this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023

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AlmaLinux No Longer Aims For 1:1 Compatibility With RHEL (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 1 year ago by duncesplayed@lemmy.one to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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[+] SpaceCadet@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] baronvonj@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe you should read the rest of my comments in this post.

You mean enterprise features mostly developed by the community under the GPL?

Enterprise features like the update management server to keep a fleet of thousands of machines patched with only security updates. Infrastructure like geo-located mirrors of the update repositories (not volunteer mirrors like universities around the world mirroring kernel.org and centos.org and eclipse.org etc). Support service like on-call staff to pick up the phone whenever you call. Those things cost money to provide. If you know of a distribution which provides all that for free, please let me know. If you need that level of support, pay for it instead of trying to find a freebie around it.

Why shouldn’t they be free?

I assume you like to be paid for your work. You might be surprised to learn that revenues from that commercial support pay for the free stuff.

Red Hat is not owed our money just because they’re a business, they however do owe the community strict adherence to the GPL and if they’re not downright violating it here, they are most certainly trying to do an end-run around it.

I agree with you, and everyone else who thinks I need to be told this. Which is why I've been advocating in this thread for users to drop RedHat like I did 20ish years ago when they first replaced their free desktop with RedHat Enterprise. And further to move away from source-rebuild distributions because RedHat has clearly stated that they see these users as lost revenue and are taking these actions as a way to "claim" those customers by removing the options. And I certainly wouldn't pay RedHat after shitting on at least the spirit of the GPL (and I'll be happy if someone sues them successfully to set a precedent about the letter of the GPL).

It seems that you, and many other corpo-apologists, have been brainwashed into a commercial software mode of thinking where you get the basic software for free, and then pay for extra features. Your “price tiers” remark certainly indicates that you don’t really understand what open source software is about.

I'm so apologetic to these corporations that I'm literally commenting in here to stop buying from them! Such an apologist! When RedHat killed CentOS, I recommended at my office that we switch all CentOS usage to Ubuntu. When they announced this last move of closing the RHEL source to non-customers and the user agreements that they'll terminate your contract if you distribute the sources, I recommended we don't even consider a source rebuild distribution either, because I don't want us to be caught with having to transition to another distribution if RedHat finds a way to kill off the source for UBI to non-customers (how Rocky is planning to stay compatible as a source-rebuild distribution). And it seems Canonical is killing their free distribution too, for organizations of more than 5, so I have to reconsider Ubuntu now (which sucks because WSL was really helping my case to use Ubuntu) Maybe now that Alma is moving away from the RHEL source rebuild model I can recommend Alma, maybe can get a WSL package of Alma. If the other distributions stop caring about RHEL compatibility, then RHEL will cease to be the de facto standard. And we can all rejoice. Seriously why would anyone want to sell a product they built on RHEL now. If they have to redistribute a library they got from RHEL, then they are faced with either being in violation of GPL or losing access to security updates from RHEL (meaning they'll be exposing their own customers to security risks). It's a legal lose-lose to be a RHEL customer now.

As for support infrastructure: nobody is expecting Red Hat to give tech support to AlmaLinux and RockyLinux users.

Fucking duh. I never implied that. I said if you're trying to make use of enterprise features that cost money to provide, you should pay for them. I personally get by just fine with support from GitHub issues/discussions, Gitter/Slack channels, IRC, and Usenet.

[+] SpaceCadet@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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[–] baronvonj@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

First, thank you for not resorting to name calling this time.

None of the Alma Linux and Rocky Linux users hit those servers, so they’re not taking anything away from Red Hat.

Here are RedHat's own words on users of source-rebuild distributions.

The generally accepted position that these free rebuilds are just funnels churning out RHEL experts and turning into sales just isn’t reality. I wish we lived in that world, but it’s not how it actually plays out. Instead, we’ve found a group of users, many of whom belong to large or very large IT organizations, that want the stability, lifecycle and hardware ecosystem of RHEL without having to actually support the maintainers, engineers, writers, and many more roles that create it. These users also have decided not to use one of the many other Linux distributions.

This is the perspective that is informing RedHat's decision making on the matter. It doesn't matter that you and I know the people using Alma and Rocky, and previously CentOS, won't switch to paid RHEL users if those options are gone.

You conflate two things: on one hand there is A: “being able to use a Linux distribution that’s binary compatible with RHEL”, on the other hand there is B: “having a support contract and access to technical support”.

I can see how you would see my comments as conflating the two. It was not my intention to do so.

I see no issue with A, “the software”, being free, and I see no issue with B, “the support”, being not free. This is how it has been since Red Hat came into existence, yet you’re telling me here that A shouldn’t exist.

I'm not saying they shouldn't exist, RedHat is saying that. I'm saying given RedHat's actions, I wouldn't want to be in the business of trying to fight with them to maintain a source-rebuild distribution or base my own business continuity on them being able to out-maneuver RedHat and continue to exist.

That’s a broken analogy. The existence of a free and legal alternative to RHEL doesn’t mean that Red Hat doesn’t get paid, it just means that a free alternative exists. But big businesses do love support contracts from big reliable vendors, so Red Hat does in fact get paid and their model is quite profitable.
On the other side: is Red Hat cutting a paycheck to all the contributors of the thousands and thousands of tools and utilities that go into RHEL?

It is a fact that big corporations like Canonical, RedHat, and Suse have historically paid full time developers to contribute to and maintain FOSS code. They have to have money to pay those developers. They can't make a reliable and predictable revenue stream on just the existence of the software itself, so they sell support contracts to pay for it.

On the other side: is Red Hat cutting a paycheck to all the contributors of the thousands and thousands of tools and utilities that go into RHEL?

No, and I never claimed anything close to that. But RedHat is among many Linux distributors who employ developers full time to contribute to and maintain FOSS projects.

Come on now, it’s the other way around. The enormous amount of free software development they have received from the community is what allows them to have this profitable commercial support model in the first place.

Indeed, hence why I think RedHat is ethically in the wrong here.

Yet you provide not a single convincing argument why that should be the case. What kind of artificial bs label is “enterprise” anyway? It’s just software, and whether it has a label of “enterprise” or “consumer” is irrelevant

I gave examples of what I perceive as enterprise support, you're free to think those things don't matter, but maybe tell me who does those things for free. Alma Foundation isn't some group of benevolent billionaires paying for everything out of their own pockets. If they weren't receiving donations (be they monetary or services) or revenue, they wouldn't be able to do what they're doing.

the only thing that determines whether or not it’s ok for it to be free is the license of the software, and so far the license says that it can be free.

Again, I agree. All the source-rebuild distributions have the right to exist. And if they feel it's worthwhile to pursue still , good for them and good luck.

I mean .. we all agree that RedHat is in the wrong here because the actions of the source-rebuild distributions are protected under the FOSS licenses. We have different reactions and hopes, but we all agree that RedHat is doing wrong. So I don't understand why you and Raphael are out here calling me an apologist who doesn't understand OSS.