4 ms·

What would you say are the main contributions of RedHat to the FOSS world, from its inception until this time (or 2019 if we want to split hairs)? As a devotee

What would you say are the main contributions of RedHat to the FOSS world, from its inception until this time (or 2019 if we want to split hairs)? As a devotee Debian (now Devuan), I've never been fond of RedHat/RHEL/CentOS as distributions and they always felt clunky to me somehow. But I am vaguely aware that RedHat has been involved in kernel development and the development of various apps etc. What would you say are the most prominent and "redeeming" of those?

yrro 4y ago
See the sibling comment from Thev00d00 for a decent answer.
account42 4y ago
Just one person amongs many, but employing Dave Airlie (airlied) has been a great boon for the Linux graphics stack. Among many other things, arlied started the radv driver (together with Bas Nieuwenhuizen) which has been become a significant part of Linux gaming on AMD hardware.
dralley 4y ago
There was a long stretch of time for which the only full-time developer working on Python (cPython) upstream was a Red Hat employee. The other core devs were either working in their free time or with their employers sponsoring only a few hours a week. https://discuss.python.org/t/official-list-of-core-developers/924 https://discuss.python.org/t/official-list-of-core-developer... I believe Microsoft has been sponsoring a lot of work for the past year or so, so I doubt that is still the case. Red Hat has been probably the biggest contributor to GCC for a very long time and contributes to LLVM/clang as well. Beyond the kernel - glibc has a lot of RH maintenance work, Grub2, wayland, Xorg, Gnome, Gtk, pipewire, systemd. etc.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
Cue start of a systemd debate. Less sarcastically, systemd is a major part of most distros. It has it's haters, but it's one of the most impressive additions to FOSS from Red Hat.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  Impressive in its insidiousness, I would say. I still can't believe Debian bought into that (of course, while claiming it's only an option).
- 2b3a51 4y ago
  Contributions to kernel by employees?
  - davidthewatson 4y ago
    I'm not a Redhat apologist. I have no skin in the game, but I've paid attention occasionally over the years. It depends on how you count, of course. I've done these statistics using a variety of git tools over the years. Being lazy, I asked various AI interfaces the question since AI seems better at faking SQL than I am at QUEL or the DSL of the week in schemaless databases. The results vary depending on decade, particularly since Intel have increased their kernel contributions from 2013 onward. However, when ranked over the 30 years from 1993-2023, as of today, assuming no latency in the data, Redhat wins: - Red Hat: 16.9% of total contributions - Intel: 12.8% of total contributions - IBM: 8.4% of total contributions - SUSE: 6.3% of total contributions - Google: 4.5% of total contributions - Linaro: 3.9% of total contributions - Samsung: 3.2% of total contributions - Oracle: 2.7% of total contributions - AMD: 2.1% of total contributions - Huawei: 1.9% of total contributions
INTPenis 4y ago
curl -sL 'https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS' | grep -ci redhat The fact that their employees can work on a large part of the Linux ecosystem during work hours makes a huge difference too. I often come across people from redhat experimenting, like implementing screen sharing in wayland. I've heard that they've been known to buy up stuff like Ansible for example, and then release source code. In ansible's case it was AWX, but I wish I had some better examples to mention. Maybe someone else can fill me in on some company red hat has purchased only to release their product source code to the public.
- worthless-trash 4y ago
  Not all of redhats contributions are from @redhat.com domain, its not uncommon for people to commit from their personal addresses. I can think of a companies that redhat has bought ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat ), but the ones that i think got opensourced are: - Sistina GFS - Netscape directory server - Permabit (Dedupe I think) There are likely more but these are the ones that I've messed with and they opened source.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  150 out of 3873. Certainly noteworthy. Some other commercial companies: curl -sL 'https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS' | egrep -o '<.*@.*>' | sed 's/<.*@//; s/>$//;' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n 23 ti.com 24 foss.st.com 27 vmware.com 28 huawei.com 36 bootlin.com 36 mediatek.com 41 chromium.org <- Google, right? --einpoklum 43 analog.com 47 suse.com 48 amd.com 48 samsung.com 49 arm.com 49 marvell.com 49 microchip.com 49 nvidia.com 54 google.com 61 nxp.com 76 broadcom.com 84 linux.ibm.com 87 linux.intel.com 140 redhat.com 157 linaro.org 158 intel.com
- fransje26 4y ago
  curl -sL 'https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS' | grep -i "@redhat" | grep -v "L:" | sort -u | wc -l
Barrin92 4y ago
they're one of the largest contributors to the kernel, Gnome is largely funded and developed by Red Hat I think, they sponsor Fedora. They probably employ a significant chunk of people who work on the linux ecosystem.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  So, the kernel is very much to their credit, GNOME - somewhat of a wash, in the sense that some people like it and some hate it... as for Fedora - I count that as one of "their" distributions, which like I said, I'm not a fan of. But point taken about many people working on the ecosystem.
dagw 4y ago
What would you say are the main contributions of RedHat to the FOSS world For me, I would say their biggest contribution is their early work with getting Linux into the hands of 'normal' people. RedHat was the first to really get their CDs into bookstores, into computer books and into the hands of students and hobbyists. They sponsored and supported the writing of many of the books that first taught people Linux. At the same time they managed to appear as a 'serious' company and calm and convince managers that Linux on both company servers and work stations was a safe bet. I would also say they really pioneered the whole "FOSS as a business model" concept which many companies and projects later adopted.
mongol 4y ago
They have set a lot of standards. If Red Hat did something it often has become embraced. Basically, they have acted as a leader and I think they have done a good job as that.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  Can you name some of the prominent examples?
  - mongol 4y ago
    Sure. Systemd. Flatpak. Freedesktop was created by Red Hat employee. Red Hat has been a driving force in implementing SELinux policies. Wayland was created by a Red Hat employee. I think if you compare Red Hat and Ubuntu, you will see that projects Red Hat pours resources into find wider adoption, while Ubuntu often goes alone.
    - einpoklum 4y ago
      Those are more like "stuff RedHat is pushing" rather than standards. Unfortunately, systemd has caught on...
      - mongol 4y ago
        Well that shows your bias more than anything
frant-hartm 4y ago
They are 2nd largest contributor to OpenJDK (Oracle is 1st obviously). They maintain the older releases - 8 and 11. It's mainly thanks to them that freely available maintenance releases of JDK 8 an 11 still exist.
- sverhagen 4y ago
  That's truly admirable, but on a little tangent here: how sad is it if you still have to be on Java 8. Sure, there's probably a small few good reasons for an exceeding small amount of users, but all those enterprises that won't go with the times just because their compliance team won't certify an upgrade, I feel for those folks.
  - toyg 4y ago
    It's not the formal certification that's the problem - it's the actual breakage in very old code that everyone expects and nobody wants to deal with.
    - sverhagen 4y ago
      This may well be... And I don't mean to argue over it, but it's just so hard to imagine, having been through this myself, and it's never been very hard, given how stable the JVM has generally been. It's not like I'm asking to upgrade from Python 2 to 3.
Dalewyn 4y ago
For better or worse: $$$$. Lots of $$$$.

