I personally don't think this is overblown. This is a major decision by one of the largest linux vendors. It's not a long video, but the thesis of the video is that the changes RedHat is doing is...
I personally don't think this is overblown. This is a major decision by one of the largest linux vendors.
It's not a long video, but the thesis of the video is that the changes RedHat is doing is going to affect RedHat itself (which is debatable, more below) and given that RedHat contributes quite a bit to the larger linux ecosystem, this reduced revenue by IBM/RedHat is going to result in decisions where they layoff or fire more developers working on upstream Linux kernel and associated projects, thereby affecting the whole Linux community.
Which is a net negative to then entire linux community, including Debian/Arch/etc.
RedHat impacting itself with this decision is not out of the realm of possibility, a lot of sysadmins and devs who introduced linux in/to their workplace don't like what IBM/RedHat is doing, which may cause a lot of decision-makers in such companies to migrate to something else (including folks like myself).
Given that IBM/RedHat has already laid off a bunch of developers before this, if these changes result in reduced revenue/marketshare for RedHat, it's quite possible they will contract their workforce even further. Over the last year, RedHat has been pretty abysmal with their time-to-fix several CVEs and these type of decisions could lead to a death spiral.
PS:
CentOS is upstream
CentOS is discontinued. CentOS Stream is not what CentOS was.
Yep! We were already slowly migrating away from RHEL but with this announcement the entire project got fast-tracked and we're now wholly moving to SUSE.
which may cause a lot of decision-makers in such companies to migrate to something else
Yep! We were already slowly migrating away from RHEL but with this announcement the entire project got fast-tracked and we're now wholly moving to SUSE.
Yup! A lot of colleagues in my circles are doing the same, actually ever since CentOS was discontinued, we've been working towards moving away from RHEL, these recent decisions have just...
Yup! A lot of colleagues in my circles are doing the same, actually ever since CentOS was discontinued, we've been working towards moving away from RHEL, these recent decisions have just fast-tracked that process a lot of us.
For additional context to folks who maybe don't interact with RHEL, a lot of stacks across a lot of companies that use RHEL, have their dev/qa/test/etc VMs running CentOS and have RHEL running on their production servers. Even if the company can easily afford the licensing cost for having RHEL run on their lower environment server, 99% of devops/sysadmins will still pick CentOS to run on their lower-level VMs because dealing with RHEL's licensing on all the containers and VMs you spin up is a Pain (with a capital 'P').
(I knew a lot of RedHat devs who would spin up CentOS VMs/containers to run their tests)
With the discontinuation of CentOS, there were two groups of folks, one group started migrating completely away from RHEL and another group who started migrating to CentOS alternatives like Rocky/Alma/etc.
With the latest change to RHEL, all the folks I know who were in the process of moving to CentOS alternatives have reversed course and are migrating away from RHEL completely now.
Is it really a loss to Red Hat? By your own admission, they received no business because your clients were just using RHEL clones and wouldn’t have given a single red cent to Red Hat to begin...
Is it really a loss to Red Hat? By your own admission, they received no business because your clients were just using RHEL clones and wouldn’t have given a single red cent to Red Hat to begin with.
Red Hat has articulated that they employ people to contribute back to GPL projects. So on one hand you’ve got a side literally spending money to improve Linux and on the other hand you’ve just got people who want the privilege of running Red Hat with no intention of ever paying Red Hat for their efforts.
I think you're misinterpreting what I wrote. They were using RHEL clones in their lower-level environment, and that too mainly because setting up RHEL licensing on all the lower-level servers that...
they received no business because your clients were just using RHEL clones
I think you're misinterpreting what I wrote.
They were using RHEL clones in their lower-level environment, and that too mainly because setting up RHEL licensing on all the lower-level servers that get spun up constantly is a pain. They were still running RHEL on the production VMs and paying RHEL for licenses/support.
This was common even within RedHat, where devs would spin up CentOS VMs/containers for testing their changes.
So on one hand you’ve got a side literally spending money to improve Linux
RedHat itself also has built it's business on free work done by folks on the linux kernel and associated OpenSource projects. From my perspective, what RedHat is doing is antithetical to the OpenSource spirit.
on the other hand you’ve just got people who want the privilege of running Red Hat with no intention of ever paying Red Hat for their efforts.
Privilege? People using RedHat based clones are largely doing so because they were either dealing with RHEL in their work environments or were building something which needed RHEL based system support.
I've been using Linux for several decades and I seldom meet people daily-driving RHEL clones.
Also, the primary business model for RHEL (and the reason companies pay them for) is their support, not the underlying Linux system itself.
