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I have insights. Alma is done by professionals for professionals (the hosting industry). Those guys were behind CentOS, and are running 70% of the internet. R

by rurban 4y ago

I have insights. Alma is done by professionals for professionals (the hosting industry). Those guys were behind CentOS, and are running 70% of the internet. Rocky is an unpaid community effort.

dapozza 4y ago
No. Rocky is done by the guy that started CentOS.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  Is he paid to develop it? Serious question, my CentOS boxes have been running for years and I'm not looking to upgrade so I'm not up to date.
  - bclemens 4y ago
    Rocky Linux is developed by a large team, some who are paid too and some who are strictly volunteers, but yes, Gregory Kurtzer's own company (https://ciq.co https://ciq.co) has invested quite a bit into Rocky Linux. (Many developers, FIPS validation alone is upwards of a million USD, etc)
  - liamnal 4y ago
    He does not develop it whatsoever. Really all he does is talk, so basically zero development value. He certainly likes to take credit though for all the work all of rocky's volunteers do.
    - bclemens 4y ago
      Yes, Gregory Kurtzer personally helped in development (primarily the packaging / tools during 8.3 and then 8.4). I know, I was there lol. For example, see the commit log to the early set of Rocky Linux devtools: https://github.com/rocky-linux/devtools/commits/main?after=f1a8d8f2b845ccb19f1f44950ea892510fbb40fc+34&branch=main&qualified_name=refs%2Fheads%2Fmain https://github.com/rocky-linux/devtools/commits/main?after=f... "All he does is talk" is unfairly dismissive. We all have our roles, and Greg's is not release engineering. The "taking credit" bit is an unfortunate misconception, media likes to attribute the entire project to gmk since he's a notable personality, but he himself does not.
      - liamnal 4y ago
        >For example, see the commit log to the early set of Rocky Linux devtools And that's literally it. After that... Nothing. Not surprising. >"All he does is talk" is unfairly dismissive. Funny because he's the only one ever mentioned or talked to in any article. It'd be nice to hear from the actual developers and not a figure head. Notice how it's only him? His role is to talk. His other company is also there to take credit, thanks to him and the media. We can blame the media all we want, but the reality is he basks in the spotlight. If that's his actual role he's doing it well. I certainly hope your upcoming board didn't drink his koolaid and keeps him out.
        realgmk 4y ago
        I do try to ensure that others are always getting credit, I'm not even mentioned in the release notes of who did the work. And the board doesn't keep people out. If you read the bylaws and charter, you would know that it is all contributing members of the projects that will vote for the board members, and the board will elect the officers of the organization. You are obviously not an RESF Member and I trust the Members of the projects to make the best decision for the RESF and Projects. If I am among them, cool, I will always do my best job there. If not, I will support the decision and enjoy knowing that the structure that I helped to create, is working, and will keep the project open, free, and in the community for decades to come. Last point, it isn't cool to discredit non-technical contributions, every role in an open source project is important.
        liamnal 4y ago
        >And the board doesn't keep people out. If you read the bylaws and charter, you would know that it is all contributing members of the projects that will vote for the board members Good to know, I forgot how voting works. I hope they do right by the community and not vote you anywhere near the officers of the org. In your words, that means the structure will be working. But that requires faith that there are members who didn't drink your koolaid. >Last point, it isn't cool to discredit non-technical contributions, every role in an open source project is important. You're right, advertising your company CIQ using Rocky Linux is definitely up there in important open source contributions. I forgot about that small point.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  Correct. Although I don't think Rocky has nearly as much money, staff, or industry support as Alma does. The other issue is RH gets Cent 8/9 Stream CVE fixes out faster than either Alma or Rocky, at least so far.
  - ustrin 4y ago
    > The problem is that Cent 8/9 Stream has quicker critical CVE patches because it's essentially the source and is closer to mirroring RHEL. This isn't entirely true, at least for embargoed CVEs (so the most critical vulnerabilities). RHEL will always get embargoed patches first. Once RHEL releases the patched packages, Alma/Rocky can rebuild them too. The patches may not be available in Stream yet at this point. This has happened a few times in the past. Also, there are no advisories for Stream, so it's not always easy to tell if a Stream package includes a patch for a particular CVE. Sometimes you have to go hunting in the changelog to figure it out, as the version numbers don't always match with RHEL's.
