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The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move: > Since the earliest days of Linux or MySQL, there were companies set up t

The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move: > Since the earliest days of Linux or MySQL, there were companies set up to profit from others’ contributions. Most recently in Linux, for example, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux both promise “bug for bug compatibility” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while contributing nothing toward Red Hat’s success. Indeed, the natural conclusion of these two RHEL clones’ success would be to eliminate their host, leading to their own demise, which is why one person in the Linux space called them the “dirtbags” of open source. > If there are any real parasites, it's Oracle Linux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Linux > Oracle Linux (abbreviated OL, formerly known as Oracle Enterprise Linux or OEL) is a Linux distribution packaged and freely distributed by Oracle, available partially under the GNU General Public License since late 2006.[4] It is compiled from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code, replacing Red Hat branding with Oracle's. I had no idea that Oracle Linux was essentially RHEL with %s/Red\ Hat/Oracle/g and Oracle has a market cap of $330bn

yrro 3y ago
To be fair to Oracle I believe they have their own "unbreakable" kernel packages, though they do ship Red Hat's kernel as well.
rconti 3y ago
Paid for Oracle Linux, can confirm.
chasil 3y ago
It has a few add-ons. The "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" includes full btrfs, extensive device support (that is removed from the stock kernel), is tuned for the eponymous database, and is always more current. There are several scenarios where it is very attractive. Oracle bought K-Splice several years ago, which was the first rebootless patch solution for Linux. It's only available with a premium license; Kernelcare is a lot cheaper. Supported Oracle Linux versions are also available for WSL1 inside of Windows. C:\>wsl.exe -l -o The following is a list of valid distributions that can be installed. The default distribution is denoted by '*'. Install using 'wsl --install -d <Distro>'. NAME FRIENDLY NAME Ubuntu Ubuntu Debian Debian GNU/Linux kali-linux Kali Linux Rolling Ubuntu-18.04 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Ubuntu-20.04 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Ubuntu-22.04 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS OracleLinux_7_9 Oracle Linux 7.9 OracleLinux_8_7 Oracle Linux 8.7 OracleLinux_9_1 Oracle Linux 9.1 SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-Server-15-SP4 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4 openSUSE-Leap-15.4 openSUSE Leap 15.4 openSUSE-Tumbleweed openSUSE Tumbleweed Oracle Linux came into existence shortly after Red Hat bought JBoss. As Oracle had also bought BEA Weblogic (IIRC), this was not taken well.
- greedo 3y ago
  OEL is dependent on RHEL for patches, so how can it be "always more current."?
  - chasil 3y ago
    The UEK is more dedicated to following long-term-release kernels. Oracle's re-wrap is known as the "Red Hat Compatible Kernel." v7-rhck-3.10.0-1160.92.1.0.1 v7-uek-5.4.17-2136.320.7.1 v8-rhck-4.18.0-477.13.1 v8-uek-5.15.0-102.110.5 v9-rhck-5.14.0-284.11.1 v9-uek-5.15.0-102.110.5.1 Kernel version 3.10 has always been stock rhel7's version, but the UEK has jumped through v4 to v5. Red Hat made a big deal about io_uring availability in v9, but I am guessing that it is available in v8's UEK. I will say that the Oracle database group's support for v9 is very poor at this point; for some reason, they are holding to v8, and releasing few products for the newer platform.
- ilyt 3y ago
  > The "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" includes full btrfs, extensive device support (that is removed from the stock kernel), is tuned for the eponymous database, and is always more current. There are several scenarios where it is very attractive. I'd never go for btrfs in anything enterprise. But it does annoy me how RHEL moves normal open source software to the separate repos that are available with extra support packages, it just makes managing it annoying
  - chasil 3y ago
    It also annoys me to great extents when Red Hat removes support for SAS raid cards that are perfectly usable. Oracle fixes that.
    - worthless-trash 3y ago
      Removed it midstream or between releases ?
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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znpy 3y ago
When Red Hat didn't yet provide free download and free hobbyist licensing for their SO CentOS is what allowed me to learn the RHEL way and learn enough to pay 560 euro to get RHCSA certified. I can see their problem with Oracle, but Rocky linux is probably bringing them business. If my job wouldn't mandate a specific distro, I would use Rocky Linux where the management doesn't want to pay for support, and RHEL whenever possible.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  I know there move to CentOS Stream cost them my business, Since that announcement 2 years ago I have replaced all Licensed RHEL servers with Ubuntu Servers...
  - StillBored 3y ago
