I was wrong about Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat, or as I've come to call it, IBM/Red Hat, has made some questionable business moves over the last year. I recently said RHEL was the best distro for a new Linux Sysadmin. But I was wrong. Are they going closed source? Maybe that is a hyperbole?

0:00 - Intro
0:12 - That Video
0:45 - RHEL Source Code
1:42 - Red Hat's Response
2:20 - Red Hat's Threat
3:19 - Red Hat's Reasons
5:24 - Red Hat's Business Model
5:52 - Wild Speculation
6:34 - Red Hat's stance on Downstream
7:14 - Open Source or Closed Source?
8:00 - More corporate double speak
9:30 - Closing thoughts

[ahettinger]

It's not completely hyperbolic to call what they are doing closing the source. The GPL *explicitly* forbids putting additional restraints on the users. They don't have to release the source outside their users, but they can't limit what their users do with that source (at least the GPLed sections). If would be different if they where talking about a BSD distro, but we're not.

[CPalanysamy]

are you with your laptop in a rave party dude? great video

[tappy]

It's neat that the algorithm recommended this channel, at least new creators aren't completely screwed. Unfortunately I've already watched a few videos exactly like this already and there are plenty of channels doing this. Good luck, maybe I'll see you in a few years and you'll be up there with the rest

[shell]

I think Debian is a good choice; it has an impeccable reputation. Also, it was the project that spearheaded the Reproducible Builds Project, which, by the way, none of the corporate distributions have committed to. A migration video from Red Hat to Debian would be very interesting to watch! I believe many people are pondering doing the same right now.

[Dan-]

Just some feedback on the sound
The background music is loud enough to the point it's distracting

[blueconcretezebra]

Blue Hat suit: "It seems there are some people using whatever it is we do for nothing. This has to be stopped. Miss Jones, get the head Neck Beard up here at once"
Blue Hat suit: "Dave, or whatever your name is, stop people using our stuff for nothing"
Head Neck Beard: "Look, you don't understand, these are not lost sales, this free activity is like your cocaine dealer giving you a free taste. They'll drive more business our way"
Blue Hat suit: "Just do what I tell you. Which of us came to work in an expensive German sedan, and has a corner office on the top floor?"

[main_rouge]

The big issue is also about trust, how can you trust them after all this now ? And their response really didn't help, this is a slippery slope, and it always start slowly but get gradually worse
Reminds me of when Apple buys open source software to make it proprietary later of what google started doing after buying android, we've seen it already and we all know were it ends
I used to see Red Hat as the exception thinking they understood they weren't selling a product but an actual service, their support, and it used to work well but I guess it wasn't enough and IBM really had to prove me wrong.

[milohoffman]

Their response of accusing Alma/Rocky of "simply repackaging" was unbelievably arrogant. RHEL itself like any other Linux distro, is just made up of 99.999% of "simply repackaging" other open source. IBM Hat is way too full of themselves and needs to be shunned by the community.

[esra_erimez]

Red Hat has completed their journey to irrelevance. Good video, this video is nonbiased and very informative. RHEL is the new OS/2. IBM got sick of not being the laughing stock of operating systems

[donaldmickunas]

Red Hats actions and justifications sound like something that either IBM or Microsoft would have said back in the day. I strongly suspect IBM is really behind all of this.

[MnemonicCarrier]

Thanks for the video, but was the background music really necessary? Anyway, horses for courses... Hope your channel grows, good luck!

[martinhorner]

A walled garden still needs sunlight. What happens when we stop shining for them?

[Akab]

1:03 source "available" would be the term probably. Definitely not open source though as there are more nuances to that than the source code simply being accessible to some.

Said Software if definitely not open source anymore though.

[debasishraychawdhuri]

Most enterprises use LInux on their servers and most do not use RedHat. I don't think it would turn into a hobby again in the foreseeable future. Nix is good it you need repeatable deployment. Your configuration becomes code and you can put it in a git repo. If you are just maintaining a few servers and you do not need reproducibility, debian is a good choice.

[jongeduard]

Yep. Large companies are never your friend, nor your enemy, it's just business. People have far to much trust in all those companies - including the one behind this place here (just saying).
However, at the same time, without those we would not be as far as we are.
But the same can be said about all the "hackers and hobyists". These are just as important. It's individuals who start world changing developments, no matter whether they do that at work or at home. People do things, companies are a thing on paper.

[SkullTraill]

Correction: RHEL customers who receive access to the source code CAN share that code publicly legally. That is simply the GPL license, and RH can’t do anything to you legally. However, they CAN revoke your license, and therefore your access to that source at any time if they see you sharing their source code publicly.

[roysigurdkarlsbakk]

I'd say use Debian, like I do, but then, I haven't tried NixOS and it certainly looks interesting.

[keylowmike]

I took the time and read the Red Hat blog concerning the criticism. Woof. I bet the author must have really taken offense at being called an IBM exec. In their response, they mentioned that they're going to follow the GPL, and they listed the options to get RHEL for free as you mentioned. However, I think that this may cause people to migrate away from RHEL to community driven distros like Debian, Fedora (they're sponsored by Red Hat, but they're still a project of their own and they're upstream so they're not affected), and OpenSuse. I'm not to thrilled with the move because my first experience with Linux was Red Hat Linux 7.3 (the original RH, not RHEL) and I liked distros like Alma. Anyways, keep up the good work.

[bart]

I think the effect might be that people are deterred from contributing to what Red Hat is working on in particular. Their sources will slowly dry up, and more and more they'll be forced to write all their RHEL specific code themselves.

[MarcDunivan]

What IBM(redhat) is doing is completely legal with most "Open Source Software" licensing, most if not all are not copyleft. Most of the software in RHEL is not GPL licensed. This is a fundamental difference between "Open Source Software" and "Free Software". The GNU Public licenses of "Free Software" are to protect "user freedoms" and are copyleft. IBM(redhat) would be violating the GPL if they removed a RHEL subscription from someone exercising the GPL granted rights, which they won't do for GPL'ed software. IBM(redhat) really is attacking the GPL licenses.