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I share the sentiment. Gawd. Freaking. Dammit. I've been using RHEL-derived systems for like almost 20 years. This actually feels like a betrayal of the Open

I share the sentiment. Gawd. Freaking. Dammit. I've been using RHEL-derived systems for like almost 20 years. This actually feels like a betrayal of the Open Source community. Any bets on whether Fedora and CentOS will exist in November 2019?

jhabdas 8y ago
See you in RHEL.
ianai 8y ago
Where’s the history of IBM buying and sun setting companies? I don’t have the same prejudice towards IBM that I do for Oracle. But I’m not in a position to know. I’m thinking RHEL’s support contracts will keep IBM from shuttering RHEL. An IBM branded RHEL would represent plenty of income.
- ranieuwe 8y ago
  SPSS comes to mind.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Can you expand?
- alexott 8y ago
  ISS?
- shmerl 8y ago
  They can cancel many projects that RedHat do as a general giving back to Linux. IBM wouldn't care.
- Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
  Rational Rose, Lotus
  - ianai 8y ago
    Can you expand?
- jacobsheehy 8y ago
  WeatherUnderground was effectively shut down post-purchase. API signup is gone, etc. Terrible transition and no support for prior products.
  - onesmalldrop 8y ago
    This is 0% true...
    - rhodysurf 8y ago
      Weather underground is a shell of what it used to be. They got rid of a ton of features and cluttered everything with ads
    - windexh8er 8y ago
      This is 100% true. They abandoned so many good parts of WU and, today, it seems to continue to operate as data collection (mobile apps / home weather stations) and ad revenue generation.
- LinuxBender 8y ago
  Sequent, though I can't see them doing the same things to RH.
R_haterade 8y ago
zOS reboot, duh! Kidding aside, nothing about this is good for the open source movement.
shady-lady 8y ago
Donated to Apache...
cmurf 8y ago
The boilerplate and vague statement of Red Hat remaining a distinct unit doesn't really tell us anything. More relevant is what the CentOS and Fedora communities think of this acquisition, because no matter what they are community driven projects. There are two coins to toss: whether IBM reaches into Red Hat in a way that kills off either project; and whether enough of the community steps out. I'm curious what openSUSE folks think of SUSE having been acquired by Novel, then Attachmate, and then the Micro Focus merger. They've been through a lot, and openSUSE is still here.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Conversely, I wonder what this does to the Linux ecosystem. It looks like at this point, Debian and Arch are the only major self-sufficient distros (i.e. not built on top of another distro) that are still community-owned and community-driven; and of the two, Debian is clearly more broadly popular. So, will this result in Debian becoming the de facto standard of "open Linux"? This could make things interesting when it comes to packaging etc.
  - pnutjam 8y ago
    There are others, puppy Linux, Alpine, and slackware to name a few.
  - bigbugbag 8y ago
    What about PCLinuxOS, openSUSE, Mageia, Void, Nixos, Solus ?
    - int_19h 8y ago
      None of these qualify as "mainstream" compared to RedHat/CentOS/Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu. Even SUSE, which used to be in the big league, is a shadow of its former glory. If you look at what runs on production servers, it's virtually always RHEL/CentOS, or Debian/Ubuntu. Everybody else isn't even above 5%, and most of those you've listed are in fractional digits. For another data point, if you look at websites, Debian+Ubuntu is already >50%. At this point, I think it's well on its way to becoming the Linux distro, with everything else being relegated to the hacker/boutique niche. And I think that this announcement, and what IBM is likely to do with RHEL afterwards, will accelerate that trend substantially.
pnutjam 8y ago
Not a huge fan of Redhat, but I am a big user. I'm willing to wait and see. Maybe we'll see more community offerings?
7ewis 8y ago
What is the relationship between RHEL and CentOS? Never actually used RHEL, but I've heard that they're basically the same - one comes with the support, the other obviously doesn't. Is CentOS supported by Red Hat, so IBM in theory could shut them down?
- basch 8y ago
  redhat owns the centos trademark and employs most of its developers.
- geggam 8y ago
  CentOS is the main competition to RHEL licenses. I have been in many meetings where the "use CentOS so if we have to buy RHEL its an easy conversion " was made I assumed Redhat was going to capture lost revenue by somehow making CentOS less viable. IBMs business nature makes me think its even more likely now.
  - slavik81 8y ago
    From my perspective, it always seemed that RHEL's big problem was that CentOS was easier to use. Whenever I set up a machine, I always reached for CentOS because to me it was the same thing, except I didn't have to ask for a license, I didn't have to securely store the license, I didn't have to enter the license, and I didn't have to document my strategies for handling those things.
    - bubblethink 8y ago
      It's generally also more reliable. In any sort of an org like setup, RHEL will be managed through Satellite. The new Satellite seems like a massive pain. The old one also had issues. Running centos compared to registering clients to satellite is a breadth of fresh air. Sometimes I wonder if RH creates complexity, and sells these overly complicated solutions to problems they create.
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  I can't find the reference, but Red Hat recently hugged CentOS after sort of passively ignoring it for a while. Now, as I understand it, Red Hat has committed to actively supporting CentOS. They're different products for different customers. Folks who want to work cheap and hack their own stuff together will use CentOS and would never have bought a RHEL license anyway. Meanwhile, folks who need a "we've got support" answer for every question will use RHEL and wouldn't be tempted by CentOS anyway; the cost savings is not worth the risk.
bubblethink 8y ago
>Any bets on whether Fedora and CentOS will exist in November 2019? I would say that Fedora and CentOS aren't going away anywhere. Not because of this anyway. There were similar concerns around RH's acquisition (if that's what you call it) of CentOS a couple of years ago, but things have largely been the same. And it's mostly for selfish reasons. The overall dev mindshare of RH based systems has shrunk compared to Ubuntu. So anything that moves people away from Ubuntu to the RH ecosystem is net win because eventually some corp will write a check when they need support. It's the same idea as MS not going after pirates just to increase MS's overall market share.
- TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
  > I would say that Fedora and CentOS aren't going away anywhere. That was the sentiment regarding OpenSolaris when Oracle bought Sun... (And I can't believe no one's mentioned this in 800+ comments so far.)
  - bubblethink 8y ago
    OpenSolaris came after regular Solaris. It was a retroactive opening of code, and wasn't as essential to regular Solaris. In contrast, Fedora is quite instrumental to RHEL's existence. CentOS is not that instrumental, but it's not a major cost sink either. It used to be community driven earlier and can become so again. i.e., Unless they go out of their way to do something malicious, which would have little payoff anyway.
    - dexterous 8y ago
      > Fedora is quite instrumental to RHEL's existence Could you expand on that? I'm curious.
      - bubblethink 8y ago
        Fedora is upstream for RHEL. RHEL is made up of several Fedora releases. Fedora is also the testing ground for RHEL.
emmelaich 8y ago
Fedora and CentOS will both survive -- but maybe under a different name. This is possible because everything in Redhat/Fedora/Centos is open source. I'd be willing to bet numerous people are working on a non IBM/Redhat version of Centos.
- mcv 8y ago
  That's the thing with an acquisition like this: what did IBM buy exactly? The code is open source, the people can leave and form a new company. The thing IBM really owns are Red Hat's contracts. But when those expire, the other party could sign their new contract with a company of former Red Hatters, if they want. Buying an open source company only makes sense if you give the employees of that company exactly what they want. They are the real value.
  - emmelaich 8y ago
    It takes a lot more than a few to provide support. It would take years to get near the support that Red Hat provide now.
    - mcv 8y ago
      Theoretically, it seems all Red Hatters could quit simultaneously and form a new company according to the same structure they had before. Of course in practice that requires a lot of coordination, there's a ton of legal hoops to jump through and you end up with a big company built around customers it doesn't currently have.