    Which is an odd choice when comparing RH and Canonical. The former has been almost religious about living to the open source ideals, going so far as open sourcing products they purchase, and making sure new products they create have opensource upstreams. I don't think the same can be said of Canonical which seems at every turn to in need of $ so they try desperate ploys to monetize new projects they work on by developing them in house and dropping releases, or trying to lock up markets and charge for features not available in the open source version. So, while they definitely aren't ideal, its hard to point to another company that does more across as much of the opensource ecosystem. Maybe google these days? But one needs only look at some of the google projects governance model to see the difference between RH and Google.
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      >>The former has been almost religious about living to the open source ideals Pre-IBM sure... Post IBM hardly >>its hard to point to another company that does more across as much of the opensource ecosystem. Maybe google these days? Really, you think google is a good example of Open Source... wow how far we have come.. Google worse than Microsoft when it comes to the EEE model You are correct Canonical is not ideal, but I find them to be more ethical and upfront than Post-IBM RedHat and for sure google
krylon 3y ago
I thought that was well known, it's not like they were secretive about it, in fact they openly advertised it. Their sales pitch, I think was, that many customers ran Oracle software on RHEL, and this way they would have a single provider of support for both the OS and the software running on it. Given Oracle's rather well-earned reputation, that does not sound like an attractive proposal to me, but there's a chance orgs that are on the hook for anything Oracle already might not share that assessment. IIRC, Oracle's move to eat part of Red Hat's lunch was considered the reason Red Hat stopped making the kernel source available in the form of mainline tree + patches, thus making it less convenient for Oracle's staff to provide support at the same level of expertise as Red Hat, but I don't think anyone working at Red Hat has commented on this on the record.
- raincom 3y ago
  When Oracle started offering support for the oracle db on RHEL, whenever there are performance issues and other issues, Oracle used to blame RHEL. So oracle DBAs are trained to go back Redhat for issues. Usually, these support issues bounce back and forth: Oracle blames Redhat, which says it’s an oracle issue. In the mean time, oracle support folks just buy sweet time. Then came Oracle enterprise linux: oracle supporting the whole stack, OS and databases. Which enterprise customer doesn’t want that. Not only that, many corporate customers of RHEL switched to Oracle Linux, as oracle charges way less for each installation.
- worthless-trash 3y ago
  As an employee, I dont think anyone can. I'd make speculation here, but we all know how that ends up being twisted into misunderstanidng. The current kernel source is available on gitlab though (centos-streams) because now centos streams is upstream of rhel kernel.
ddaae2ggg444569 3y ago
Yeah I really think people are way out over their skis if they think that Red Hat/IBM doesn't have at least a somewhat justifiable case to make here. You can still disagree, but at least you need to admit that you can understand why they would be pissed about something like Rocky. They do offer downloads of RHEL for free (or is that gone too?) for anybody not using it commercially, this isn't some poor student cloning RHEL because they couldn't afford it or anything like that.
- deleted 3y ago
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totallywrong 3y ago
IIRC they even have a tool to "convert" a RHEL system into Oracle. And it's not just RHEL, they shamelessly distribute AWX (upstream for Ansible Tower, a product 100% made by RH from scratch) under a different name without contributing anything back. Oracle is truly a parasite of the open source ecosystem. The only outcome I see for these "business models" at Oracle, Rocky, Alma, etc. is increasingly less availability of software for us regular users. Say what you might about RH but you can't argue that they put out massive amounts of open source code out there for all to use. Or they did anyway.
- jmainguy 3y ago
  Redhat bought ansible tower, they did not write it from scratch.
  - totallywrong 3y ago
    Thanks, I stand corrected. But to my point, they bought something and open sourced it, only to have it used against them.
phpisthebest 3y ago
This is only true it RHEL was self contained OS Project with no Upstream sources itself... That is not the case, RHEL is not possible with out the wider ecosystem, and to say Rocky Linux is a "dirtbag" for repacking RHEL, would be like saying RedHat is a "dirtbag" for packaging any number of free software projects they consume into their product. It completely antithetical the free software movement for which Linux is Licensed However it is perfectly on brand of the "Open Source" corporatist movement that seems to be supplanting free software
- pietro72ohboy 3y ago
  > However it is perfectly on brand of the "Open Source" corporatist movement that seems to be supplanting free software This has been happening on HN too. The vilification of GPL and AGPL as ”not free in the truest sense of the word”, the usage of RMS and his personal image to label the free software movement outdated/fanatical/toxic is a testament to how corporate rebranding efforts have succeeded in replacing free software with open-source — software that is conveniently licensed so that corporations can bake it into their product without a single concern for the longevity or well-being of the developer or the software itself.
  - reidrac 3y ago
    I think you mean anti-copyleft. Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same, despite the philosophical differences. The issue here is against the copyleft (GPL and AGPL).
