nixCraft 🐧Jul 11, 2023

For those who didn't follow the whole story or drama so far about Red Hat/IBM. Here we go:

1. Red hat blog that started storm https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-stream

2. Oracle said they will set enterprise Linux free https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/blog/keep-linux-open-and-free-2023-07-10/

3. SUSE announced RHEL fork https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/

4. More info from Rocky Linux https://rockylinux.org/news/keeping-open-source-open/

5. Also from Alma Linux https://almalinux.org/blog/our-value-is-our-values/

Furthering the evolution of CentOS Stream

As the CentOS Stream community grows and the enterprise software world tackles new dynamics, we want to sharpen our focus on CentOS Stream as the backbone of enterprise Linux innovation. We are continuing our investment in and increasing our commitment to CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases.

Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Jul 11, 2023

Alma, Rocky, Oracle and the new SuSE-RHEL will all keep striving for binary compatibility.

They will all have to do research on what went into each binary release, as exact corresponding source packages are now no longer provided to the general public.

Will these four engage in coopetition and create some shared base source-code distro? That would be an interesting outcome.

Show threadBjörn LindströmJul 11, 2023
@clacke that shared repository basically already exists and is called Centos Stream.
Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Jul 12, 2023
@bkhl It existed and was called CentOS. CentOS Stream is explicitly and intentionally not that.
Show threadBjörn Lindström
@clacke what source code is missing from it that's relevant to maintaining binary compatibility, do you mean?
Jul 12, 2023 at 4:00amWeb
Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Jul 12, 2023

@bkhl All the source code except for recent patches would be in the upstream, but you don't have the exact source that went into the particular binary package.

NixOS, Debian, SuSE, Alma, Rocky, Oracle, they are pretty much reproducible -- you can take the exact source pile for this exact package version and in 90%+ of the cases with NixOS and Debian you can even bit for bit get the exact same binary package file.

RHEL has subscription terms that actively prevent this.

Show threadBjörn LindströmJul 12, 2023

@clacke yeah, that's why I'm thinking was missing is a list/tag of packages included in some particular RHEL point release.

The chance that this will be significantly different from a close enough arbitrary point in time seems very small.

But also yes, not just providing this information in an easy to digest form is the bit of the Centos Stream setup that does seem a bit petty.