Looks like IBM is a big fan of enshittification too. As a long time Ubuntu user, i'm insulated from this, but a lot of CentOS users are gonna be in for a shock.
Looks like IBM is a big fan of enshittification too.
As a long time Ubuntu user, i'm insulated from this, but a lot of CentOS users are gonna be in for a shock.
IBM started enshittification of CentOS couple of years ago with Stream [1]. Most people I know (who don't want to pay for RHEL licenses) have migrated to distributions like Rocky Linux or Alma...
IBM started enshittification of CentOS couple of years ago with Stream [1].
Most people I know (who don't want to pay for RHEL licenses) have migrated to distributions like Rocky Linux or Alma Linux, which aim to be drop-in replacements for CentOS by now.
Yes! I was not a fan of those distros personally, but given IBM changing how CentOS was being used I was glad those distros popped up. I hope this decision moves more folks to SuSe! This is the...
Yes! I was not a fan of those distros personally, but given IBM changing how CentOS was being used I was glad those distros popped up.
I hope this decision moves more folks to SuSe!
This is the meting notes from RockyLinux folks about this subject. Doesn't look too hopeful for them to be able to continue.
Thanks for linking those! Honestly that's basically my top option whenever IT shit goes sideways. "Why am I doing this, I should quit and just raise goats." It does sound like they're working on a...
This is the meting notes from RockyLinux folks about this subject.
Thanks for linking those!
Options
Buy a farm in Nebraska or Montana. Raise cattle
Stack suggests goats instead, as they may be easier (plus milk, cheese, gyro's, and they will eat poison ivy!)
Honestly that's basically my top option whenever IT shit goes sideways. "Why am I doing this, I should quit and just raise goats."
It does sound like they're working on a plan, and that they're not completely blindsided by this move. Things will likely be a bit rocky for a little while but I fully expect them to come out okay (and even better, with being decoupled from IBM's whims).
Not a Linux power user. Just switched to Fedora recently though. What are the ramifications for a downstream user like me? Would it be recommendable to switch to another distro?
enshittification
Not a Linux power user. Just switched to Fedora recently though. What are the ramifications for a downstream user like me? Would it be recommendable to switch to another distro?
I don't think anything will be changing for Fedora. Fedora is actually upstream of Red Hat: So I'm not worried at this stage. However, considering that Red Hat is a massive sponsor of Fedora, and...
I don't think anything will be changing for Fedora. Fedora is actually upstream of Red Hat:
To create Red Hat Enterprise Linux, some version of Fedora is forked and enters an extensive development, testing and certification process to become a new version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
So I'm not worried at this stage. However, considering that Red Hat is a massive sponsor of Fedora, and IBM (who owns Red Hat) is shaking things up, I am keeping an eye out.
Yeah I think Fedora is relatively safe. Though Red Hat did make a thoroughly stupid decision to lay off the Fedora Program Manager recently and that's going to have some impacts (I think we'll be...
Yeah I think Fedora is relatively safe. Though Red Hat did make a thoroughly stupid decision to lay off the Fedora Program Manager recently and that's going to have some impacts (I think we'll be seeing those impacts for some time)
I guess I was wondering more from a perspective of principles. I.e., am I, by continuing to use Fedora contributing to the popularity of a distro—and by extension, a company (IBM)—that is going to...
I guess I was wondering more from a perspective of principles. I.e., am I, by continuing to use Fedora contributing to the popularity of a distro—and by extension, a company (IBM)—that is going to harm the OSS ecosystem in the long run?
It's just on my mind probably due to what's been going on with Reddit and the similarities (enshittification).
I've been using Fedora for a while now, but I'm not concerned. Although Fedora is heavily funded and used Red Hat, it's still an independent project, and the Fedora source is still publicly...
I've been using Fedora for a while now, but I'm not concerned. Although Fedora is heavily funded and used Red Hat, it's still an independent project, and the Fedora source is still publicly available. Fedora hasn't done any wrong here.
FOSS is free by nature - free for any person or company to use, adapt, and re-use so long as they comply with the license terms. There's always going to be a company that uses FOSS in harmful ways, sometimes even while sponsoring FOSS projects. In Red Hat's case, it has historically done a lot of good.
So in my view, continuing to use Fedora is barely any different to continuing to use the Linux kernel, Gnome, Wayland, etc. They all contribute to the popularity and success of Red Hat and IBM - and far worse companies than those. But if the teams behind those projects started making terrible decisions, then I'd become worried.