jhabdas 8y ago

See you in RHEL.

ianai 8y ago

Where’s the history of IBM buying and sun setting companies? I don’t have the same prejudice towards IBM that I do for Oracle. But I’m not in a position to know. I’m thinking RHEL’s support contracts will keep IBM from shuttering RHEL. An IBM branded RHEL would represent plenty of income.

ranieuwe 8y ago
SPSS comes to mind.
- ianai 8y ago
  Can you expand?
alexott 8y ago
ISS?
shmerl 8y ago
They can cancel many projects that RedHat do as a general giving back to Linux. IBM wouldn't care.
Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
Rational Rose, Lotus
- ianai 8y ago
  Can you expand?
jacobsheehy 8y ago
WeatherUnderground was effectively shut down post-purchase. API signup is gone, etc. Terrible transition and no support for prior products.
- onesmalldrop 8y ago
  This is 0% true...
  - rhodysurf 8y ago
    Weather underground is a shell of what it used to be. They got rid of a ton of features and cluttered everything with ads
  - windexh8er 8y ago
    This is 100% true. They abandoned so many good parts of WU and, today, it seems to continue to operate as data collection (mobile apps / home weather stations) and ad revenue generation.
LinuxBender 8y ago
Sequent, though I can't see them doing the same things to RH.

R_haterade 8y ago

zOS reboot, duh! Kidding aside, nothing about this is good for the open source movement.

shady-lady 8y ago

Donated to Apache...

cmurf 8y ago

The boilerplate and vague statement of Red Hat remaining a distinct unit doesn't really tell us anything. More relevant is what the CentOS and Fedora communities think of this acquisition, because no matter what they are community driven projects. There are two coins to toss: whether IBM reaches into Red Hat in a way that kills off either project; and whether enough of the community steps out. I'm curious what openSUSE folks think of SUSE having been acquired by Novel, then Attachmate, and then the Micro Focus merger. They've been through a lot, and openSUSE is still here.

