An exceptionally well explained rant that I find myself in total agreement with.
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Truly the year of enshittification.
I’ve been watching ol Jeff for quite some time. He’s so delightfully nerdy I love him
Guess they really wanted to be the Reddit of Linux
Reddit Enterprise Linux
That was great! I mean the circumstances are not great but I like the video. It seems there’s a lot of talk about how big companies take over open source projects and ruin them, which is a good conversation.
I get where Jeff Geerling is coming from, but I think RedHat has a point as well.
I think a lot of people are coming at this from the perspective that RedHat themselves are just repackaging open source code and putting it behind a paywall, instead of also being one of the top contributors of software and bug fixes into the Linux ecosystem. Jeff mentions that Redhat is based on other open source software like the Linux kernel, but at the same time doesn’t mention that they’re also one of the leading contributors to it. I mean seriously, good luck using Linux without a single piece of RedHat code and see how far that gets you. If you’re entering the discussion from that perspective of “Redhat is simply just taking other people’s work as well”, it’s easy to have a biased view and start painting RedHat as a pure villain.
I also think that people are downplaying exactly how much effort it takes to build an enterprise Linux system, support customers at an engineering level, and backport patches, etc. Having downstream distributions straight up sell support contracts on an exact copy of your work won’t fly or be considered fair in any other business situation and I get why RedHat as a business doesn’t want to go out of their way to make that easy.
And it’s not like Redhat isn’t contributing the developments that happen in RHEL back into the FOSS community. That’s literally what CentOS Stream is and will continue to be, alongside their other upstream contributions.
Does it suck that we won’t have binary compatibility between Alma / Rocky and RHEL, yes it is frustrating as a user! Does it suck that we once got RHEL source for free and now we have to resort to Centos Stream? Yes! But the reality too is that open source STILL needs sources of income to pay developers to work on the Linux ecosystem, which is getting bigger and more complicated every day. That money has to come from somewhere, just sayin.
This argument that open source somehow needs to exploit users and blatantly skirt the intent of the GPL because profit must be taken from it is absurd.
Why is it assumed that they weren’t perfectly sustainable before and why is it the end users responsibility to bear the burden of making their business model viable if they weren’t? Being unprofitable doesn’t excuse you from following the terms of your software license.
Red Hat weren’t ever unprofitable under the old model. This is just the classic killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs. They’ll get a short term boost in profit until customers start moving to competitors.
The profit motive is antithetical to software freedom
Except they’re aren’t violating the GPL at all. Their source code is still available to subscribers (and it isn’t behind a paywall because you can get a free license) and available to the public via CentOS Stream. Their code also goes into upstream projects as well.
The GPL exists so that companies can’t just take the code and contribute nothing back. But that isn’t what Redhat is doing here so I find your accusations that Redhat is exploiting users to be very hyperbolic.
I agree that they should be allowed a profit. However calling it open source when redistributing rhel code causes them to hold the right of canceling you access to the code and binary, eventhough gpl states that redistributing is a right under gpl rubs me the wrong way.
The problem is that nothing Red Hat has done justifies them breaking the rules.
Have they made tons of contributions back to open source? Yes. Do they need to make money? Yes. Are there organizations and people who are, in essence, freeloading off their work? Yes.
But here’s the thing. At the end of the day, they chose to make their project open source and to build it on Linux. And that choice comes with rules that they (and everyone else that have used Linux or other FOSS projects) have to follow, no exceptions. You can argue that their motivations for wanting to do so are understandable all day long. You can argue the GPL is bad and shouldn’t work this way. But they still chose this ecosystem.
Now, have they actually violated the GPL? We’ll leave that up to the lawyers to decide I guess. But if we’re only talking whether they should be allowed to violate the GPL, the answer is absolutely not. If they didn’t want RHEL to be open source and stolen by freeloaders they should’ve made their own operating system with their own license.
Redhat, the organization/company no longer exists. Redhat did those things in the past, and earned a lot of love, respect, and clout. All that is left of that legacy is their contributed code and an IBM product name.
If it was just that they were repackaging source code and putting it behind a paywall, then there would be no problem at all.
The problem is, as I understand it, that they are selling modified GPL code without giving people access to it. That’s against the GPL license. Out of all people, Red Hat should be aware of what the GPL states.