Historical side-note, they weren't just the gold standard for home PCs, (way) before that IBM was Computing-Tabulating-Record company, they defined and popularized the punched card format, the...
Exemplary
Historical side-note, they weren't just the gold standard for home PCs, (way) before that IBM was Computing-Tabulating-Record company, they defined and popularized the punched card format, the IBM-80 and IBM-40 and the associated character codes, and laid the groundwork for BCDIC (sort-of a precursor to ASCII, and various vendors did have their own variation of BCDIC)
And even before the first AI winter of 70s IBM used an IBM704 to showcase a checkers program that could "learn" (written by Arthur Samuel introducing tree-pruning and minmax concepts)
IBM's history extends quite a ways back, it's sad what they have reduced themselves to.
Back when I worked at [massive ISP], I had to do work for a project with a team of contractors from IBM. I was very unimpressed, and eventually couldn't take it anymore and asked a senior at the...
Back when I worked at [massive ISP], I had to do work for a project with a team of contractors from IBM. I was very unimpressed, and eventually couldn't take it anymore and asked a senior at the company about it. The conversation went something like this (heavily paraphrased, it's been years):
"They're paid like 20x what we're paid, how are they so completely inept? I thought IBM were competent."
"Oh, IBM still has some superstars, but they don't let them anywhere near us. They're for the companies that pay [another order of magnitude more than we do]. Most of their people these days don't have to do anything useful, they're just there because their brand recgonition is so good they can just sell it on its own."
"Then why contract them at all? Seems like a huge waste of money."
"The executives that made the decision would rather trust the brand. If they contract IBM and they fail, no one can blame them - it's IBM! If they choose a less well known company like yours the risk to them is much higher."
Manufacturing and core sectors are losing their revenues due to global recession, and since IT and other service sectors are dependent on core sectors, they will be the one receiving the maximum...
Manufacturing and core sectors are losing their revenues due to global recession, and since IT and other service sectors are dependent on core sectors, they will be the one receiving the maximum flak.
Somewhere around the turn of this century when (apparently) we transitioned from industrial revolution to the digital revolution, folks probably assumed that technology is what drives the economy which seems to be an incorrect assumption. Core industries like manufacturing and agriculture still drive the economy and IT is just another service industry that depends on that just like others like banking, insurance, transport, etc.
You're right! It looks like it's about 3 licenses purchased by a few folks within NASA who wanted to use Rocky. Doubt that had anything to do with this decision. And I agree, IBM is trying to...
You're right!
It looks like it's about 3 licenses purchased by a few folks within NASA who wanted to use Rocky. Doubt that had anything to do with this decision.
And I agree, IBM is trying to leverage OpenShift a lot more and their decisions line up with trying to squeeze revenue from containers and automation.
The only thing that surprises me here is that it took IBM this long to begin turning the screws on Redhat. As a general Linux desktop/laptop user, this makes me fear for the future of the...
The only thing that surprises me here is that it took IBM this long to begin turning the screws on Redhat.
As a general Linux desktop/laptop user, this makes me fear for the future of the platform. Redhat currently spends a lot of time and money working on things that benefit everybody else. As a Fedora user, I'm even more concerned.
I wanted to say this was "unbelievable" but it really isn't. A significant portion of the tools upon which RHEL is built are open source, and some are even GPL v2/v3, so this strikes me as taking...
I wanted to say this was "unbelievable" but it really isn't. A significant portion of the tools upon which RHEL is built are open source, and some are even GPL v2/v3, so this strikes me as taking work made by developers all around the world and walling it so IBM can profit from it all.
The announcement itself is classic business speak; it goes on and on in circles and avoids the main point until the very last moment. Besides, RHEL support is not what it used to be. Both of these signify a shift in quality and transparency moving forward, and I cannot reasonably expect any sort of improvement.
Yikes. If we have to pay RHEL licenses for non-production hosts, where we often use a community distro, I could see that pushing us to a different distro completely. We actually evaluated Ubuntu a...
Yikes. If we have to pay RHEL licenses for non-production hosts, where we often use a community distro, I could see that pushing us to a different distro completely. We actually evaluated Ubuntu a few years ago, but they couldn't provide the level of support that RedHat does. Maybe that has changed since then.
I guess we're starting to see the IBM interference on what used to be a great company. It's a shame, but I'm a little surprised that it's lasted as long as it has.
