Redhat goes CLOSED SOURCE?
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This is a MAJOR development with Redhat NO LONGER giving public access to the base RHEL source code. Support My Work-----------------------------------------...

Potentially this means that Fedora and CentOS stream do not get timely updates implemented in RHEL.

Canonical must be throwing a party, and I bet SUSE is not hating it either

    • CountVon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      402·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, the writing was on the wall as soon as IBM acquired Red Hat. IBM is going to end up hollowing out Red Hat in their drive for more revenue. They started by destroying CentOS, which used to be a community-supported binary-compatible RHEL analog but is now effectively RHEL Beta and thus useless for enterprise work. Now they’re closing the source so they can kill the other RHEL analogs, like Rocky Linux.

      It’s such a short-sighted move though, so many things got built on RHEL and compatible because those FOSS options existed. IBM seems to think that some significant percentage of those free installs can be converted to a paid install, and they might be right in the short term but I think the long-term impact is gonna be dire. Over time RHEL could became a closed-source ghetto in the FOSS world because fewer developers will be able to test their open source projects on RHEL without paying the IBM tax. Once RHEL starts to fall behind it could cause enough friction that enterprises will start looking to other distros, and then Red Hat’s primary revenue stream starts to dry up.

      • ebike_enjoyer@slrpnk.netEnglish
        72·
        2 years ago

        I’ve been a happy fedora user for some time now. Maybe it’s time to start distrohopping again.

        • CountVon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          14·
          2 years ago

          I think Fedora will continue to be fine for the foreseeable future as it’s an upstream OS. It gets changes before they go into an RHEL release, which means a Fedora user is essentially beta-testing future RHEL changes. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that and if you’re happy on Fedora then you can stick with it and be confident it’s going to continue to operate the way it does today (barring any future licensing changes from IBM that affect upstream distros).

          This change will really affect the downstream distros like Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux. I think those distros have a valuable place in the FOSS ecosystem, as they allow FOSS contributors a low-friction way to test their code on an RHEL-compatible distro without having to agree to a Red Hat license. The fact they IBM / Red Hat is making this change must mean that they see some advantage in having absolute control of the licensing terms for downstream distros, and I have to imagine that their gain will be at least partly at the community’s expense.

      • LoafyLemon@kbin.social
        4·
        2 years ago

        Is this the beginning of yet another corporate enshitifcation? Or are we already further in the process? I haven’t been paying that much attention to Red Hat.

        • CountVon@sh.itjust.works
          7·
          2 years ago

          Is this the beginning of yet another corporate enshitifcation?

          I hadn’t actually thought of this as enshitification, but upon reflection… yeah, it truly is! Red Hat allowed the existence of downstream distros, and even made one of their own in CentOS, because they understood how supporting FOSS dev/test on their enterprise product ultimately increased the overall value of that product to their paying customers. Now that IBM has bought Red Hat they don’t care about any of that, they just want to squeeze as hard as possible to maximize the return on their investment. I’d say enshitification started in earnest when they killed CentOS six months ago, so the current announcement is the second phase of enshitification.

          • LoafyLemon@kbin.social
            2·
            2 years ago

            That sucks. I didn’t know they had already killed CentOS, but knowing IBM owns them makes this less of a surprise, last I checked, IBM has been struggling financially.

            I wonder how this change will affect distros like Fedora.

      • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        cause enough friction that enterprises will start looking to other distros

        Highly unlikely IMO, unless someone else enters the market of commercial support.

        I’ve been working for big enterprises for decades, not IT companies but big nonetheless.

        The reason why Linux could “break the barrier” and enter the enterprise market (at least in EU) is that one day Red Hat became a company capable of guarantee support by means of support contracts.

        Big enterprises don’t care a product is the best in the world IF they cannot have a contract with some entity capable of commercially supporting it every time there’s a problem.

        I believe it’s very stupid on IBM part to make this move, but as long as they maintain their contracts, big enterprises will stay on Red Hat, they won’t care about what will happen to independent developers, they wouldn’t be using their software anyway.

        Very sad, but at enterprise level there are not many choices when it comes to opensource software.

    • RF@uninspired.dev
      9·
      2 years ago

      It’s not closed source technically, but it is a little suspect at the very least. It’s not violating GPL, but we should be striving for better than the bare minimum.

    • CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.mlEnglish
      25·
      2 years ago

      Debian has always had a primary focus on being open source and adhering to good open source principles. It’s a rare trait in the modern Linux ecosystem sadly, with so many corporate distros just trying to make a buck. Arch seems pretty good about open principles as well. I’m always going to stick to community-powered distros over ones backed by corporations and I suggest everyone who cares about FOSS do the same.

      • pahakala@lemmy.worldEnglish
        355·
        2 years ago

        systemd is one of the best things that has happened with linux. Instead of random shell scripts that work differently on each distro, now you have a single ini conf file for your service that configures automatic restarts, sandboxing and activation in a easy to use way.

          • Wr4ith@lemmy.worldEnglish
            152·
            2 years ago

            I mean a core issue is that it doesn’t adhere to the unix principle of do one thing and do it well. Aside from that it essentially creates a middle layer where things can happen without you really knowing it’s happening. If you haven’t I’d suggest running a couple of different init systems to see what I mean.

            I’m ambivalent, I like systemd because it’s convenient, but I also like openrc because it’s simple.

          • sarsaparilyptus@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
            83·
            2 years ago

            I don’t like systemd. Reasons:

            • broad scope and lots of dependencies are more or less the exact opposite design philosophy of *nix

            • putting too many eggs in one basket intrinsically increases the attack vector and also decreases stability

            • bloated

            Most importantly:

            • Gives Red Hat i.e. IBM too much influence over Linux
          • eltimablo@kbin.social
            1·
            2 years ago

            They see all the other stuff that gets packaged under the systemd name and assume it’s non-optional. While many distributions do, annoyingly, ship the auxiliary packages like resolved by default, they’re not required if you just want to use the init system, and honestly they kind of strike me as an attempt to supplement or replace some of the incumbent components of your average distro.

            Systemd-resolved can suck my whole grundle, though.

            • bane_killgrind@lemmy.mlEnglish
              2·
              2 years ago

              A specific design philosophy that is adhered to means the software has greater interoperability, reliability, and maintainability. When you are criticising something that adheres to a design philosophy, communicate how it’s adhering to that philosophy to it’s own detriment.

      • RangerHere@programming.devEnglish
        9·
        2 years ago

        If you don’t mind me asking, why do you not like systemd? I like it a lot and in my humble opinion it makes life really easy.

      • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.mlEnglish
        6·
        2 years ago

        This literally feels like the geek equivalent of culture wars stoked to divide people just for the sake of it

      • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Anyone who thinks systemd is a mess has obviously never struggled with the failings of its predecessor. Systemd is a major improvement.

      • NikkiNikkiNikki@kbin.social
        14·
        2 years ago

        APT is the mess, I’ve never had more issues with broken packages and unbreakable dependency cycles than with APT

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
          1·
          2 years ago

          This is why I always use aptitude to manage my packages, and always review all planned actions (other than simple upgrades) before proceeding.

        • FreeBooteR69@kbin.social
          11·
          2 years ago

          Yeah i’ve had problems with both Mint and Pop with broken packages. Easy to fix with synaptic package manager, but annoying.

  • StarkillerX42@lemmy.mlEnglish
    151·
    2 years ago

    I remember people on reddit saying the IBM buyout “is no big deal” and IBM will maintain Redhat “in good faith”

  • animist@lemmy.oneEnglish
    132·
    2 years ago

    Dammit I just got used to Fedora too. Guess I have to go pure Debian now

    • Mane25@feddit.ukEnglish
      25·
      2 years ago

      Fedora is upstream from RHEL, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference.

      • onepinksheep@kbin.social
        3·
        2 years ago

        It’s not going to have a direct material effect, but it’s going to affect perception. There are already people cautious about corporate influence on Linux, and a Linux distro getting closed like this is going to be seen negatively. While Fedora and RedHat are separate entities, they’re close enough for one’s perception to rub off on the other.

        • Mane25@feddit.uk
          31·
          2 years ago

          But it’s not “getting closed”, that’s a misleading headline that people have jumped on all of a sudden, there was no talk of this yesterday when the change was announced. This was the original wording. Nothing is going closed, the way it’s published is changing - you might not like the change, but to call it closed source is just deceptive.

          The worst case (most cynical interpretation of Red Hat’s narrative) is that they’re trying to make things difficult for Rocky and Alma (which doesn’t make much sense to me from their point of view but it’s what it looks like). The best case (most charitable interpretation) is that it’s a simple rationalisation that could encourage better community integration.

