8 ms·

Say Goodbye to CoreOS

127 points by eaguyhn 7y ago

coding123 7y ago
I think the idea behind it was definitely sound and pretty cool. I used CoreOS a couple of times for internal projects, using Docker (not rkt) but I think as Kubernetes became ubiquitously available on managed services, the need for me to attempt to build my own docker infrastructure started to wane. Goodbye CoreOS.
leetrout 7y ago
> will, as of Sept.1, 2020, delete all CoreOS images I get moving on / cutting product lines but I don’t see the need to delete all the images.
- coding123 7y ago
  I initially had that internal reaction too, but then realized that the value in CoreOS was the updates. If they're specifically going to stop that, at this point it's like any other never gets updates OS (sure the readonly file system still helps tremendously) - so yes, people should get off ASAP. But the September date ensures that anyone that wants to fork and provide updates some other way, can definitely find the time to do that.
- lrem 7y ago
  Maybe they were worried about people using an os that no longer gets security updates?
- echelon 7y ago
  IBM is scorching the earth.
- rconti 7y ago
  Because they don't want to play a part in unmaintained CD pipelines that pull ancient vulnerable images for the next many years.
haolez 7y ago
I really enjoyed managing a CoreOS cluster in the past. It was one of those project where every product developed was great, like etcd, Ignition, CoreDNS and even Fleet, at the time. I wonder how far they'd have gotten if they'd refused to sell.
- nine_k 7y ago
  Maybe not far if their revenue stream was not large enough.
  - haolez 7y ago
    I have no idea what's their case in this regard. Would love some input from someone who knows.
parhamn 7y ago
While I never used CoreOS, the team certainly played a big part in the new wave of devops. The team also brought us etcd and a lot of the niceties of the devX in kubernetes et al these days. The article doesn't mention him, but shoutout to Brandon Phillips (technical lead) and his team for so much innovation in the space!
- ignoramous 7y ago
  Here's a nice article on CoreOS from 2013, just as they graduated from YC: https://www.wired.com/2013/08/coreos-the-new-linux/ https://www.wired.com/2013/08/coreos-the-new-linux/ ... and the show-hn thread referenced by tfa: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6128700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6128700
0xbadcafebee 7y ago
Too soon, I know, but can we soon start talking about abandoning all corporate-managed open source projects? I wouldn't be surprised at this move if I were a CoreOS user, but I would be pretty pissed off that the next 6 months of my work would be migrating to a new platform for production work, all because the Linux distro I used got bought for its IP and customer list. Or, say when HashiCorp is eventually bought, and suddenly its parent company decides, no more free tools for you, kids! Buy our other, more crappy products instead, but here's some free samples you can use at small scale. Also you need to rewrite all your code. This extends to virtually every important project in the cloud computing ecosystem. They're all just run by companies, not a distributed decentralized community of users and developers (cat-herded by a BDFL) like every successful multi-generational open source project. There's also only one widely-supported Linux distribution in the world which isn't run by a corporation, meaning if that distribution ever goes down, everyone who uses Linux for more than its kernel is at the mercy of that given corporation, and we'll probably see massive fragmentation. Open Source and GNU basically got its start to prevent corporations from preventing you from doing what you wanted with software, but it had a nasty side-effect: they can now make whatever you do with it obsolete and unsupportable. A bit like a car manufacturer no longer shipping replacement parts, forcing you to find some machinists to support an aging fleet of obsolete vehicles. And sure, if the impact is only to corporate engineers, who cares, but as one of those engineers, it is very annoying that we literally are letting them do this to us.
- yodon 7y ago
  This isn't a corporate-managed open source problem, it's a single developer managed open source problem, with the corporate entity functioning like a single entity. Tons of great open source project exist as updating projects through the force of will of a single passionate developer. When that developer moves on, the project dies. The open source license grants others the ability to continue, but without that singular developer and their passion the reality is in most cases no one will pick up the project and carry it forward. Sure there are examples where projects do survive the death or disappearance of a maintainer, but there are far more projects out there in need of a new maintainer than find one.
- carapace 7y ago
wtmt 7y ago
> Red Hat, which purchased the company behind CoreOS in 2018, will, as of Sept.1, 2020, delete all CoreOS images. That means even if you wanted to download CoreOS (without supported updates), you won’t be able to. > Although Fedora CoreOS is the official replacement for CoreOS, there are a few use cases it cannot replace, such as: > No native support for Azure, Digital Ocean, GCE, Vagrant, or Container Linux community-supported platforms. The rkt container runtime, originally developed by CoreOS, is missing. Have these images of CoreOS (that RedHat will delete) not been added to the Wayback Machine yet? Or not backed up anywhere else? > For those looking for a non-Red Hat alternative should check out the Flatcar Linux project, [1] a fork of CoreOS Container Linux. So there is an (almost) equivalent alternative for those who use the images that are going to be deleted (and one that doesn't have the limitations of Fedora CoreOS)? [1]: https://www.flatcar-linux.org/releases/ https://www.flatcar-linux.org/releases/
- mathattack 7y ago
  Is this an issue of RedHat just buying and killing a competitor?
  - wmf 7y ago
    CoreOS was a competitor but it hasn't really been killed. CoreOS technology is still available but they changed the names of the products when they broke backwards compatibility.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    At least in the open source world, other people can continue maintaining the project under a new name (dependent on the specific license). I wonder how Flatcar and Fedora CoreOS will converge/diverge. Also, was rkt not open source? Or was it just depreciated?
    - robszumski 7y ago
      rkt was always open source. It was donated to the CNCF and eventually "retired" by them.
yovagoyu 7y ago
CoreOS, docker, and mesos was an alternative to kubernetes. I'd say while using flatcar is viable, it looks like kubernetes is what the people have chosen.
- whalesalad 7y ago
  CoreOS and Kube are not mutually exclusive. The first k8s cluster I ever ran was on CoreOS.
  - mdaniel 7y ago
    Me, too! I got started with both CoreOS and kubernetes using their kubernetes-in-vagrant repo (before it went to the abysmal rkt runtime: https://github.com/coreos/coreos-kubernetes/blob/v0.4.0/multi-node/generic/controller-install.sh https://github.com/coreos/coreos-kubernetes/blob/v0.4.0/mult... ) and I shepherded that v1.0.6 cluster all the way up to v1.10 when I left. It was a highly educational process
- blixtra 7y ago
  Most of our Flatcar Container Linux users run Kubernetes. It's really an ideal match for a minimal container OS.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  I really prefer DC/OS to K8s. They both have strengths and weaknesses, but I hate we're not this k8s monoculture now. There need to be more container orchestration systems .. and don't kid yourself; few shops are using nomad.
  - mpfundstein 7y ago
    Just deployed a new infra using nomad, consul & docker swarm. Much nicer than k8s
    - the_angry_angel 7y ago
      Does the uncertainty of swarm’s future not concern you? Or am I out of date?
foreign-inc 7y ago
Finally a non-sponsored article on the newstack.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fierarul 7y ago
I read this as 'Say Goodbye to ChromeOS' and though 'well, Android finally won inside Google'.
Thaxll 7y ago
Isn't GKE runs on CoreOS?
deathmetal8932 7y ago
https://youtu.be/mvKOD0dapRE https://youtu.be/mvKOD0dapRE

