL if needed. I think this will be a net positive for Debian and Debian-based distros thanks to enterprise infra switching to Ubuntu which offers this (free use and an upgrade path to full compliance/commercial support.
Them closing up completely undermines their UVP.
WhoRogerSomeone enlighten me. What are we talking about? The whole distro? Isn't almost all of it GNU stuff under GPL or similar licenses?
Or is it just about some in-house made RH applications and patches done without any collaboration from outside people?
I don't get it how a Linux-based project can go closed-source after ~30 years.
To comply with GPL, RedHat simply has to provide source code to anyone they provide binaries to.
Yea, so why is everyone misrepresenting these news so damn hard? I'd think people who report on Linux would understand the core basics of GPL.