And the reason RHEL employs so many Linux devs is because they like to be able to fix CVE and bugs in the kernel for their paying customer as soon as possible, which has a direct impact on their revenue (and it does help the larger linux community as a whole, not just RHEL based clones)
Given this whole saga started with RedHat discontinuing CentOS, and with you calling this story overblown, I wasn't sure if you weren't sure CentOS Stream and CentOS are not the same or if you...
Given this whole saga started with RedHat discontinuing CentOS, and with you calling this story overblown, I wasn't sure if you weren't sure CentOS Stream and CentOS are not the same or if you weren't sure what the actual crux of this whole story was (given that CentOS is central to this story) and I have also seen a lot of bad takes conflating CentOS and CentOS stream so far associated with this story, Hence my pedantic correction.
I personally don't think this is overblown. This is a major decision by one of the largest linux vendors.
It's not a long video, but the thesis of the video is that the changes RedHat is doing is going to affect RedHat itself (which is debatable, more below) and given that RedHat contributes quite a bit to the larger linux ecosystem, this reduced revenue by IBM/RedHat is going to result in decisions where they layoff or fire more developers working on upstream Linux kernel and associated projects, thereby affecting the whole Linux community.
Which is a net negative to then entire linux community, including Debian/Arch/etc.
RedHat impacting itself with this decision is not out of the realm of possibility, a lot of sysadmins and devs who introduced linux in/to their workplace don't like what IBM/RedHat is doing, which may cause a lot of decision-makers in such companies to migrate to something else (including folks like myself).
Given that IBM/RedHat has already laid off a bunch of developers before this, if these changes result in reduced revenue/marketshare for RedHat, it's quite possible they will contract their workforce even further. Over the last year, RedHat has been pretty abysmal with their time-to-fix several CVEs and these type of decisions could lead to a death spiral.
PS:
CentOS is discontinued. CentOS Stream is not what CentOS was.
Yep! We were already slowly migrating away from RHEL but with this announcement the entire project got fast-tracked and we're now wholly moving to SUSE.
Yup! A lot of colleagues in my circles are doing the same, actually ever since CentOS was discontinued, we've been working towards moving away from RHEL, these recent decisions have just fast-tracked that process a lot of us.
For additional context to folks who maybe don't interact with RHEL, a lot of stacks across a lot of companies that use RHEL, have their dev/qa/test/etc VMs running CentOS and have RHEL running on their production servers. Even if the company can easily afford the licensing cost for having RHEL run on their lower environment server, 99% of devops/sysadmins will still pick CentOS to run on their lower-level VMs because dealing with RHEL's licensing on all the containers and VMs you spin up is a Pain (with a capital 'P').
(I knew a lot of RedHat devs who would spin up CentOS VMs/containers to run their tests)
With the discontinuation of CentOS, there were two groups of folks, one group started migrating completely away from RHEL and another group who started migrating to CentOS alternatives like Rocky/Alma/etc.
With the latest change to RHEL, all the folks I know who were in the process of moving to CentOS alternatives have reversed course and are migrating away from RHEL completely now.
Is it really a loss to Red Hat? By your own admission, they received no business because your clients were just using RHEL clones and wouldn’t have given a single red cent to Red Hat to begin with.
Red Hat has articulated that they employ people to contribute back to GPL projects. So on one hand you’ve got a side literally spending money to improve Linux and on the other hand you’ve just got people who want the privilege of running Red Hat with no intention of ever paying Red Hat for their efforts.
That’s pretty inequitable, isn’t it?
I think you're misinterpreting what I wrote.
They were using RHEL clones in their lower-level environment, and that too mainly because setting up RHEL licensing on all the lower-level servers that get spun up constantly is a pain. They were still running RHEL on the production VMs and paying RHEL for licenses/support.
This was common even within RedHat, where devs would spin up CentOS VMs/containers for testing their changes.
RedHat itself also has built it's business on free work done by folks on the linux kernel and associated OpenSource projects. From my perspective, what RedHat is doing is antithetical to the OpenSource spirit.
Privilege? People using RedHat based clones are largely doing so because they were either dealing with RHEL in their work environments or were building something which needed RHEL based system support.
I've been using Linux for several decades and I seldom meet people daily-driving RHEL clones.
Also, the primary business model for RHEL (and the reason companies pay them for) is their support, not the underlying Linux system itself.
And the reason RHEL employs so many Linux devs is because they like to be able to fix CVE and bugs in the kernel for their paying customer as soon as possible, which has a direct impact on their revenue (and it does help the larger linux community as a whole, not just RHEL based clones)
Given this whole saga started with RedHat discontinuing CentOS, and with you calling this story overblown, I wasn't sure if you weren't sure CentOS Stream and CentOS are not the same or if you weren't sure what the actual crux of this whole story was (given that CentOS is central to this story) and I have also seen a lot of bad takes conflating CentOS and CentOS stream so far associated with this story, Hence my pedantic correction.