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      Hello fellow redhatter in the kernel engineering group ;)
      - ustrin 4y ago
        Actually, I'm closer to the OP than to Red Hat, but I've heard this point explained often enough :P
        worthless-trash 4y ago
        you -nailed- it.
  - Proven 4y ago
- liamnal 4y ago
  He (gmk) didn't start it, but he certainly provided support/funding to it.
- Conan_Kudo 4y ago
  Strictly speaking, Greg Kurtzer didn't start CentOS. He started cAos, and people within cAos started CentOS to bootstrap cAos. When the CentOS and cAos people couldn't get along, CentOS left cAos to be its own thing. Lance Davis probably has more claim to being the founder than Greg Kurtzer, as he was the one that started actually creating the Red Hat Linux rebuild work the led to CentOS.
  - realgmk 4y ago
    Rocky McGaugh started building cAos-EL under the cAos Foundation which I created and led. Due to my role with the cAos Foundation, I was part of the planning, inception, architecture, setup, leadership, management and led the project itself, but Rocky did 99% of the engineering work for cAos-EL-2 (later renamed to CentOS-3) and after Rocky was working on that, John Newbigin started on what would become CentOS-2. Lance was there since the early days of the cAos Foundation, and he suggested the name "CentOS" (and he squatted and held the domain from the Foundation, which was how he took over the project), and he got involved with engineering/development of CentOS-3 after Rocky passed away. While I would agree, he is a co-founder, he proved to be opportunistic and acted very unethically and has been further demonstrated with the open letter sent to him from Russ Herrold (another co-founder) and the rest of the CentOS contributors for going AWOL, still holding the domain, and taking the project donations for years. CentOS split off from the cAos Foundation (501c3) due to Lance's stronghold on the domain. To be clear, the separation was not mutual but it was cordial and sugar coated for the good of the project. I always enjoyed being part of CentOS and working on Linux distributions so not being part of CentOS was hard on me. This is one of the reasons why I announced a new distribution (Rocky) within 2 hours of CentOS being killed off, I was excited to do a distribution again! You can also imagine how and why I setup the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation different from the cAos Foundation to better protect the project(s). One last point, just because I wasn't working on core engineering and development of CentOS doesn't mean I wasn't deeply involved for the first years of CentOS and not a reason to discredit my role as project leader and co-founder.
bclemens 4y ago
No. Alma Linux is done by CloudLinux, and still uses their infrastructure, secure boot certificate, etc (according to their page at https://web.archive.org/web/20221208102246/https://wiki.almalinux.org/Transparency.html#assets-and-build-environment https://web.archive.org/web/20221208102246/https://wiki.alma...). They have never had anything to do with CentOS. Rocky Linux _is_ community oriented, and _is not_ beholden to a specific company, but it is not necessarily unpaid. The majority of the most active contributors to the project are being paid by their respective organizations (CIQ, OpenLogic / Perforce, etc) to do so.
- Conan_Kudo 4y ago
  AlmaLinux uses their own secure boot certificate, as noted in their last shim-review: https://github.com/rhboot/shim-review/issues/250 https://github.com/rhboot/shim-review/issues/250 EDIT: actually link to the right shim-review ^_^;
- jonathanspw 4y ago
  Most services are NOT on CL infra. There are a few minor things that need to be moved but all the core stuff is hosted on Alma's own infra including the build system/servers. Source: I'm the infra lead at Alma.
- creatonez 4y ago
  Should be noted that AlmaLinux is a registered non-profit, whereas RockyLinux has not done such a thing and has bylaws that leave open the opportunity of being bought out by a for-profit From RockyLinux: > The Foundation is here for the benefit of the public community. We are a self imposed not-for-profit organization[^1] and thus we will never be driven, motivated, or manipulated by profit or monetary gain. > [1]: This means the Foundation is a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation, with the objectives set forth in this Charter and the Foundation Bylaws. We do not have an objective to make money for shareholders. As of the time of this writing, the Foundation is NOT a 501(c)* US tax-exempt organization. Also, AlmaLinux has its own infrastructure. It's not using CloudLinux infrastructure.
- rurban 4y ago
  Cloudlinux was the cPanel partner who provided their CentOS updates and support. They (Igor) were the ones who kept CentOS alive previously. As nice as RockyLinux is, they can never compete with the dedicated support of the commercial partners from the hosting industry. See what they did: https://almalinux.org/blog/looking-back-leaping-forward-a-look-back-at-the-first-year-for-almalinux-and-what-the-future-holds/ https://almalinux.org/blog/looking-back-leaping-forward-a-lo...