A quick search and my memory is failing me...Isn't MicroOS is an aquisition of theirs from way back when...I swear I remember using it while distrohopping a decade+ ago. If anyone else feels like...
A quick search and my memory is failing me...Isn't MicroOS is an aquisition of theirs from way back when...I swear I remember using it while distrohopping a decade+ ago.
If anyone else feels like sleuthing, its starting to bother me.
The three Linux OS that Oracle officially supports for their database are: RHEL Oracle Linux (huh wonder why) OpenSUSE If you need Oracle (admittedly decreasing need these days), and want to...
The three Linux OS that Oracle officially supports for their database are:
RHEL
Oracle Linux (huh wonder why)
OpenSUSE
If you need Oracle (admittedly decreasing need these days), and want to abandon RHEL before they go full IBM, you've basically got 1 choice.
That said, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is amazing for those who like to bleed.
I'm familiar with enterprise, i guess burnt out from migrating apps to the cloud that have not been updated in 10 years or more. At least haven't been asked to support COBOL.
I'm familiar with enterprise, i guess burnt out from migrating apps to the cloud that have not been updated in 10 years or more. At least haven't been asked to support COBOL.
Woot for openshift, that's what I'm migrating the apps to. I do feel bad for the dev that are helping as well as some of them are only assigned the project a month before they were told to migrate.
Woot for openshift, that's what I'm migrating the apps to. I do feel bad for the dev that are helping as well as some of them are only assigned the project a month before they were told to migrate.
They do have major releases with breaking changes, but also support older version for up to 10+ years. Which allows enterprises to upgrade as needed (based on the other applications they have...
They do have major releases with breaking changes, but also support older version for up to 10+ years. Which allows enterprises to upgrade as needed (based on the other applications they have running in their stack and their support)
IBM pulled a switcheroo with CentOS about 3 years ago, renaming CentOS as CentOS Stream, which acts more as a beta-testing level now. This article goes into the details if you're interested
IBM pulled a switcheroo with CentOS about 3 years ago, renaming CentOS as CentOS Stream, which acts more as a beta-testing level now.
This article goes into the details if you're interested
The article seems to say they are migrating the source code to CentOS Stream, but I think I’m misunderstanding. I know at some point CentOS was essentially RHEL with Red Hat’s proprietary stuff...
The article seems to say they are migrating the source code to CentOS Stream, but I think I’m misunderstanding. I know at some point CentOS was essentially RHEL with Red Hat’s proprietary stuff removed, did Red Hat also release the source for their proprietary stuff but now they aren’t? What’s the impact to RHEL users?
Stream 8/9 EOL dates are on the download page (specific date for Stream 8, end of RHEL9 full support phase for Stream 9): https://www.centos.org/centos-stream/
Looks like IBM is a big fan of enshittification too.
As a long time Ubuntu user, i'm insulated from this, but a lot of CentOS users are gonna be in for a shock.
IBM started enshittification of CentOS couple of years ago with Stream [1].
Most people I know (who don't want to pay for RHEL licenses) have migrated to distributions like Rocky Linux or Alma Linux, which aim to be drop-in replacements for CentOS by now.
Of course those distros might be toast now, since they were based on RHEL's source.
Yes! I was not a fan of those distros personally, but given IBM changing how CentOS was being used I was glad those distros popped up.
I hope this decision moves more folks to SuSe!
This is the meting notes from RockyLinux folks about this subject. Doesn't look too hopeful for them to be able to continue.
Thanks for linking those!
Honestly that's basically my top option whenever IT shit goes sideways. "Why am I doing this, I should quit and just raise goats."
It does sound like they're working on a plan, and that they're not completely blindsided by this move. Things will likely be a bit rocky for a little while but I fully expect them to come out okay (and even better, with being decoupled from IBM's whims).
Not really. Red Hat is one of the biggest contributors to the Linux ecosystem. If they go down the drain, we're all going to suffer.
Not a Linux power user. Just switched to Fedora recently though. What are the ramifications for a downstream user like me? Would it be recommendable to switch to another distro?
I don't think anything will be changing for Fedora. Fedora is actually upstream of Red Hat:
So I'm not worried at this stage. However, considering that Red Hat is a massive sponsor of Fedora, and IBM (who owns Red Hat) is shaking things up, I am keeping an eye out.