yrro 4y ago

See the sibling comment from Thev00d00 for a decent answer.

account42 4y ago

Just one person amongs many, but employing Dave Airlie (airlied) has been a great boon for the Linux graphics stack. Among many other things, arlied started the radv driver (together with Bas Nieuwenhuizen) which has been become a significant part of Linux gaming on AMD hardware.

dralley 4y ago

There was a long stretch of time for which the only full-time developer working on Python (cPython) upstream was a Red Hat employee. The other core devs were either working in their free time or with their employers sponsoring only a few hours a week. https://discuss.python.org/t/official-list-of-core-developers/924 https://discuss.python.org/t/official-list-of-core-developer... I believe Microsoft has been sponsoring a lot of work for the past year or so, so I doubt that is still the case. Red Hat has been probably the biggest contributor to GCC for a very long time and contributes to LLVM/clang as well. Beyond the kernel - glibc has a lot of RH maintenance work, Grub2, wayland, Xorg, Gnome, Gtk, pipewire, systemd. etc.

boomboomsubban 4y ago

Cue start of a systemd debate. Less sarcastically, systemd is a major part of most distros. It has it's haters, but it's one of the most impressive additions to FOSS from Red Hat.

einpoklum 4y ago
Impressive in its insidiousness, I would say. I still can't believe Debian bought into that (of course, while claiming it's only an option).
2b3a51 4y ago
Contributions to kernel by employees?
- davidthewatson 4y ago
  I'm not a Redhat apologist. I have no skin in the game, but I've paid attention occasionally over the years. It depends on how you count, of course. I've done these statistics using a variety of git tools over the years. Being lazy, I asked various AI interfaces the question since AI seems better at faking SQL than I am at QUEL or the DSL of the week in schemaless databases. The results vary depending on decade, particularly since Intel have increased their kernel contributions from 2013 onward. However, when ranked over the 30 years from 1993-2023, as of today, assuming no latency in the data, Redhat wins: - Red Hat: 16.9% of total contributions - Intel: 12.8% of total contributions - IBM: 8.4% of total contributions - SUSE: 6.3% of total contributions - Google: 4.5% of total contributions - Linaro: 3.9% of total contributions - Samsung: 3.2% of total contributions - Oracle: 2.7% of total contributions - AMD: 2.1% of total contributions - Huawei: 1.9% of total contributions

