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<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">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/">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/">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">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>
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