Huge Open Source Drama

Red Hat just erected a paywall in front of the source code to their Linux distribution.

Are they burning bridges to the wider open source ecosystem?

Referenced in this video:

#opensource #redhat

[JeffGeerling]

Red Hat posted an official response. In it, they wrote:

"Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere."

Paraphrasing: those who use open source code and don't contribute back are "a real threat to open source companies everywhere"

I call these people: users.

I fight for the users.

[RockyLinux]

Thank you for your continued support of Rocky Linux.

[silverXnoise]

As a Debian sysadmin who has recently been concerned with job prospects, I fully support Red Hat’s strategy of aggressively shoving away customers, and bringing more organizations onto Debian. Godspeed, you ghoulish corporate pricks.

[TxemaFinwe]

Meanwhile, SUSE CEO:
"The principles of open source are dear to us. We believe that the freedom to access, modify, and distribute software should remain open to all."

[tolstoy]

I support thousands of paid RHEL instances already, its really great being able to spin up quick development instances for testing without all of the subscription manager hassle. This is not going to generate sales, it is going to create an exodus.

[YouCanHasAccount]

I did some consultancy for a company last year. I recommended Rocky Linux for their new data center. They now have 200 physical servers and come to me asking how to deal with this mess. Thanks Red Hat for making me look like incompetent.

[mlsmithjr]

I worked at Red Hat for 15 years until just recently. I can tell you honestly that most of the leadership, and all of the engineers, are open source zealots. If this decision had been posited for feedback in the company there would have been riots. That's why I have to believe this was IBM's doing.

[Portablesounds]

From the GPL FAQ: "If someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee". So yes, this is 100% a GPL violation, despite all the RHEL apologist articles saying otherwise. I really hope the FSF sues them stat, since they have more resources than a lot of the other open source devs.

[river]

I can't believe I'm seeing this happen so far up the chain now. Just last year I've seen something like this happen on a smaller scale in the Subnautica modding community. A user made an open source framework to make adding custom items (and creatures too I believe) into the game, and another user made a fork of it cleaning up some bugs and adding more functionalities to it. Dude got harassed and ran out the community for "freeloading and stealing the source code" despite it being open source and within their rights to do so. I and several other users stood up for them, but still to no avail.

[ChrisTitusTech]

Well said and a great video. I was distraught when I heard the news and looked at the changes. CentOS 6 was my first system I worked on professionally in Linux. Rocky is still there and Greg even mentioned he already has a path lined up to circumvent these restrictions, but I'm angry as hell at Redhat.

[martinwolstencroft]

This mess is being particularly heavily felt in the academic HPC community.

[donoteatmikezila]

It's a dire day when we have to hope that Oracle steps in to be the good guys.

[antoinereese]

This is all driven by the insane notion that every company is expected to have double digit returns every year in perpetuity. Want more enterprise users, how about you add useful features or support that makes it worth it. This predatory behavior is happening all across our economy and coming for foss. I'm hoping this goes badly for them because if it doesn't it will only encourage others.

[TinyTonyGOD]

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’m Jeff Geerling.” *HE HAS SPOKEN*

[starwarsgames]

The Open-Source / Free Software Movement is one of the best things to ever happen to humanity

[illmatikne]

This is all what I was worried about the first time I learned of the IBM acquisition. As I get older in my career I continue to get disgusted by the corporate moves in our industry. I'm so thankful for the open source contributors and the community. Thank you for being such an advocate, Jeff.

[beanologi]

As someone who makes Red Hat certification tutorials, this drastically changes my perspective. I am probably going to move into more general Linux videos and not champion RHEL so much 😢

Edit: I want to clarify that I’m still committed to my existing video series’s but just thought it would be good to branch out my content as well since the software world is always changing 👍

[esra_erimez]

RedHat has relegated themselves to being irrelevant. The have done other things like stop supporting packages such as OpenLDAP.

[wpyoga]

Without free alternatives such as Alma and Rocky (and previously CentOS), students won't pick up RHEL skills. When they enter the labor market, they will not pick RHEL for their enterprise jobs. Good luck, Red Hat.

[vedastro]

As an open source platform developer, I just learned what NOT to do to our biggest asset : - Users (free loaders as RedHat calls them)