Doesn't this basically straight up kill distributions like Oracle Linux, Rocky Linux, Alma Linux etc.?
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Red Hat will still be providing the source code for those who buy RHEL subscription, so not really.
As I've understood, it'll be just based not on RHEL, but on CentOS.
Does it? It isn't like source code isn't available.
Self-answering after a lot of reading:
Pretty much all RedHat employees I read from seemed absolutely hell-bent on misunderstanding the purpose of most downstream distros. They all acted like Alma/Rocky, etc were aiming to be kinda-sorta similar to RHEL, when in theory those distributions have to be as 100% identical to RHEL as possible to be useful.
Depending on how things play out, the situation for the future can range from "Downstream distros just have to create a free RHEL account to get the source like always" to a ruinous game of cat and mouse where RedHat moves things around, keeps back tiny pieces and generally makes any kind of stable automation of a build process close to impossible. Things can also start out at the harmless end of the range and get progressively worse until all downstream distros just (have to) give up. This uncertainty is poison for them, even if RHEL does nothing further to harm them.
All in all I'm very glad I reduced my usage of the whole RHEL ecosystem by a lot since they killed CentOS. I'll continue to move away from it until all that is left is a single node in a corner used to support those of our customers who can't be steered away from it. We stopped recommending RHEL to our customers already and this kind of stunt just shows what a good decision that was.
In the comment section one Red hatter says the differences will be minimal for Alma and Rocky, though some embargoed fix might be out. Seems mostly ok (I'd say for most use cases even CentOS Stream is ok)
That’s a Red Hat employee that has nothing to do with code. The comments about emabargoed stuff appearing in Red Hat before CentOS Stream are for coordinated code releases to fix a bug that’s not been released yet. (e.g. there’s a remote code exploit in the network stack related to intel NICs. Intel will coordinate with people like Red Hat and MS to get the release out in a coordinated fashion, but the data Intel supplies is embargoed until the coordinated release.)
Rocky reports their release cycles are all tied to automation of the git repos that are going away. https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/has-red-hat-just-killed-rocky-linux/10378
So, while in theory someone who has a license can use source RPM’s to get at code, Rocky, and likely Alma, aren’t set up to deal with that as upstream sources. Plus, even though that matches the GPL (if someone sells you code, they have to supply source without restitrictions), I’d imagine the GPL doesn’t say that if someone sells a GPL’d product, they have to sell to you.
My guess is Alma and Rocky will figure a way around this, but id also guess it’s going to be tough.
Would this affect the lifecycle of Alma and Rocky? CentOS Stream had support for 5 years only, whereas RHEL comes with a 10 year support policy.
Before we get too reactionary here, it could make sense to have people focus on the CentOS stream codebase for upstream dev, instead of Redhat having to manage upstreamed code targeting all the different releases of RHEL no?
And can't Rocky Linux and Alma Linux just simply get source code via the partner program? Or does this change prevent them from doing so? You'd think that Redhat would want projects like Rocky and Alma around as a taste-testing lure for RHEL, considering that Redhat makes their money on support rather than RHEL itself.
RedHat already has no-cost RHEL licenses. The disadvantage is that it's necessary to create a developer account, and one account only supports 16 devices.