Yeah I think Fedora is relatively safe. Though Red Hat did make a thoroughly stupid decision to lay off the Fedora Program Manager recently and that's going to have some impacts (I think we'll be seeing those impacts for some time)
Ref:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-PM-Red-Hat-Laid-Off
I guess I was wondering more from a perspective of principles. I.e., am I, by continuing to use Fedora contributing to the popularity of a distro—and by extension, a company (IBM)—that is going to harm the OSS ecosystem in the long run?
It's just on my mind probably due to what's been going on with Reddit and the similarities (enshittification).
I've been using Fedora for a while now, but I'm not concerned. Although Fedora is heavily funded and used Red Hat, it's still an independent project, and the Fedora source is still publicly available. Fedora hasn't done any wrong here.
FOSS is free by nature - free for any person or company to use, adapt, and re-use so long as they comply with the license terms. There's always going to be a company that uses FOSS in harmful ways, sometimes even while sponsoring FOSS projects. In Red Hat's case, it has historically done a lot of good.
So in my view, continuing to use Fedora is barely any different to continuing to use the Linux kernel, Gnome, Wayland, etc. They all contribute to the popularity and success of Red Hat and IBM - and far worse companies than those. But if the teams behind those projects started making terrible decisions, then I'd become worried.
Historical side-note, they weren't just the gold standard for home PCs, (way) before that IBM was Computing-Tabulating-Record company, they defined and popularized the punched card format, the IBM-80 and IBM-40 and the associated character codes, and laid the groundwork for BCDIC (sort-of a precursor to ASCII, and various vendors did have their own variation of BCDIC)
And even before the first AI winter of 70s IBM used an IBM704 to showcase a checkers program that could "learn" (written by Arthur Samuel introducing tree-pruning and minmax concepts)
IBM's history extends quite a ways back, it's sad what they have reduced themselves to.
Back when I worked at [massive ISP], I had to do work for a project with a team of contractors from IBM. I was very unimpressed, and eventually couldn't take it anymore and asked a senior at the company about it. The conversation went something like this (heavily paraphrased, it's been years):
"They're paid like 20x what we're paid, how are they so completely inept? I thought IBM were competent."
"Oh, IBM still has some superstars, but they don't let them anywhere near us. They're for the companies that pay [another order of magnitude more than we do]. Most of their people these days don't have to do anything useful, they're just there because their brand recgonition is so good they can just sell it on its own."
"Then why contract them at all? Seems like a huge waste of money."
"The executives that made the decision would rather trust the brand. If they contract IBM and they fail, no one can blame them - it's IBM! If they choose a less well known company like yours the risk to them is much higher."
With apologies to any IBM employees here.
Why has there been such an intense enshittification of basically every tech product I like and/or use this past year?
Manufacturing and core sectors are losing their revenues due to global recession, and since IT and other service sectors are dependent on core sectors, they will be the one receiving the maximum flak.
Somewhere around the turn of this century when (apparently) we transitioned from industrial revolution to the digital revolution, folks probably assumed that technology is what drives the economy which seems to be an incorrect assumption. Core industries like manufacturing and agriculture still drive the economy and IT is just another service industry that depends on that just like others like banking, insurance, transport, etc.
I am sure IBM wasn't too happy with Rocky and Alma doing the same.
Especially with NASA purchasing licenses for Rocky Enterprise Linux [1].
You're right!
It looks like it's about 3 licenses purchased by a few folks within NASA who wanted to use Rocky. Doubt that had anything to do with this decision.
And I agree, IBM is trying to leverage OpenShift a lot more and their decisions line up with trying to squeeze revenue from containers and automation.
The only thing that surprises me here is that it took IBM this long to begin turning the screws on Redhat.
As a general Linux desktop/laptop user, this makes me fear for the future of the platform. Redhat currently spends a lot of time and money working on things that benefit everybody else. As a Fedora user, I'm even more concerned.
I wanted to say this was "unbelievable" but it really isn't. A significant portion of the tools upon which RHEL is built are open source, and some are even GPL v2/v3, so this strikes me as taking work made by developers all around the world and walling it so IBM can profit from it all.
The announcement itself is classic business speak; it goes on and on in circles and avoids the main point until the very last moment. Besides, RHEL support is not what it used to be. Both of these signify a shift in quality and transparency moving forward, and I cannot reasonably expect any sort of improvement.
Yikes. If we have to pay RHEL licenses for non-production hosts, where we often use a community distro, I could see that pushing us to a different distro completely. We actually evaluated Ubuntu a few years ago, but they couldn't provide the level of support that RedHat does. Maybe that has changed since then.
