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 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] Raphael 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] baronvonj 1 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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 ([email protected]) where they release update notifications (including Security releases) just like CentOS did.

[–] prey169 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Welp. In rocky we trust to keep it 1 to 1 I guess

[–] Raphael 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They better be careful, Papa Red Hat is coming after them next. Expect legal issues to unfold in the upcoming months.

[–] prey169 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah precidents are about to get set

[+] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] baronvonj 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[+] SpaceCadet 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] baronvonj 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don’t think that “let’s all abandon RHEL so it becomes irrelevant” is the appropriate response here. It’s a matter of freedom and principles. If RHEL exists, a compatible, free and unencumbered alternative should be allowed to exist as well.

RedHat thinks they shouldn't exist, and is trying to maneuver within legal limits to ensure they don't exist. It's not that I agree with RedHat that the compatible clones shouldn't exist. It's that I think RedHat's actions are duplicitous enough that we should no longer see RHEL compatibility as a goal to care about. Much the same way Google has taken actions to distance itself from a dependence on Java after Oracle went all APIs-are-patentable rampage. Why engage with an entity who has a stated goal of ending your existence?

Also, Alma doesn’t have a business model in the same way that Debian doesn’t have a business model. The Alma Linux OS Foundation is a non-profit organization.

I knew there was a foundation behind Alma but hadn't looked into them too much, as I was already thinking of continuing to target RHEL compatibility may have poor business continuity after they killed CentOS as a free RHEL clone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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.

[–] baronvonj 3 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] Raphael 2 points 2 years ago

RedHat has made RHEL closed source,

You've said the words, corpo-apologists will start haunting you now, good luck fending them off.

[–] baronvonj 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Whole situation is ridiculous. People can't expect enterprise features and support infrastructure for free. But enterprises need to offer more price tiers.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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?

[–] baronvonj 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] baronvonj 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] Raphael 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

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?

[–] baronvonj 3 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] Raphael 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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?

[–] baronvonj 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

OKD is free and same as Openshift without support..

[–] baronvonj 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Raphael 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The person you're talking to is strictly anti-opensource, he does not believe anything can be done with community projects.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

ugh... I hope this doesn't end up flame war. Thank you for sharing and reminds me about it.

[–] baronvonj 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Raphael is blindly ignoring that I've literally said I don't support RedHat closing access to their sources and that I'm in here applauding Alma for moving away from their dependence on a greedy corporation. Somehow my acknowledging that enterprise support costs money to provide, and that the resources to develop and distribute FOSS aren't free, means to him that I'm just blindly opposed to FOSS and that I'm pro-corporation.

[–] Raphael 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Your argument boils down to "It can't be helped".

[–] baronvonj 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Your argument boils down to “It can’t be helped”.

In this thread I've said don't use RedHat because they're being dickbags, also maybe don't use clones of RHEL because they then see you as a customer who isn't paying them, and also if you need enterprise support it costs money so pay for it (because it also pays for the FOSS projects that these companies foster and contribute to).

So what is it that I'm saying can't be helped?

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