by rurban 4y ago

I have insights. Alma is done by professionals for professionals (the hosting industry). Those guys were behind CentOS, and are running 70% of the internet. Rocky is an unpaid community effort.

dapozza 4y ago

No. Rocky is done by the guy that started CentOS.

dotancohen 4y ago
Is he paid to develop it? Serious question, my CentOS boxes have been running for years and I'm not looking to upgrade so I'm not up to date.
- bclemens 4y ago
  Rocky Linux is developed by a large team, some who are paid too and some who are strictly volunteers, but yes, Gregory Kurtzer's own company (https://ciq.co https://ciq.co) has invested quite a bit into Rocky Linux. (Many developers, FIPS validation alone is upwards of a million USD, etc)
- liamnal 4y ago
  He does not develop it whatsoever. Really all he does is talk, so basically zero development value. He certainly likes to take credit though for all the work all of rocky's volunteers do.
  - bclemens 4y ago
    Yes, Gregory Kurtzer personally helped in development (primarily the packaging / tools during 8.3 and then 8.4). I know, I was there lol. For example, see the commit log to the early set of Rocky Linux devtools: https://github.com/rocky-linux/devtools/commits/main?after=f1a8d8f2b845ccb19f1f44950ea892510fbb40fc+34&branch=main&qualified_name=refs%2Fheads%2Fmain https://github.com/rocky-linux/devtools/commits/main?after=f... "All he does is talk" is unfairly dismissive. We all have our roles, and Greg's is not release engineering. The "taking credit" bit is an unfortunate misconception, media likes to attribute the entire project to gmk since he's a notable personality, but he himself does not.
    - liamnal 4y ago
      >For example, see the commit log to the early set of Rocky Linux devtools And that's literally it. After that... Nothing. Not surprising. >"All he does is talk" is unfairly dismissive. Funny because he's the only one ever mentioned or talked to in any article. It'd be nice to hear from the actual developers and not a figure head. Notice how it's only him? His role is to talk. His other company is also there to take credit, thanks to him and the media. We can blame the media all we want, but the reality is he basks in the spotlight. If that's his actual role he's doing it well. I certainly hope your upcoming board didn't drink his koolaid and keeps him out.
      - realgmk 4y ago
        I do try to ensure that others are always getting credit, I'm not even mentioned in the release notes of who did the work. And the board doesn't keep people out. If you read the bylaws and charter, you would know that it is all contributing members of the projects that will vote for the board members, and the board will elect the officers of the organization. You are obviously not an RESF Member and I trust the Members of the projects to make the best decision for the RESF and Projects. If I am among them, cool, I will always do my best job there. If not, I will support the decision and enjoy knowing that the structure that I helped to create, is working, and will keep the project open, free, and in the community for decades to come. Last point, it isn't cool to discredit non-technical contributions, every role in an open source project is important.
        liamnal 4y ago
        >And the board doesn't keep people out. If you read the bylaws and charter, you would know that it is all contributing members of the projects that will vote for the board members Good to know, I forgot how voting works. I hope they do right by the community and not vote you anywhere near the officers of the org. In your words, that means the structure will be working. But that requires faith that there are members who didn't drink your koolaid. >Last point, it isn't cool to discredit non-technical contributions, every role in an open source project is important. You're right, advertising your company CIQ using Rocky Linux is definitely up there in important open source contributions. I forgot about that small point.
1letterunixname 4y ago
Correct. Although I don't think Rocky has nearly as much money, staff, or industry support as Alma does. The other issue is RH gets Cent 8/9 Stream CVE fixes out faster than either Alma or Rocky, at least so far.
- ustrin 4y ago
  > The problem is that Cent 8/9 Stream has quicker critical CVE patches because it's essentially the source and is closer to mirroring RHEL. This isn't entirely true, at least for embargoed CVEs (so the most critical vulnerabilities). RHEL will always get embargoed patches first. Once RHEL releases the patched packages, Alma/Rocky can rebuild them too. The patches may not be available in Stream yet at this point. This has happened a few times in the past. Also, there are no advisories for Stream, so it's not always easy to tell if a Stream package includes a patch for a particular CVE. Sometimes you have to go hunting in the changelog to figure it out, as the version numbers don't always match with RHEL's.
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    Hello fellow redhatter in the kernel engineering group ;)
    - ustrin 4y ago
      Actually, I'm closer to the OP than to Red Hat, but I've heard this point explained often enough :P
      - worthless-trash 4y ago
        you -nailed- it.
- Proven 4y ago
liamnal 4y ago
He (gmk) didn't start it, but he certainly provided support/funding to it.
Conan_Kudo 4y ago
Strictly speaking, Greg Kurtzer didn't start CentOS. He started cAos, and people within cAos started CentOS to bootstrap cAos. When the CentOS and cAos people couldn't get along, CentOS left cAos to be its own thing. Lance Davis probably has more claim to being the founder than Greg Kurtzer, as he was the one that started actually creating the Red Hat Linux rebuild work the led to CentOS.
- realgmk 4y ago
  Rocky McGaugh started building cAos-EL under the cAos Foundation which I created and led. Due to my role with the cAos Foundation, I was part of the planning, inception, architecture, setup, leadership, management and led the project itself, but Rocky did 99% of the engineering work for cAos-EL-2 (later renamed to CentOS-3) and after Rocky was working on that, John Newbigin started on what would become CentOS-2. Lance was there since the early days of the cAos Foundation, and he suggested the name "CentOS" (and he squatted and held the domain from the Foundation, which was how he took over the project), and he got involved with engineering/development of CentOS-3 after Rocky passed away. While I would agree, he is a co-founder, he proved to be opportunistic and acted very unethically and has been further demonstrated with the open letter sent to him from Russ Herrold (another co-founder) and the rest of the CentOS contributors for going AWOL, still holding the domain, and taking the project donations for years. CentOS split off from the cAos Foundation (501c3) due to Lance's stronghold on the domain. To be clear, the separation was not mutual but it was cordial and sugar coated for the good of the project. I always enjoyed being part of CentOS and working on Linux distributions so not being part of CentOS was hard on me. This is one of the reasons why I announced a new distribution (Rocky) within 2 hours of CentOS being killed off, I was excited to do a distribution again! You can also imagine how and why I setup the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation different from the cAos Foundation to better protect the project(s). One last point, just because I wasn't working on core engineering and development of CentOS doesn't mean I wasn't deeply involved for the first years of CentOS and not a reason to discredit my role as project leader and co-founder.