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      >>Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same, No ... no they are not >>despite the philosophical differences. And those differences are HUGE and make them incompatible
      - reidrac 3y ago
        Well, go and check: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html Then see how many of those are OSI approved licences (thus open source).
Aaron2222 3y ago
Regardless of your views of cloning a commercial Linux distro like that, alling Rocky Linux and Alma Linux 'dirtbags' misses the point of the entire reason they exist in the first place, RedHat discontinuing CentOS (and drastically shortening the support window on CentOS 8).
- freedomben 3y ago
  who called them dirtbags? I've seen this mentioned a few times but I haven't seen any source for it
  - 0x0000000 3y ago
    It's in one of the comments on the linked article, and was reposted in the top comment in the thread in which you're replying. It seems to be sourced originally from here: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3697733/chatgpt-s-parasitic-machine.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/3697733/chatgpt-s-parasiti...
- reidrac 3y ago
  Besides it isn't true they don't contribute. As you say, they are filling the gap left by CentOS, and that helps sustaining an ecosystem that benefits RHEL.
JohnFen 3y ago
> which is why one person in the Linux space called them the “dirtbags” of open source. That's funny, because that's how I tend to feel about Red Hat.
xyst 3y ago
Yup. One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison. I avoid anything Oracle. Their licensing model is hell. Their products are usually terrible compared to competition. Cloud products are subpar. Products tend to require a support contract since it’s proprietary dogshit. Some tidbits of Oracle and Larry Ellison (founder, CEO): - in the early days of Oracle DB, it was benchmarked and compared against other RDBMS and Oracle DB was found to have poor performance. Ellison and Oracle tried to get the professor fired and introduced language into their EULA preventing benchmarking [1,2] - then there is the growing list of controversies documented on Wikipedia [3] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150313140846/https://starcounter.com/the-story-of-professor-dewitt/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150313140846/https://starcount... (2015, archive.org) [2] https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation
- disordinary 3y ago
  Oracle is now in the keep customers locked in business rather than the get new customers business.
- brightball 3y ago
  SQL Server did something similar too. There’s a famous Reddit post that goes deep comparing it to PostgreSQL but can’t name it for takedown reasons.
  - dizhn 3y ago
    Takedown reasons?
    - runjake 3y ago
      Takedown == getting issued a scary cease-and-desist warning letter by high-paid lawyers.
      - sieabahlpark 3y ago
yetanotherloss 3y ago
I have no raw feelings towards organizations trying to keep themselves in business, but I'd be happier if it was literally anyone besides Oracle.
m463 3y ago
Isn't redhat profiting from all the software upstream to themselves? I'm reminded of the definition of a linux distribution: a package manager and a source repository. (that said, unbreakable linux, yeah)
- zaphar 3y ago
  Redhat contributes back to upstream in a lot of cases. I don't know if Rocky and co do or not but Redhat definitely does.
  - m463 3y ago
    I'm not denying that important point. But imagine being a contributor to a package which redhat incorporates and using it via centos/rocky.
  - fredski42 3y ago
    RedHat actually helps Rocky and co by basing RHEL on Centos Stream. Rocky and co can now file bugs on Centos Stream and have it fixed faster for their distribution. Before they could not do that. They had to report further upstream and had to wait until that landed in RHEL. Also RedHat is helped by these fixes. Only winners here.
passterby 3y ago
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Phrodo_00 3y ago
> Most recently in Linux, for example, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux both promise “bug for bug compatibility” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while contributing nothing toward Red Hat’s success. CentOS was huge towards equipping smaller IT departments, startups and student on the RHEL ways, allowing them to jump on "real RH" when they got bigger. Alma Linux is the same. Rocky Linux does sell support, but even then it's still advertising RHEL.
- jzb 3y ago
  CentOS was also huge towards allowing a lot of larger companies to just run CentOS in production instead of RHEL and avoid paying anything at all. However you may feel about Red Hat's actions, I'd trust that folks at Red Hat have done enough legwork to figure out that "CentOS as a loss leader for RHEL" wasn't working out the way people like to imagine it would. (Note: I am a former Red Hat employee, but I do not have and haven't had specific access to any data estimating what CentOS Linux was expected to add to or subtract from the bottom line. But I feel pretty sure that many deals won and lost have been examined, many customers spoken to, and numbers crunched to inform their actions.)
  - Phrodo_00 3y ago
    And I'm not sure I'd agree with their analysis, but they're clearly free to make the decision. If larger companies can run CentOS in production, they also can run Debian or any other distro without a support contract. They could even use a competing loss leader distro like OpenSuse Leap.
