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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.
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Not surprised. A for-profit corporation wanting more money. Especially as we enroach further into late stage capitalism where corporations struggle to find more territory to profiteer from and squeeze more profit out of us.
The era of free services being profitable is ending rapidly, and we see this across many areas in the world.
I wouldn't say they aren't profitable, I would say the greed outweighs profitability.
You're right. I should say "profit growth" which is what corporations look for. You can have solid growth, but unless it's growing, they don't care.
Part of the Capitalist mythos for sure, "if you're not growing, you're dying." There's a rejection of the idea that you could reach a healthy equilibrium of size and just remain there.
And because of the way the rest of the market works, it forces everybody to act like that or get beat out completely. Vicious feedback loops.
There's a word for sth that grows unlimited and uncontrolled. Cancer.
From an investor's perspective why would you invest in OSS when you can invest in real estate. Why structuring an economy where investors decide everything is fucking terrible.
I was wondering when Red Hat enshittification would began the moment IBM announced the acquisition. Turns out it begins today.
They announced the discontinuation of CentOS in 2020. That's when it started for me. This is just more of the same crusade against people "using RHEL for free" (which I'm sure none of the suits at IBM even begin to understand the value of, the real wonder is that RH managed to resist this move for so long).
It's most probably IBM forcing it, but yeah it's dumb.
I don't know about that. IBM is traditionally stupid, yeah, but they wanted Red Hat for a reason. The CentOS debacle altogether was Red Hat, not IBM, and I don't think they are doing too much day to day operational mandates for stuff like this. I would not be surprised if this was just a Red Hat thing. I know it's easy to blame IBM, but I don't think it's that simple.
Lol, redhat is just butt hurt they lost the NASA Linux contract to rocky
Jeff Geerling consistently has the most compatible, tested, updated, and well documented Ansible rolls out there. If I need to get some niche software installed and there is a geerlingguy role for it - I breathe a sigh of relief.
If he is considering stopping support for RedHat and it's various distros - that is massive.
Maybe IBM can hire the Reddit CEO when he is fired to head up Red Hat. Seems like a perfect fit
I was wondering why you were mentioning IBM, then I read that they bought it for 34B. This decision tracks...
Ohh, let's see, pay for Redhat which will rot away without community support or use one of a dozen other distros. Sorry yum, it's been fun.
you'd be surprised how many comps use RHEL just for the "I'm completely fucked and I need corporate level support" or "we need a data center completely off the rack" or "we wanna throw money at this problem" or "we need somebody to sue or point our finger at if we get majorly fucked" or "we need an OS that meets compliance" use cases. many comps won't just use some random community built OS to run their shit regardless of the community support. at the end of the day, many corporations with very complex requirements don't have many legitimate data center OS options available.
This is start of end RH.
Feel the Hat Red flow through you
I have seen IBM do this multiple times. When they buy a company, they leave it pretty much alone for a year or two. Then they start to make their IBM changes to it, and change it enough to make anyone that knew the product before them hate it. IBM buying RedHat was the beginning of the end. I told my boss about it the day I read the news of the IBM buyout, "We need to stop using CentOS for any new systems."
I am basically in the same boat, interacting with RHEL mostly because some of our customers insist on using it. It is already a giant pain with its tiny number of packages and the whole license tool struggles. At least so far we could build our internal tooling and the software we build for our customers on simple Centos or Alma Docker containers and use those for test systems as well. But now dealing with RHEL at all suddenly became an order of magnitude more painful, especially as others will also reduce support for it in their third party software we use.
the whole stream debacle was a massive red flag for me. at that point the decision was made to completely transition the tiny number of remaining RHEL based systems to debian and be done with it.
red hat has contributed much to the FLOSS ecosystem and some may require the corporate backed walled garden, but stream was (and this is) exactly the sort of unhelpful drama no one needs right now.
Yeah fuck this move. Seems incredibly short sighted and a huge fuck you to the community.
@FrankTheHealer @REdOG I guess Debian based distros win.
Is there even a Debian based distro that is up to date like Fedora, does not have snaps and does not have "Unstable" in its name?
*sigh* Do I have to go abandon Fedora now too? I really hope they don't pull a CentOS on that one
I highly doubt this would affect Fedora. Thankfully, it's community driven and self-goverened so Red Hat execs can't go and tell them what to do. (Though I don't know how many ties the Fedora council had to Red Hat)
Redhat: Yes, but also we are liars.
I gave up on RedHat when they gave up on the community. I wish them well, but I'm never going to use or recommend RedHat again,
IBM: We poured money and resources into Linux before 99% of the business world had even heard of it. We helped make it great. Why shouldn't we require a return on that investment?
PLEASE UNDERSTAND, I think IBM/RH is bone-headed as heck and are now inexcusable violators of the GPL, and other licenses.
I knew they were going to *break* RH and make it something abominable.
But they *were* there at the very beginning of the 2000s, promoting Linux heavily. (Not altruistically, of course)
This is not a violation of the GPL. They are allowed to charge for access to the source. If you provide binaries/images to a customer, you also must provide source. However, anyone who doesn't pay isn't entitled to it.
However, this is still a total bonehead move.
Who's surprised? IBM is owned 8% by Blackrock so this shouldn't surprise anybody.
Wow what the hell, this is the first I'm hearing of this change. I use Rocky Linux for my server atm and I was thinking I liked it for server use quite a lot more than Fedora, but if they're going to do this then I'm going to have to jump ship unfortunately. Maybe I'll go back to Debian. Or even better, maybe I'll try using Devuan in a prod server setup for once?
I'm super not happy to have to jump ship again though when I JUST settled into something I'm comfortable with that works near perfectly well for my usecases, after multiple years of jumping around undecided.
E: Although I did just read that statement from the Rocky Linux team, and maybe it'll be fine? But I'm still gonna prepare to move just in case this fucks over the Rocky Linux ecosystem anyways
The chatter around the water cooler at my office is that this may kill Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux (at least as downstream forks of RHEL). It will be very painful for companies that want RedHat support for their production systems but don't want to pay for RHEL licenses for developer test beds.
While Jeff's support for ELs has been imperfect - I marveled at the supply-chain issues gleefully baked into the drupal vagrant stuff - I came here to really say:
IBM's not really the poster-child for preserving the sanctity of source code in the past (cough cough Monterey cough), and I'm surprised they're even suggesting everyone respect their own demands around that.