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<p>
<blockquote type="cite">This was likely aimed at the other folks
like Oracle who are making money off of rebuilds and not so much
at Alma/Rocky. Those are collateral damage.</blockquote>
</p>
<p>Very good point. I forgot about Oracle Linux. I always forget
about Oracle Linux. Oracle Linux is not exactly a 100% RHEL copy -
they add their own secret sauce on top of RHEL, but still very
valid to this discussion. <br>
</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">Debian has no controlling corporation, no
requirement to make returns for shareholders, and its automation
system is second to none. </blockquote>
</p>
<p>I've never followed Debian itself very closely, but from what
I've heard, the GPL and open-source in general is like religion to
them, so going with pure Debian is probably the best way to
protect yourself from this in the future. There is, however, the
need for commercial support from 3rd parties, like GPFS, NVIDIA,
etc. Ubuntu has also done a good job of getting commercial 3rd
party support for Ubuntu. I don't think is the same level of 3rd
party support for pure Debian. <br>
</p>
<p>From what I remember reading years ago, one of Mark
Shuttleworth's motivations for Unbuntu was to provide a free/cheap
OS to the poor people of Africa, so I think Ubuntu is relatively
safe from similar actions, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Feel
free to correct me if I'm wrong and he does have more
profit-oriented goals for Ubuntu. <br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Prentice </pre>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 6/26/23 2:38 PM, Joe Landman wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:4639fb4d-2aef-65dc-3092-5849fa890b5c@gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<p>Debian doesn't suck, and is fairly painless/consistent to
admin. Been running clusters on it for more than a decade.</p>
<p>RH/IBM's business is not to be an open source warrior, rather
to make money for their shareholders. Seen in this way, they
are trying to define a moat around RHEL so that they are the
only RHEL(alike) that is standing.</p>
<p>This was likely aimed at the other folks like Oracle who are
making money off of rebuilds and not so much at Alma/Rocky.
Those are collateral damage.</p>
<p>I've seen now a number of people just give up on them in the
last week. Doug Eadline put a message on twitter this morning
from Jeff Geerling (ansible guy). Gromacs looks like they are
done with specific support of RHEL(alike).</p>
<p>This was a dumb move on IBMs part, but entirely predictable.
The correct move would have been to make CentOS the on ramp to
RHEL, and encourage everyone to use it for non-enterprise (read
as: something you aren't making money with, where you need audit
trails). They chose instead to try to restrict a license that
says you can't restrict it. IBM is banking on having many
lawyers, to enforce this action.</p>
<p>It sucks, but maybe its time to move off RHEL. Ubuntu could be
ok, but it has some idiocy (snap/flatpak) in it as well. Debian
has no controlling corporation, no requirement to make returns
for shareholders, and its automation system is second to none.
The transition for me was easy.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 6/26/23 14:27, Prentice Bisbal via
Beowulf wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:6235f1c9-13a0-3598-b75b-768979447c60@pppl.gov">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
charset=UTF-8">
<p>Beowulfers, <br>
</p>
<p>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: <br>
</p>
<p>Red Hat's announcement: <br>
<a target="_blank" class="c-link moz-txt-link-freetext"
data-stringify-link="https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-stream"
data-sk="tooltip_parent"
href="https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-stream"
rel="noopener noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-stream</a></p>
<p>Alma Linux's response: <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://almalinux.org/blog/impact-of-rhel-changes/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://almalinux.org/blog/impact-of-rhel-changes/</a><br>
<br>
Rocky Linux's response:<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://rockylinux.org/news/2023-06-22-press-release/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://rockylinux.org/news/2023-06-22-press-release/</a><br>
</p>
<p>Software Freedom Conservancy's anaylsis of the situation: <br>
<a target="_blank" class="c-link moz-txt-link-freetext"
data-stringify-link="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/"
data-sk="tooltip_parent"
href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/"
rel="noopener noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true">https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/</a></p>
<p>I'm writing to get your thoughts on this situation, as well
as see what plans of action you are considering moving
forward. <br>
</p>
<p>Here are my thoughts: <br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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?): <br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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). <br>
</p>
<p>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...</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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). </p>
<p>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? <br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Prentice</pre>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Joe Landman
e: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:joe.landman@gmail.com" moz-do-not-send="true">joe.landman@gmail.com</a>
t: @hpcjoe
w: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://scalability.org" moz-do-not-send="true">https://scalability.org</a>
g: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/joelandman" moz-do-not-send="true">https://github.com/joelandman</a>
l: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelandman" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelandman</a></pre>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
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To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf">https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
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