The Future Of Open Source Linux Documentation?

I saw this recent discussion about Red Hat locking there documentation behind a login wall as if this is something that Red Hat hadn't already been doing for years, so let's have a look into it.

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#Linux #RedHat #OpenSource #FOSS #LinuxDesktop

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[notuxnobux]

I agree, I dont see any problem even if it did cost money. Red hats main monetary model is customer support and these documents are their own guides that they spent time writing. The main target for these guides is for corporate IT workers.

[omfgbunder]

Paywalling the help pages is something redhat have been doing for many years... Yes its asshole-ish, but I'll just use the arch wiki to fix my gentoo issues 🤣

[excidium_]

Search engines have been getting worse in the last few years because of the way everyone games SEO with login walled pages

[chrismcdonaldracing]

I have become tired of this discussion. For the most part RedHat was not built for the people who want to go and cry about log in accounts and paying for something.

RedHat is not and was not ever hobbyists software. It has always been corporate software for company's using Linux to make money.

This is a good thing some one has to pay all the software devs making this software that you freely use. So in other words they have to make money period end of the story.

[andljoy]

You should not have to log in to get documentation, even Microsoft don't make you do that.

[wumwum]

About the SEO issue: they should probably put a link to the upstream documentation at the top, so free users can get the information when the search gives you that article as well, and enterprise users get additional information.

[mat_max]

I don't see any problem even if they charged for this. The entire point of RHEL is that the support is paid only. Documentation counts as support. This support is about stuff that's not RHEL exclusive (systemd). Stuff that has it's own documentaion and other distributions or RH Linux like Fedora, Rocky, CentOs or alma also have documentation on this

[cllve]

>>1:48
>Your name, your address, your email, your phone number
>Basic things for signing up to a website.
The fact that name, address and phone number are now "Basic things for registration" upsets me greatly.

[nbcde]

It blows my mind that anyone would get upset at this. At most its a mild inconvenience, but the information is freely available. I have seen arguments against stuff like ZorinOS charging for the pro version as well when you could literally spend a couple of hours of work turning the free version into the pro version if you want. If you don't want to pay for there time then you can use your own time and not have to pay anything.

[simonedeiana]

"It's free as in free speech, you can still sell stuff like support!"
"Ok, I'm going to charge for support"
"N-NOT LIKE THAT!"

[yuvalne]

agreed. this is not all that different from Ubuntu Pro with Support, which no one seems to be mad about.

[Omnifarious]

I agree about the SEO. :-/ They should make it easy for their corporate customers to do a site: search when they pay for a subscription.

[kamikamieu]

RedHat documentation is really good, especially knowing it will always work on the current supported RHEL version.

[aonodensetsu]

SEO is the issue here, not the existance of good, paid (as in you're the price) articles rehashing public information are totally fine

[Chewsstudio]

it is a legit business model to have payed documentation and support lol

[xslvrxslwt]

Compared to Canonical — certainly not.

[Mitsunee_]

Did these people forget that RHEL is not a free product, but has a child called Fedora that is free and has its own free documentation? Because that was the first site I visited when I needed stuff like golang and docker on my newly installed system since I was coming from Ubuntu (which shot itself in the foot when it realized it can't installed firefox as a snap because snap was uninstalled lol)

[replikvltyoutube]

I think the SEO thingy actually give them more registrations.

[developerpranav]

I was considering installing RHEL 9 on my machine, and wanted to check if the dev packages I need are of the version that works for me.
I landed up on the RHEL package search page where it didn't let me do anything without signin in. So I signed in and was greeted with "You need an active subscription to view this information."
Closed the tab and didn't look back.

[paherbst]

Red hat is and always has been about value add. They are hugely important in the Linux world.