127 points by eaguyhn 7y ago

I think the idea behind it was definitely sound and pretty cool. I used CoreOS a couple of times for internal projects, using Docker (not rkt) but I think as Kubernetes became ubiquitously available on managed services, the need for me to attempt to build my own docker infrastructure started to wane. Goodbye CoreOS.

leetrout 7y ago

> will, as of Sept.1, 2020, delete all CoreOS images I get moving on / cutting product lines but I don’t see the need to delete all the images.

coding123 7y ago
I initially had that internal reaction too, but then realized that the value in CoreOS was the updates. If they're specifically going to stop that, at this point it's like any other never gets updates OS (sure the readonly file system still helps tremendously) - so yes, people should get off ASAP. But the September date ensures that anyone that wants to fork and provide updates some other way, can definitely find the time to do that.
lrem 7y ago
Maybe they were worried about people using an os that no longer gets security updates?
echelon 7y ago
IBM is scorching the earth.
rconti 7y ago
Because they don't want to play a part in unmaintained CD pipelines that pull ancient vulnerable images for the next many years.

haolez 7y ago

I really enjoyed managing a CoreOS cluster in the past. It was one of those project where every product developed was great, like etcd, Ignition, CoreDNS and even Fleet, at the time. I wonder how far they'd have gotten if they'd refused to sell.

nine_k 7y ago
Maybe not far if their revenue stream was not large enough.
- haolez 7y ago
  I have no idea what's their case in this regard. Would love some input from someone who knows.

parhamn 7y ago

While I never used CoreOS, the team certainly played a big part in the new wave of devops. The team also brought us etcd and a lot of the niceties of the devX in kubernetes et al these days. The article doesn't mention him, but shoutout to Brandon Phillips (technical lead) and his team for so much innovation in the space!

ignoramous 7y ago
Here's a nice article on CoreOS from 2013, just as they graduated from YC: https://www.wired.com/2013/08/coreos-the-new-linux/ https://www.wired.com/2013/08/coreos-the-new-linux/ ... and the show-hn thread referenced by tfa: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6128700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6128700