          Of course if people keep spreading false or sensationalist narrative that might harm their reputation anyway through misinformation (which is kind of what happened with CentOS Stream in my view).

  • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    2 years ago

    As I understand the situation Red Hat will just release the sources on centos.org. Much fuss about a domain change. They’ll still comply with the GPL. Nothing is going closed source.

  • taladar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    91·
    2 years ago

    This is especially painful since it means you can’t easily use any RHEL downstream distros like Alma or Rocky for testing or build servers for RHEL anymore. I suspect this will lead to even worse third party software support to complement RHEL’s tiny selection of available packages.

  • havilland@lemmy.mlEnglish
    81·
    2 years ago

    Has anyone got a source on this? The video doesn’t have any more info linked…

  • root@lemmy.runEnglish
    6·
    2 years ago

    Seems like another good company is being sacrificed to corporate greed.

      • kool_newt@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Ya, I think I’m gonna try it on a second system because it really appeals to me, I use Arch (btw) on my main system and am very happy with it.

    • pahakala@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      fedora will be fine as it is the upstream provider of rpm build files

      fedora -> centos stream -> RHEL

      Rocky Linux and Oracle Linux that take the RHEL sources without contributing back are having their src rpm access cut.

        • BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          Quoted from my other post: Well in order to access the CentOS stream repo you need to have a subscription. So really not closed source but rather “harder-to-view-the-source”.

          • Carl George@beehaw.org
            3·
            2 years ago

            Well in order to access the CentOS stream repo you need to have a subscription.

            That’s false. The sources are right here, open to the world and open for contribution. What was shut down was the automation to export RHEL source RPMs to the legacy location. The source RPM exports were pretty much useless for contributors and maintainers of RHEL and CentOS. However, they were critical for RHEL rebuilds, which is why people are upset.

          • ReCursing@kbin.social
            1·
            2 years ago

            That’s not closed sourced, it’s just not free (or libre). I mean it still seems like a bad move to me, a retrograde step, but it won’t hurt the business side of things I expect

            • BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social
              3·
              2 years ago

              Well, thats youtube sensationalism for you. Rocky Linux has already said it shouldn’t affect them and if they’re good I doubt there will be much issue.

    • TooL@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      What does this have to do with fedora? Fedora is actively supported by redhat I doubt you’re going to see any changes with this. This really only affects redhat alternate distros like rocky.

      • BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        Fedora’s deeply related Red Hat. Every decision affects Fedora in some way. It’s just another negative change IBM is doing to RH.

        • vaidooryam@mastodon.sdf.org
          0·
          2 years ago

          @BarrierWithAshes @SmokeInFog @TooL not unless they make new announcements regarding their upstream projects. This decision affects downstream projects that rely on making their code publicly available (hence projects outside of redhat).

          I am apprehensive too as I just started using fedora and beginning to like it.

          • TooL@kbin.social
            1·
            2 years ago

            I’ll still be using Fedora. But i’m a RHEL Engineer soo… kinda makes sense to stick with it. I don’t see this really having much of an effect on me.

  • weirdwallace75@kbin.social
    2·
    2 years ago

    Red Hat can’t go closed source since the source they’re distributing is released under the GPL. They’re required to distribute code to anyone they distribute binaries to, and they can’t stop anyone who has their code from redistributing it.

    • feyo@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      You are correct. They can however stop doing business with whoever is distributing their source, which makes getting new versions of the source harder.

      This is what the dude selling „hardened“ versions of Linux is doing. Can’t remember the name and I don’t care to give him advertisement anyway, but he simply stops selling you new versions if you distribute old ones.

    • bayaz@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      There’s a discussion about this on lwn (relevant part starting around this comment). My understanding is like @fayo said: you can pull this “trick” of releasing their source code, but only once (assuming they catch you).

  • Jeremy [Iowa]@midwest.socialEnglish
    32·
    2 years ago

    Sensationalism at its finest.

    However, the open-source developer GloriousEggroll mentions that the developer subscription to RHEL is free. So, access to RHEL source code is still possible but inconvenient?

    Just want to to note here the Developer subscription is completely free and still allows access to RHEL and its source code if you want exact package sources. CentOS stream basically serves as a RHEL upstream so I understand this change. It may seem confusing for some people.

    — GloriousEggroll @gloriouseggroll@fosstodon.org (@GloriousEggroll) June 22, 2023