    - jzb 3y ago
      Yes, they could. But they (often) don't. The certification / training ecosystem that exists around RHEL has a lot value, even if a lot of folks like to handwave it away. The engineering that goes into RHEL and the very predictable lifecycle has a lot of value, too. I'm not going to say that Debian or SUSE aren't equally good, engineering-wise, but it seems like a lot of large companies have chosen RHEL clones over Debian. (Not all! I am sure plenty of companies do as you suggest with Debian.) Don't get me wrong - I think it'd be great if Debian became the standard, assuming that meant that companies helped develop Debian and poured resources into it as a commons. That'd be much better than depending on Red Hat to do all the work and then not paying for it.
deleted 3y ago
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PeterZaitsev 3y ago
Is not this something what Open Source exactly suppose to allow you to do ? I have no love for Oracle but I would imagine one of the reasons Oracle embraced RedHat Enterprise Linux early on was the fact they could fork it if it was in their interest - this was tremendous value for RedHat for a time and helped its establishment as leading Linux for Enterprise. Remember also what RedHat itself "stands on the shoulders of the giants" - there are a lot of packages which RedHat includes. Years ago when I worked at MySQL AB RedHat used to include MySQL packages, say they are covered by their "subscription" but have no revenue share with MySQL AB (as creators) Note I'm not complaining I'm saying this is exactly how things upposed to work - MySQL got great value from being Open Source and allowing Linux distributions to include it (and make money on it) freely.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  MySQL got great value Mindshare? Market share? Support contracts?
wkat4242 3y ago
I don't really agree. RHEL is nothing special. Important for Enterprise and thus free availability is handy for people having an interest in becoming a sysadmin to learn it. Dogfooding work stuff is the only reason I'd consider using it or its derivatives at home. But I don't care even about that and my stuff all runs BSD :P But other distros are much better IMO. There's good reasons that a totally free distro like Debian is forked so much. It's just a really solid base. Software doesn't need to have a business model to be great. I'd be a lot sadder to see Debian disappear than RHEL and its derivatives.
- bonzini 3y ago
  There is no single criterion by which you can decide which distro is better. All I know is anecdotes. RHEL 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 came out around the same time. Around May, upstream QEMU started getting bug reports from Canonical developers that you couldn't reset a virtual machine that had been created in 12.04 and migrated to 14.04 due to some firmware incompatibility. In RHEL we had started testing cross-version migration 6 months in advance.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bubblethink 3y ago
>The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move They are not. Maybe this is how the YC/VC crowd sees everything. Dollar went in, two dollars come out. Two points: 1) RHEL is not an island. It uses (and contributes) upstream. 2) They undercut the spirit, if not the letter, of GPL by forbidding customers from releasing the sources. Don't want derivatives ? Don't use copyleft free software. Can't have your cake and use it too.
awill 3y ago
There's a huge difference between Rocky/Alma, and Oracle. Oracle actually tries to steal RHEL business. They offer support, which I think is ludicrous when they don't even build the product. Alma/Rocky aren't to my knowledge offering any support (and if they plan to, they shouldn't). Are customers cross-shopping RHEL with Alma? You either want support, and buy RHEL, or you don't, and you use something else (Alma/Rocky, or Debian/Ubuntu etc..)
- progmetaldev 3y ago
  Rocky does offer support, but your comment about Oracle still stands. I believe Rocky works with Red Hat.
  - awill 3y ago
    Rocky can offer support on helping you install it. But they can't offer real support. They can't fix bugs or do any real work on RHEL beyond requesting that Red Hat accept a fix. If Red Hat declines, Rocky can't even ship their own fix.
    - progmetaldev 3y ago
      Doesn't Rocky offer their own repositories, where if they had an upstream fix that was important enough, they could just include it in their own repositories?
      - yrro 3y ago
        They can't do so while claiming to be bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL.
Shorel 3y ago
The complementary relationship is also true. RHEL became the enterprise Linux distribution because it was the one used and supported by Oracle, back then, when many companies still used Oracle as their database. I am talking about 15 years ago. Even nowadays at work, we all use Ubuntu in our workstations, but the servers run CentOS (another repackaging of RH). Without the support of Oracle, we all would be using SUSE in our servers, instead of a Red Hat based distro.
- ilyt 3y ago
  We just use Debian for everything (sooo much less issues than with RHEL or Ubuntu ), but the RHEL bias is high in enterprise clients we support.
rrauenza 3y ago
Prusa has made a similar statement regarding their open source 3D printers. A lot of cheap knock offs leveraging their work … https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-printing-in-2023_76659/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-prin...
birdyrooster 3y ago
It has ocfs2 working out of the box which is a pretty good clustered file system.