bclemens 4y ago

No. Alma Linux is done by CloudLinux, and still uses their infrastructure, secure boot certificate, etc (according to their page at https://web.archive.org/web/20221208102246/https://wiki.almalinux.org/Transparency.html#assets-and-build-environment https://web.archive.org/web/20221208102246/https://wiki.alma...). They have never had anything to do with CentOS. Rocky Linux _is_ community oriented, and _is not_ beholden to a specific company, but it is not necessarily unpaid. The majority of the most active contributors to the project are being paid by their respective organizations (CIQ, OpenLogic / Perforce, etc) to do so.

Conan_Kudo 4y ago
AlmaLinux uses their own secure boot certificate, as noted in their last shim-review: https://github.com/rhboot/shim-review/issues/250 https://github.com/rhboot/shim-review/issues/250 EDIT: actually link to the right shim-review ^_^;
jonathanspw 4y ago
Most services are NOT on CL infra. There are a few minor things that need to be moved but all the core stuff is hosted on Alma's own infra including the build system/servers. Source: I'm the infra lead at Alma.
creatonez 4y ago
Should be noted that AlmaLinux is a registered non-profit, whereas RockyLinux has not done such a thing and has bylaws that leave open the opportunity of being bought out by a for-profit From RockyLinux: > The Foundation is here for the benefit of the public community. We are a self imposed not-for-profit organization[^1] and thus we will never be driven, motivated, or manipulated by profit or monetary gain. > [1]: This means the Foundation is a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation, with the objectives set forth in this Charter and the Foundation Bylaws. We do not have an objective to make money for shareholders. As of the time of this writing, the Foundation is NOT a 501(c)* US tax-exempt organization. Also, AlmaLinux has its own infrastructure. It's not using CloudLinux infrastructure.
rurban 4y ago
Cloudlinux was the cPanel partner who provided their CentOS updates and support. They (Igor) were the ones who kept CentOS alive previously. As nice as RockyLinux is, they can never compete with the dedicated support of the commercial partners from the hosting industry. See what they did: https://almalinux.org/blog/looking-back-leaping-forward-a-look-back-at-the-first-year-for-almalinux-and-what-the-future-holds/ https://almalinux.org/blog/looking-back-leaping-forward-a-lo...