int_19h 8y ago
Conversely, I wonder what this does to the Linux ecosystem. It looks like at this point, Debian and Arch are the only major self-sufficient distros (i.e. not built on top of another distro) that are still community-owned and community-driven; and of the two, Debian is clearly more broadly popular. So, will this result in Debian becoming the de facto standard of "open Linux"? This could make things interesting when it comes to packaging etc.
- pnutjam 8y ago
  There are others, puppy Linux, Alpine, and slackware to name a few.
- bigbugbag 8y ago
  What about PCLinuxOS, openSUSE, Mageia, Void, Nixos, Solus ?
  - int_19h 8y ago
    None of these qualify as "mainstream" compared to RedHat/CentOS/Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu. Even SUSE, which used to be in the big league, is a shadow of its former glory. If you look at what runs on production servers, it's virtually always RHEL/CentOS, or Debian/Ubuntu. Everybody else isn't even above 5%, and most of those you've listed are in fractional digits. For another data point, if you look at websites, Debian+Ubuntu is already >50%. At this point, I think it's well on its way to becoming the Linux distro, with everything else being relegated to the hacker/boutique niche. And I think that this announcement, and what IBM is likely to do with RHEL afterwards, will accelerate that trend substantially.

pnutjam 8y ago

Not a huge fan of Redhat, but I am a big user. I'm willing to wait and see. Maybe we'll see more community offerings?

7ewis 8y ago

What is the relationship between RHEL and CentOS? Never actually used RHEL, but I've heard that they're basically the same - one comes with the support, the other obviously doesn't. Is CentOS supported by Red Hat, so IBM in theory could shut them down?

basch 8y ago
redhat owns the centos trademark and employs most of its developers.
geggam 8y ago
CentOS is the main competition to RHEL licenses. I have been in many meetings where the "use CentOS so if we have to buy RHEL its an easy conversion " was made I assumed Redhat was going to capture lost revenue by somehow making CentOS less viable. IBMs business nature makes me think its even more likely now.
- slavik81 8y ago
  From my perspective, it always seemed that RHEL's big problem was that CentOS was easier to use. Whenever I set up a machine, I always reached for CentOS because to me it was the same thing, except I didn't have to ask for a license, I didn't have to securely store the license, I didn't have to enter the license, and I didn't have to document my strategies for handling those things.
  - bubblethink 8y ago
    It's generally also more reliable. In any sort of an org like setup, RHEL will be managed through Satellite. The new Satellite seems like a massive pain. The old one also had issues. Running centos compared to registering clients to satellite is a breadth of fresh air. Sometimes I wonder if RH creates complexity, and sells these overly complicated solutions to problems they create.
snowwrestler 8y ago
I can't find the reference, but Red Hat recently hugged CentOS after sort of passively ignoring it for a while. Now, as I understand it, Red Hat has committed to actively supporting CentOS. They're different products for different customers. Folks who want to work cheap and hack their own stuff together will use CentOS and would never have bought a RHEL license anyway. Meanwhile, folks who need a "we've got support" answer for every question will use RHEL and wouldn't be tempted by CentOS anyway; the cost savings is not worth the risk.

bubblethink 8y ago

>Any bets on whether Fedora and CentOS will exist in November 2019? I would say that Fedora and CentOS aren't going away anywhere. Not because of this anyway. There were similar concerns around RH's acquisition (if that's what you call it) of CentOS a couple of years ago, but things have largely been the same. And it's mostly for selfish reasons. The overall dev mindshare of RH based systems has shrunk compared to Ubuntu. So anything that moves people away from Ubuntu to the RH ecosystem is net win because eventually some corp will write a check when they need support. It's the same idea as MS not going after pirates just to increase MS's overall market share.

TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
> I would say that Fedora and CentOS aren't going away anywhere. That was the sentiment regarding OpenSolaris when Oracle bought Sun... (And I can't believe no one's mentioned this in 800+ comments so far.)
- bubblethink 8y ago
  OpenSolaris came after regular Solaris. It was a retroactive opening of code, and wasn't as essential to regular Solaris. In contrast, Fedora is quite instrumental to RHEL's existence. CentOS is not that instrumental, but it's not a major cost sink either. It used to be community driven earlier and can become so again. i.e., Unless they go out of their way to do something malicious, which would have little payoff anyway.
  - dexterous 8y ago
    > Fedora is quite instrumental to RHEL's existence Could you expand on that? I'm curious.
    - bubblethink 8y ago
      Fedora is upstream for RHEL. RHEL is made up of several Fedora releases. Fedora is also the testing ground for RHEL.

emmelaich 8y ago

Fedora and CentOS will both survive -- but maybe under a different name. This is possible because everything in Redhat/Fedora/Centos is open source. I'd be willing to bet numerous people are working on a non IBM/Redhat version of Centos.

mcv 8y ago
That's the thing with an acquisition like this: what did IBM buy exactly? The code is open source, the people can leave and form a new company. The thing IBM really owns are Red Hat's contracts. But when those expire, the other party could sign their new contract with a company of former Red Hatters, if they want. Buying an open source company only makes sense if you give the employees of that company exactly what they want. They are the real value.
- emmelaich 8y ago
  It takes a lot more than a few to provide support. It would take years to get near the support that Red Hat provide now.
  - mcv 8y ago
    Theoretically, it seems all Red Hatters could quit simultaneously and form a new company according to the same structure they had before. Of course in practice that requires a lot of coordination, there's a ton of legal hoops to jump through and you end up with a big company built around customers it doesn't currently have.