yrro 3y ago

To be fair to Oracle I believe they have their own "unbreakable" kernel packages, though they do ship Red Hat's kernel as well.

rconti 3y ago

Paid for Oracle Linux, can confirm.

chasil 3y ago

It has a few add-ons. The "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" includes full btrfs, extensive device support (that is removed from the stock kernel), is tuned for the eponymous database, and is always more current. There are several scenarios where it is very attractive. Oracle bought K-Splice several years ago, which was the first rebootless patch solution for Linux. It's only available with a premium license; Kernelcare is a lot cheaper. Supported Oracle Linux versions are also available for WSL1 inside of Windows. C:\>wsl.exe -l -o The following is a list of valid distributions that can be installed. The default distribution is denoted by '*'. Install using 'wsl --install -d <Distro>'. NAME FRIENDLY NAME Ubuntu Ubuntu Debian Debian GNU/Linux kali-linux Kali Linux Rolling Ubuntu-18.04 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Ubuntu-20.04 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Ubuntu-22.04 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS OracleLinux_7_9 Oracle Linux 7.9 OracleLinux_8_7 Oracle Linux 8.7 OracleLinux_9_1 Oracle Linux 9.1 SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-Server-15-SP4 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4 openSUSE-Leap-15.4 openSUSE Leap 15.4 openSUSE-Tumbleweed openSUSE Tumbleweed Oracle Linux came into existence shortly after Red Hat bought JBoss. As Oracle had also bought BEA Weblogic (IIRC), this was not taken well.