I guess we're starting to see the IBM interference on what used to be a great company. It's a shame, but I'm a little surprised that it's lasted as long as it has.
We've been looking pretty hard at the Ubuntu Pro offering lately.
(Unrelated to this development, but does make it seem like a great idea now!)
DoD is using it now so i hope support is good. https://ubuntu.com/security/certifications/docs/disa-stig
Woo, i have used this before. Works great.
Yea, i used the automated ones before.
Agreed! I wish more people explored SUSE, it's fantastic.
I always forget about that distro for whatever reason. I'll have to check this out.
A quick search and my memory is failing me...Isn't MicroOS is an aquisition of theirs from way back when...I swear I remember using it while distrohopping a decade+ ago.
If anyone else feels like sleuthing, its starting to bother me.
Why? Is their support better or the OS better?
The three Linux OS that Oracle officially supports for their database are:
If you need Oracle (admittedly decreasing need these days), and want to abandon RHEL before they go full IBM, you've basically got 1 choice.
That said, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is amazing for those who like to bleed.
ehh, i feel like long support cycles are why windows is so bloated. Would be nice to have a breaking changes after a bit.
I'm just tired of old code not being maintained and feel like OS not not doing backward compatibility would force them to keep it updated.
I'm familiar with enterprise, i guess burnt out from migrating apps to the cloud that have not been updated in 10 years or more. At least haven't been asked to support COBOL.
Woot for openshift, that's what I'm migrating the apps to. I do feel bad for the dev that are helping as well as some of them are only assigned the project a month before they were told to migrate.
They do have major releases with breaking changes, but also support older version for up to 10+ years. Which allows enterprises to upgrade as needed (based on the other applications they have running in their stack and their support)
Thats great, might have to try it out in my homelab.
What happened to CentOS project? Wasn't that supposed to deliver the non-production RHEL to the plebs?
IBM pulled a switcheroo with CentOS about 3 years ago, renaming CentOS as CentOS Stream, which acts more as a beta-testing level now.
This article goes into the details if you're interested
I want enterprise to switch over to ubuntu. Feel like it would be better especially with other big names joining on.
The article seems to say they are migrating the source code to CentOS Stream, but I think I’m misunderstanding. I know at some point CentOS was essentially RHEL with Red Hat’s proprietary stuff removed, did Red Hat also release the source for their proprietary stuff but now they aren’t? What’s the impact to RHEL users?
I think Stream is in between Fedora and RHEL.
AlmaLinux's response: https://almalinux.org/blog/impact-of-rhel-changes/ and https://almalinux.org/blog/our-value-is-our-values/
Rocky Linux's response: https://rockylinux.org/news/2023-06-22-press-release/
Rocky Linux has updated their processes to use public cloud instances to obtain the RHEL source: https://rockylinux.org/news/brave-new-world-path-forward/ and https://rockylinux.org/news/keeping-open-source-open/
Information about the change from a RH engineer: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/XM6BNUHKI3EKTDEXAAVE3JBPCG3BPUJC/
Security updates in RHEL not appearing in CentOS Stream is a bug: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/WUSZLJMBKX4U7J2N2QSXCJRMHDZ6EXQQ/
Just dropping some more links here for my own reference as I find them.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-you-should-have-already-been-centos-stream-back-2019-smith/
https://medium.com/@gordon.messmer/in-favor-of-centos-stream-e5a8a43bdcf8
CentOS was never truly bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL: https://www.spinics.net/lists/centos-devel/msg19564.html
16 no-cost RHEL licenses are available through their Developer program: https://access.redhat.com/discussions/5719451
Stream 8/9 EOL dates are on the download page (specific date for Stream 8, end of RHEL9 full support phase for Stream 9): https://www.centos.org/centos-stream/
Interesting interaction between CentOS Stream and Rocky Linux members: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/qv6mg2/were_the_almalinux_os_foundation_team_ama/hkvxy62/?context=100
Another exchange between them: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/10t6n9k/how_does_rocky_linux_compare_to_other_opensource/
https://www.reddit.com/r/redhat/comments/w0cggu/rocky_linux_vs_alma_l/
https://www.reddit.com/r/CentOS/comments/s77p49/why_did_greg_kurtzer_leave_the_centos_project_in/
Oh look, selfish jerks ruining things with greed. How very capitalist of them.