So I think it’s pretty fair to accused Red Hat of being intentionally evil here. If it was just a mistake, then I’d say it’s a very very dumb mistake. Either way, if these are the kind of people who run Red Hat now, things don’t look good.
The access is given as per the GPL, it doesn’t have to be publicly available.
I’m so annoyed with this. We were using CentOS, which was effectively killed, then I did a lot of research and spent time moving everything over the AlmaLinux.
Having to now do it all again another time is so frustrating; the only pragmatic long-term option is to bite the bullet and get things working on Debian.
Look in to Rocky Linux. It was started by the original developer of CentOS the day Red Hat announced that CentOS would be moving upstream of RHEL. They’ve already put out an announcement saying that it’s essentially going to be business as usual for them.
Thanks tool.
From what I understand, Rocky and Alma are essentially the same and so I found it difficult to decide between the two when moving from CentOS. Whatever happens now, will apply to both.
The writing is on the wall and it’s similar to Twitter and Reddit: they wanted to kill CentOS as it was, weren’t expecting the community to come back with Rocky and Alma, so now they’re trying to kill those too. The above video posits a scenario where Oracle’s legal team help the little guys by going to battle with IBM, but I don’t see it.
At this point, I don’t think it’s smart to go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over, but then again I’d be very happy to see the little guys succeed.
2019-07-09: The death knell of Red Hat
Honestly, I am not surprised. Red Hat’s parent company IBM is an absolute joke. Almost as bad as Oracle.
Honestly, I think they’re worse. Oracle have actually done less evil in the past few years compared to before, whilst IBM/Redhat seem to be revelling in causing disharmony and aggressive business tactics.
I am surprised it has taken IBM this long to begin poisoning the waters…
Jeff is 100 spot on. IBM/Redhat is really shooting themselves in the foot for some short term profits.
This was his first reaction, just as satisfying to read: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/dear-red-hat-are-you-dumb
Wait, I only knew this name from good Ansible stuff. I had no idea he created great videos too!
This said it all perfectly. Think I’ll check out more of his videos.
I really hope this doesn’t affect ansible. I’ll be so fucking mad.
It’s crazy that we’re even considering that, yet we are. Redhat have become so unpredictably malicious, it’s really depressing.
“IBM won’t affect our culture” they said…
I can’t believe how many people fundamentally misunderstand the spirit behind the GPL.
It helps to consider “the software” as a single snapshot in time, with the GPL’s intention that the consumer may make their own fixes, rebuild, and redistribute. Check.
Remember: “Free as in freedom, not free as in beer.” Selling open source software has always been explicitly allowed, as long as you make the source available to those who receive it. Check.
What the GPL does NOT provide is guaranteed access to maintenance and future versions of said software. Again, it applies to a snapshot, as delivered.
In a nutshell, the customer receives open source everything they FOR A PARTICULAR VERSION.
I see no problem — either in spirit or letter — in Redhat’s approach here.
This is debatable. The GPL allow redistribution of a given version of the software without additional restriction. If the user receives that copy knowing in advance that redistribution will lead to retaliatory actions this can be treated as an additional restriction.
What if you bought an android phone, and could ask them for the source code to the Linux kernel on it, but if they caught you sharing it online, they would not allow your phone to update to the latest Android version?
The problem is that the GPL states:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein.
Red Hat are arguing that they are free to punish customers from exercising their rights under the GPL, and that punishment does not constitute a “restriction”, even though its done specifically to discourage people from exercising those rights. Whether Red Hat have found a loophole is something for the courts to decide, but it’s clearly against the intention and spirit of the GPL.
That’s a fair point, and worthy of deliberation.
However, I would continue to argue that if Redhat does not restrict parties’ rights to the source code they’ve been given, then they’ve satisfied the GPL.
It is my understanding (at least initially) that the GPL was meant to solidify the end user’s rights to the software they have, so that they’re not left with an unfixable binary executable.
And again, there are no rights granted by the GPL for FUTURE versions.
Ok, yes as far as I understand they are not breaking the GPL, but it’s still a d**k move as it leaves downsteam projects/distros in a mess of a situation. While technically allowed, I’m with Jeff on this one.
SFC thinks they are in violation of the GPL for what that’s worth.