INTPenis 4y ago

curl -sL 'https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS' | grep -ci redhat The fact that their employees can work on a large part of the Linux ecosystem during work hours makes a huge difference too. I often come across people from redhat experimenting, like implementing screen sharing in wayland. I've heard that they've been known to buy up stuff like Ansible for example, and then release source code. In ansible's case it was AWX, but I wish I had some better examples to mention. Maybe someone else can fill me in on some company red hat has purchased only to release their product source code to the public.

worthless-trash 4y ago
Not all of redhats contributions are from @redhat.com domain, its not uncommon for people to commit from their personal addresses. I can think of a companies that redhat has bought ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat ), but the ones that i think got opensourced are: - Sistina GFS - Netscape directory server - Permabit (Dedupe I think) There are likely more but these are the ones that I've messed with and they opened source.
einpoklum 4y ago
150 out of 3873. Certainly noteworthy. Some other commercial companies: curl -sL 'https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS' | egrep -o '<.*@.*>' | sed 's/<.*@//; s/>$//;' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n 23 ti.com 24 foss.st.com 27 vmware.com 28 huawei.com 36 bootlin.com 36 mediatek.com 41 chromium.org <- Google, right? --einpoklum 43 analog.com 47 suse.com 48 amd.com 48 samsung.com 49 arm.com 49 marvell.com 49 microchip.com 49 nvidia.com 54 google.com 61 nxp.com 76 broadcom.com 84 linux.ibm.com 87 linux.intel.com 140 redhat.com 157 linaro.org 158 intel.com
fransje26 4y ago
curl -sL 'https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS' | grep -i "@redhat" | grep -v "L:" | sort -u | wc -l

Barrin92 4y ago

they're one of the largest contributors to the kernel, Gnome is largely funded and developed by Red Hat I think, they sponsor Fedora. They probably employ a significant chunk of people who work on the linux ecosystem.

einpoklum 4y ago
So, the kernel is very much to their credit, GNOME - somewhat of a wash, in the sense that some people like it and some hate it... as for Fedora - I count that as one of "their" distributions, which like I said, I'm not a fan of. But point taken about many people working on the ecosystem.

dagw 4y ago

What would you say are the main contributions of RedHat to the FOSS world For me, I would say their biggest contribution is their early work with getting Linux into the hands of 'normal' people. RedHat was the first to really get their CDs into bookstores, into computer books and into the hands of students and hobbyists. They sponsored and supported the writing of many of the books that first taught people Linux. At the same time they managed to appear as a 'serious' company and calm and convince managers that Linux on both company servers and work stations was a safe bet. I would also say they really pioneered the whole "FOSS as a business model" concept which many companies and projects later adopted.

mongol 4y ago

They have set a lot of standards. If Red Hat did something it often has become embraced. Basically, they have acted as a leader and I think they have done a good job as that.

einpoklum 4y ago
Can you name some of the prominent examples?
- mongol 4y ago
  Sure. Systemd. Flatpak. Freedesktop was created by Red Hat employee. Red Hat has been a driving force in implementing SELinux policies. Wayland was created by a Red Hat employee. I think if you compare Red Hat and Ubuntu, you will see that projects Red Hat pours resources into find wider adoption, while Ubuntu often goes alone.
  - einpoklum 4y ago
    Those are more like "stuff RedHat is pushing" rather than standards. Unfortunately, systemd has caught on...
    - mongol 4y ago
      Well that shows your bias more than anything

frant-hartm 4y ago

They are 2nd largest contributor to OpenJDK (Oracle is 1st obviously). They maintain the older releases - 8 and 11. It's mainly thanks to them that freely available maintenance releases of JDK 8 an 11 still exist.

sverhagen 4y ago
That's truly admirable, but on a little tangent here: how sad is it if you still have to be on Java 8. Sure, there's probably a small few good reasons for an exceeding small amount of users, but all those enterprises that won't go with the times just because their compliance team won't certify an upgrade, I feel for those folks.
- toyg 4y ago
  It's not the formal certification that's the problem - it's the actual breakage in very old code that everyone expects and nobody wants to deal with.
  - sverhagen 4y ago
    This may well be... And I don't mean to argue over it, but it's just so hard to imagine, having been through this myself, and it's never been very hard, given how stable the JVM has generally been. It's not like I'm asking to upgrade from Python 2 to 3.

Dalewyn 4y ago

For better or worse: $$$$. Lots of $$$$.