this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
75 points (85.0% liked)

Linux

48366 readers
1310 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] sounddrill@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz 35 points 1 year ago (3 children)

A lot of people suggested moving away from rhel and rhel based... I did not listen and now...

[–] CountVon@sh.itjust.works 36 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] eltimablo@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

IBM apparently didn't learn their IBM-compatible lesson.

[–] ebike_enjoyer@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] CountVon@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year 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 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 points 1 year 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

A lot of people suggested moving away from rhel and rhel based… I did not listen and now…

Alma and Rocky Linux both said it's not a change that will dramatically impact them. They'll have to adapt the existing workflows but they'll both continue.

[–] jared@uninspired.dev 9 points 1 year 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.

[–] words_number@programming.dev 24 points 1 year ago (20 children)
[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year 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.

load more comments (19 replies)
[–] animist@lemmy.one 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] Mane25@feddit.uk 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] animist@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

That's good to know, thank you!

[–] onepinksheep@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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).

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Reorder9543@social.fossware.space 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

openSUSE Leap or Tumbleweed is an option if you wanna stick to RPM-based.

[–] ProtonBadger@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Yes, SUSE have always been great.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year 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.works 9 points 1 year 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.

[–] root@lemmy.run 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] vis4valentine@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

TLDW?

What is gonna happen to Fedora?

What are they thinking?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] havilland@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] kool_newt@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We need to make "Arch Enterprise Linux".

[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Check out opensuse tumbleweed. You might like it

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Man I'm glad I never picked up Fedora. Rocky has already put out a statement that they should be fine at least.

https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/has-red-hat-just-killed-rocky-linux/10378/3

[–] TooL@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] ReCursing@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What??? Is there an article rather than a video?

[–] BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] ReCursing@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Am I missing something? Nothing there says anything about becoming closed source?

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] jeremy_sylvis@midwest.social 2 points 1 year 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

load more comments
view more: next ›