AlmaLinux also reaffirmed their commitment to being fully open-source and good open-source citizens.
Thank you, AlmaLinux team. It is truly an unfortunate sight to see so many corpo-apologists in a Linux sub. You're doing a beautiful work.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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If there’s anyone that hates what Red Hat has done here, it’s me, but what AlmaLinux is doing is exactly what Red Hat was aiming for according to their statement, which is that clones would use CentOS Stream as their upstream and develop and contribute their own patches instead of copying RHEL bug-for-bug. The other reason is of course to convert people that need that bug-for-bug clone to paying customers.
With SUSE having announced a RHEL compatible alternative, I’m hoping that some people/businesses will consider switching their environment over to them as a more OSS friendly competitor that also offers support. If that distribution gains some traction, I foresee that some of the clones might use that as their upstream and that OEMs will follow suit and test their drivers on those distributions. There are enough people/businesses that are reliant on a mixture of RHEL and Alma/Rocky and for those life got a bit harder because of RHEL’s actions.
With SUSE having announced a RHEL compatible alternative,
Bummer. I know there's a market for customers who want it, but I'd prefer to finally rip the bandaid off and just leave RHEL compatibility behind.
What's the point of AlmaLinux if not for 1:1 RHEL compatibility? Might as well use CoreOS Stream cause the compatibility is good enough. Time to switch to Rocky Linux I guess.
Good for Alma, I say. Why base your business model on RedHat not finding a way to kill it? RedHat is a de facto enterprise standard in part because of the existence of free source-rebuild distributions allowing for small FOSS developers to ensure compatibility. They said so themselves, they want users to either switch to another distribution or pay for RedHat. So let's give them what they want and abandon RHEL compatibility.
Won't Rocky have the same issue as Alma? RedHat has made RHEL closed source, so how can they maintain compatibility?
I suspect Rocky and other source rebuilds just haven't made the announcement yet. Alma was merely the first to make an official statement.
RedHat has made RHEL closed source,
You've said the words, corpo-apologists will start haunting you now, good luck fending them off.
Rocky has announced their plan to continue as a 1:1 source rebuild. They're looking at using sources from RedHat's Universal Base Image Docker images, and also using cloud instances with consumption based pricing. With the latter option you spin up an instance on AWS/Azure/DigitalOcean/etc and it has a license for that instance, so you get the sources for the package versions on that instance. But since the license was temporary, then there's nothing for RHEL to terminate when you redistribute the sources.
RedHat says they don't want clones of RHEL. I say give it to them, lets have a landscape where they're no longer the de facto standard because there are no other distributions targeting RHEL compatibility.
This seems like a wise move for the time being. I am an Alma fan and supporter so I get that the foundation is trying to do everything it can to stay relevant.
Welp. In rocky we trust to keep it 1 to 1 I guess
They better be careful, Papa Red Hat is coming after them next. Expect legal issues to unfold in the upcoming months.
Yeah precidents are about to get set
Whole situation is ridiculous. People can't expect enterprise features and support infrastructure for free. But enterprises need to offer more price tiers.
I always thought the Red Hat business model was based around service and support with the OS being a secondary product which is why the free forks existed. When did the OS become the product?
When did the OS become the product?
When other companies made a business out of building a clone distro from the source RPMs with trademarks removed.and selling support contracts for it. Oracle being the absolute worst about it. Fuck Oracle.
The ability to do that is literally one of the core purposes of the license.
You don't and can't own derivative works of GPL projects. Oracle has the exact same right to resell an exact copy as red hat does of the original project.
I agree. That's why I said I don't support RedHat's choice to close off access to their source to non-customers. RedHat is still complying with their end of the license though, by keeping source access open to the recipients of their binary distribution. This is how Rocky is aiming to maintain 1:1 binary. RedHat is still publishing their Universal Base Image Docker image, so they need to keep source for that open, and Rocky will be using that method to get sources.
My stance is that we as users should be moving on from RedHat and RedHat derivatives, or just pay for RedHat if that's what we want. Continuing to use derivatives will just convince RedHat we'll all pay up if they can just get rid of those other options.
Having a prerequisite contract that allows them to punish customers who exercise their rights to the software is not complying with the license. Selling the code is allowed (though if it were written in the modern era where distribution costs are negligible I'm not sure it would be. Predicating distribution on other contracts that limit your rights is not.
You don't have a right to their sources until they distribute to you. And they have the right to choose to whom they do business (as long as they're not violatong discrimination laws). If they've distributed their product to you they have to give you the source, and they will. And if you distribute that source, they won't distribute the next release to you, so you won't have license to those subsequent sources. Compliant with the letter, not the spirit. It's shitty. And I think we should accordingly not do business with RedHat. That's what Alma is chosing here, by pivoting to no longer being 1:1 source rebuild distribution. Rocky is trying to hold onto the model that RedHat is trying to kill, by finding ways to still be a non-paying recipient of an RH distribution, requiring they be given access to source. I think we can expect RedHat to try and find a way to cut that off. Then Rocky will either pivot or die. But I wouldn't want to wait and see and then be screwed. I would want to break all dependence on an entity intent on breaking me. And I'd be wary of recommending Rocky as a migration from CentOS because of RedHat's actions.
It's not compliant with the letter. The GPL doesn't allow you to place other limitations on someone to receive the source. "You have the rights the GPL grants you, but we can punish you for exercising it" is a blatant and egregious breach of the GPL.
They're not betting that there's a 1 in a billion chance that they're right. They know with absolute certainty that they aren't even in the neighborhood of complying with the license. They're betting that no one is willing to spend the massive amount of money it would take to punish them for their stolen code.
Just to reiterate, I don't think RH is in the right here.
