Enterprise Open Source - Cracks in the Foundations

What lessons can we learn from Red Hat's killing off of CentOS Linux, Elastic's licensing changes, and AWS's recent fork of Elasticsearch?

Let's explore that topic in this video about how the Open Source Software ecosystem is changing—maybe for the worse.

#OpenSource #Elasticsearch #CentOS

Contents:

00:00 - Chinks in OSS's armor
01:23 - Red Hat and CentOS
03:30 - Elastic and AWS
04:48 - SSPL is not open source
05:38 - What's can we do?
07:03 - Maybe Stallman is right

[hnasr]

Thanks Jeff for the summary! What is happening in OSS is concerning

[TurboPotato]

You're one of the best new youtube education channels bar-none

[arcticblue]

We were about 90% finished with our CentOS 8 migration (about 200 instances on AWS) when that news dropped. A bridge was certainly burned with my team.

[alliejr]

2:15 is the fundamental problem. Open Source is great when there is a vast and vibrant community of active contributors. But if you're RedHat and you're doing ALL the work, for free, then what's in for you? I'm not defending IBM for ignoring previous promises of long-term support, but full reliance on "free" (as in beer) with no useful economic model to pay for development and support has to change.

[beauslim]

This reinforces my personal preference for BSD/MIT style licenses. It is often better to have zero expectations.

[marciomaiajr]

This video is great. I don't know how you were able to summarize all this stuff thats going on in less than 8 minutes.

[rationalraven]

This really makes me appreciate Debian more...even though Ubuntu is probably more popular among end users, Debian as the upstream project more or less has the final say on licensing...yes Ubuntu can use proprietary licenses for some of their own packages, and they do have some paid enterprise software, but ultimately they are so heavily dependent on Debian that most of their code-base will always be FOSS by necessity... In fact, I think Canonical is probably a better example than Red Hat of how to monetize open source projects the right way

[zambonidriver]

I’m anxiously awaiting Rocky. Edit: And I hope Rocky turns into an Apache-like Foundation.

[RoyOlsen]

As someone who likes to support open source projects that are important to my work, I’m trying to respond to these specific events by redirecting funds from Elastic to Rocky Linux. Kudos to AWS for OpenSearch, I expect they have the funding they need. And thanks for covering this, Jeff. To everyone else, if you run your business on open source and don’t already contribute in other ways, please consider funding open source projects when appropriate. That will enable projects to stay independent and open.

[PanosGeorgiadis]

The cool thing with open source projects is that they cannot be killed. You and anyone else out there is able to continue the traditional CentOS (e.g. Rocky is born). That's what open source is all about.

[archsage]

Rarely do I commented but love the video, simple and sweet! Hope you consider doing more of these Linux news videos. It's hard to find objective Linux news videos without the person inserting their bias.

[deechvogt]

Jeff, thanks for another thought provoking video. It has given me a lot to think about. Thank for sharing your thoughts and reflections with us.

[brianbutton]

Bravo!

I light of my view of human nature, I am amazed (and grateful) that open source works as well as it does. Thanks for the summary.

[brianh]

I don't see cracks in the foundation. Rather, this is the beauty of decentralization. If you don't like a project's new direction, just Fork It. The more forks that occur in these "difficult times", the better. Competition is the health of the project.

[i_dont_want_a_name]

Jeff, awesome content and thank you for so many videos in the past 24 hours. Your channel is my favourite channel.

On this topic, I wish more developers would insist on copyleft licences. It would force the corporations to cooperate and contribute.

[sleepyeyesvince]

Excellent summary. Thank you. I feel it's a discussion that needs to be had, but many shy away from.

[Daniel_Zhu_af]

it's a miracle that oss has been born and survived in a country that prays on copyright. but apparently one miracle is far from enough to defeat late-stage capitalism.
not sure if licensing changes can help much, though it's definitely worth trying. there are more effective options, though. sci-hub is a very positive example of how piracy has changed scientific journals for the better. maybe such things can be done to software to.

[jeffherdzina]

I have worked at a CDN, which had over 17, 500 CentOS servers. I am glad I moved on.

That being said. I have my own CentOS machines about 10 of them, multiple versions 6, 7, and 8. and was updating the 7's to 8's when the IBM news hit the Centos community. Not surprised that IBM would let down the community, But knowing that Jim Whitehurst went from the C.E.O. of Redhat, to a corporate shill at IBM, really hacks me off. What is even more scary is the fact that IBM/Redhat owns a great product called cannot wait to see just how badly the idiots at IBM/Redhat destroy Ansible.

[RudyAmid]

Elastic still offers a "free" version for public use but with basic license, meaning less features like alerts, etc. If you want a fully functional Elasticsearch with the company support, you are welcome to pay for it.

As for the developers and their access to the new development invested by Elastic, that's a little tricky. Jeff is correct to point out that Elastic has investors to please. Double now that it's a public company. Open Source is a great ideology, but running a company is never about that.

[pedro_]

I started using CentOS only very recently, about 2 months before this whole debacle, good thing I didn't go all in on it and still use Debian/Ubuntu for my "production" stuff.