0xbadcafebee 7y ago

Too soon, I know, but can we soon start talking about abandoning all corporate-managed open source projects? I wouldn't be surprised at this move if I were a CoreOS user, but I would be pretty pissed off that the next 6 months of my work would be migrating to a new platform for production work, all because the Linux distro I used got bought for its IP and customer list. Or, say when HashiCorp is eventually bought, and suddenly its parent company decides, no more free tools for you, kids! Buy our other, more crappy products instead, but here's some free samples you can use at small scale. Also you need to rewrite all your code. This extends to virtually every important project in the cloud computing ecosystem. They're all just run by companies, not a distributed decentralized community of users and developers (cat-herded by a BDFL) like every successful multi-generational open source project. There's also only one widely-supported Linux distribution in the world which isn't run by a corporation, meaning if that distribution ever goes down, everyone who uses Linux for more than its kernel is at the mercy of that given corporation, and we'll probably see massive fragmentation. Open Source and GNU basically got its start to prevent corporations from preventing you from doing what you wanted with software, but it had a nasty side-effect: they can now make whatever you do with it obsolete and unsupportable. A bit like a car manufacturer no longer shipping replacement parts, forcing you to find some machinists to support an aging fleet of obsolete vehicles. And sure, if the impact is only to corporate engineers, who cares, but as one of those engineers, it is very annoying that we literally are letting them do this to us.

yodon 7y ago
This isn't a corporate-managed open source problem, it's a single developer managed open source problem, with the corporate entity functioning like a single entity. Tons of great open source project exist as updating projects through the force of will of a single passionate developer. When that developer moves on, the project dies. The open source license grants others the ability to continue, but without that singular developer and their passion the reality is in most cases no one will pick up the project and carry it forward. Sure there are examples where projects do survive the death or disappearance of a maintainer, but there are far more projects out there in need of a new maintainer than find one.
carapace 7y ago

wtmt 7y ago

> Red Hat, which purchased the company behind CoreOS in 2018, will, as of Sept.1, 2020, delete all CoreOS images. That means even if you wanted to download CoreOS (without supported updates), you won’t be able to. > Although Fedora CoreOS is the official replacement for CoreOS, there are a few use cases it cannot replace, such as: > No native support for Azure, Digital Ocean, GCE, Vagrant, or Container Linux community-supported platforms. The rkt container runtime, originally developed by CoreOS, is missing. Have these images of CoreOS (that RedHat will delete) not been added to the Wayback Machine yet? Or not backed up anywhere else? > For those looking for a non-Red Hat alternative should check out the Flatcar Linux project, [1] a fork of CoreOS Container Linux. So there is an (almost) equivalent alternative for those who use the images that are going to be deleted (and one that doesn't have the limitations of Fedora CoreOS)? [1]: https://www.flatcar-linux.org/releases/ https://www.flatcar-linux.org/releases/

mathattack 7y ago
Is this an issue of RedHat just buying and killing a competitor?
- wmf 7y ago
  CoreOS was a competitor but it hasn't really been killed. CoreOS technology is still available but they changed the names of the products when they broke backwards compatibility.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  At least in the open source world, other people can continue maintaining the project under a new name (dependent on the specific license). I wonder how Flatcar and Fedora CoreOS will converge/diverge. Also, was rkt not open source? Or was it just depreciated?
  - robszumski 7y ago
    rkt was always open source. It was donated to the CNCF and eventually "retired" by them.

yovagoyu 7y ago

CoreOS, docker, and mesos was an alternative to kubernetes. I'd say while using flatcar is viable, it looks like kubernetes is what the people have chosen.

whalesalad 7y ago
CoreOS and Kube are not mutually exclusive. The first k8s cluster I ever ran was on CoreOS.
- mdaniel 7y ago
  Me, too! I got started with both CoreOS and kubernetes using their kubernetes-in-vagrant repo (before it went to the abysmal rkt runtime: https://github.com/coreos/coreos-kubernetes/blob/v0.4.0/multi-node/generic/controller-install.sh https://github.com/coreos/coreos-kubernetes/blob/v0.4.0/mult... ) and I shepherded that v1.0.6 cluster all the way up to v1.10 when I left. It was a highly educational process
blixtra 7y ago
Most of our Flatcar Container Linux users run Kubernetes. It's really an ideal match for a minimal container OS.
djsumdog 7y ago
I really prefer DC/OS to K8s. They both have strengths and weaknesses, but I hate we're not this k8s monoculture now. There need to be more container orchestration systems .. and don't kid yourself; few shops are using nomad.
- mpfundstein 7y ago
  Just deployed a new infra using nomad, consul & docker swarm. Much nicer than k8s
  - the_angry_angel 7y ago
    Does the uncertainty of swarm’s future not concern you? Or am I out of date?

foreign-inc 7y ago

Finally a non-sponsored article on the newstack.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

fierarul 7y ago

I read this as 'Say Goodbye to ChromeOS' and though 'well, Android finally won inside Google'.

Thaxll 7y ago

Isn't GKE runs on CoreOS?

deathmetal8932 7y ago

https://youtu.be/mvKOD0dapRE https://youtu.be/mvKOD0dapRE