They're "punishing" you by not taking any more of your money for future versions. Maybe we'll see a court case out of it to settle the question but I doubt it. But consider you are a customer, and you have to ship RH binaries with your application. In order to comply with the license you must also make the source available. RedHat can't stop you from doing so, they just won't give you access to any more updates (and stop taking your money). So now you can't ship security updates to your customer. So now you have a legal liability by being a RedHat customer. Either you fail to comply with GPL yourself for the sake of updates, or you expose your customer to known security risks because you compiled with the GPL. So .. why do business with RedHat anymore? Explain this problem to your customers why you can't certify on RedHat anymore.
"If you distribute the code you're entitled to distribute we can terminate your contract" is identical to "if you distribute the code you're entitled to distribute we can charge you money". They're additional restrictions that are unconditionally not under any circumstances allowed by the GPL. You cannot restrict redistribution in any way for any reason outside of the GPL terms.
The second you do so, you are no longer covered under the GPL and everything you're distributing is copyright infringement.
"If you distribute the code you're entitled to distribute we can terminate your contract" is identical to "if you distribute the code you're entitled to distribute we can charge you money"
I'm not a lawyer, but I categorically disagree that those two statements are the same. If someone takes RedHat to court and wins, fantastic. But as I've said, I wouldn't make business plans that rely on winning that case.
When other companies made a business out of building a clone distro from the source
This has a name.... someone help... tip of my tongue... aaaaah... FREE SOFTWARE?
Did Red Hat invent linux? Did Red Hat write bash?
No, but Red Hat created the following major projects:
- Wayland
- PipeWire
- PulseAudio
- systemd
- FreeIPA
- Keycloak
- OpenStack
- NetworkManager
- Ceph
They're also major contributors of the following projects:
- Xorg
- GNOME
- LibreOffice
- radeon
- Linux kernel
If you use Linux, you directly use or benefit from Red Hat contributions. As simple as that.
What even is the point you think you're arguing against with me? Someone asked when RedHat decided to change aspects of their business model and I provided an answer. I didn't say I agree with it. Even in the face of me saying literally "I don't support RedHat" and "I haven't used RH in like 20 years" you seem really dedicated to convincing yourself that I just love RedHat and think they can do no wrong. Geerling is right. RedHat is stupid, and IBM is killing whatever was left of the brand. There are many, many alternatives to RedHat. Both free and commercial. Lets use them instead of clinging to RedHat-but-not-RedHat-because-we-don't-want-to-pay-RedHat.
People can’t expect enterprise features [...] for free
Hmm? Does Red Hat have *anything* you couldn't install in *any* linux distro?
support infrastructure for free
Alma sells support IIRC don't they? Or are you saying we need to fire all Windows IT specialists that are not Microsoft employees?
Does Red Hat have anything you couldn't install in any linux distro?
Can you install Satellite servers on your fleet of Ubuntu machines? OpenShift isn't free. I don't think there's anything that RHEL does that any other enterprise vendor can't do. And I don't support Red Hat (IBM) closing access to the source RPMs. But it costs money for vendors to develop their enterprise management platforms, the storage and bandwidth for geo-cached mirrors of updates, and all that. And if you're in an organization with a fleet of thousands of installations you need enterprise management platform.
Alma sells support IIRC don't they?
Exactly. It costs Alma money to have the resources to do that. So customers will need to pay the support costs to keep Alma viable. Just like with RedHat. But enterprises a freaking out about needing a new free enterprise distro, because RH is too expensive to license on thousands of machines. So RH should be finding more flexible price models, instead of trying to squeeze out competition.
Can you install Satellite servers on your fleet of
Use Rauncher from SUSE instead, they may be a corp but they're committed to Free Software at the moment.
So RH should be finding more flexible price models
Care to check for how many BILLIONS Red Hat was sold for? It is more than profitable enough, capitalism propaganda won't fly this time around.
Use Rauncher from SUSE instead, they may be a corp but they're committed to Free Software at the moment.
The free stuff is subsidized by enterprise subscriptions (and YaST sucks). That's all I'm saying. Alma has a free option and paid subscription. So does Rocky. So does Ubuntu. So does Suse. RedHat has free stuff too. (CentOS Stream, Fedora, and free RHEL developer license, and ubi). If you want the enterprise features of RedHat, pay the enterprise price. And if you don't want to (I sure don't), then use something else, because like you said we have choices.
capitalism propaganda won't fly this time around
You're way off the mark here. I haven't used RH in like 20 years, since they first introduced RHEL and killed its predecessor because screw that greedy shit. But I also haven't been trying to use 1:1 rebuilds of RHEL. Employers have made us use CentOS to because customers use RedHat but no we won't pay for RedHat but also no we can't use CentOS because no enterprise management to push security updates without the application updates but also no we won't pay for RedHat. It's stupid. Either pay for RedHat because you need it, or shut up and move onto something that isn't RedHat.
OKD is free and same as Openshift without support..
Not sure what direction you're leaning with this one. From here:
OKD is the upstream project of Red Hat OpenShift, optimized for continuous application development and deployment.
So it's the CentOS Stream of OpenShift. And just like CentOS Stream is openly available while Red Hat Enterprise is not, OKD is openly available while OpenShift is not. So revenue from OpenShift is used to support the development of OKD, just like with RHEL and CentOS Stream.
I just saying there OKD can be a replacement of OpenShift, even it's upstream, I just saying that it's possible to have somekind of openshift... in OKD.
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I wonder then how PCI compliance will be effected. Given CVEs can be patched by Alma now, however they'll need to maintain their own list of CVE's to track/fix
You should be fine for PCI compliance as long as you are on a current release (Been there already, a few times). Also AlmaLinux already has an Announce mailing list (announce@lists.almalinux.org) where they release update notifications (including Security releases) just like CentOS did.
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