greedo 3y ago
OEL is dependent on RHEL for patches, so how can it be "always more current."?
- chasil 3y ago
  The UEK is more dedicated to following long-term-release kernels. Oracle's re-wrap is known as the "Red Hat Compatible Kernel." v7-rhck-3.10.0-1160.92.1.0.1 v7-uek-5.4.17-2136.320.7.1 v8-rhck-4.18.0-477.13.1 v8-uek-5.15.0-102.110.5 v9-rhck-5.14.0-284.11.1 v9-uek-5.15.0-102.110.5.1 Kernel version 3.10 has always been stock rhel7's version, but the UEK has jumped through v4 to v5. Red Hat made a big deal about io_uring availability in v9, but I am guessing that it is available in v8's UEK. I will say that the Oracle database group's support for v9 is very poor at this point; for some reason, they are holding to v8, and releasing few products for the newer platform.
ilyt 3y ago
> The "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" includes full btrfs, extensive device support (that is removed from the stock kernel), is tuned for the eponymous database, and is always more current. There are several scenarios where it is very attractive. I'd never go for btrfs in anything enterprise. But it does annoy me how RHEL moves normal open source software to the separate repos that are available with extra support packages, it just makes managing it annoying
- chasil 3y ago
  It also annoys me to great extents when Red Hat removes support for SAS raid cards that are perfectly usable. Oracle fixes that.
  - worthless-trash 3y ago
    Removed it midstream or between releases ?
    - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

znpy 3y ago

When Red Hat didn't yet provide free download and free hobbyist licensing for their SO CentOS is what allowed me to learn the RHEL way and learn enough to pay 560 euro to get RHCSA certified. I can see their problem with Oracle, but Rocky linux is probably bringing them business. If my job wouldn't mandate a specific distro, I would use Rocky Linux where the management doesn't want to pay for support, and RHEL whenever possible.

phpisthebest 3y ago
I know there move to CentOS Stream cost them my business, Since that announcement 2 years ago I have replaced all Licensed RHEL servers with Ubuntu Servers...
- StillBored 3y ago
  Which is an odd choice when comparing RH and Canonical. The former has been almost religious about living to the open source ideals, going so far as open sourcing products they purchase, and making sure new products they create have opensource upstreams. I don't think the same can be said of Canonical which seems at every turn to in need of $ so they try desperate ploys to monetize new projects they work on by developing them in house and dropping releases, or trying to lock up markets and charge for features not available in the open source version. So, while they definitely aren't ideal, its hard to point to another company that does more across as much of the opensource ecosystem. Maybe google these days? But one needs only look at some of the google projects governance model to see the difference between RH and Google.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    >>The former has been almost religious about living to the open source ideals Pre-IBM sure... Post IBM hardly >>its hard to point to another company that does more across as much of the opensource ecosystem. Maybe google these days? Really, you think google is a good example of Open Source... wow how far we have come.. Google worse than Microsoft when it comes to the EEE model You are correct Canonical is not ideal, but I find them to be more ethical and upfront than Post-IBM RedHat and for sure google

krylon 3y ago

I thought that was well known, it's not like they were secretive about it, in fact they openly advertised it. Their sales pitch, I think was, that many customers ran Oracle software on RHEL, and this way they would have a single provider of support for both the OS and the software running on it. Given Oracle's rather well-earned reputation, that does not sound like an attractive proposal to me, but there's a chance orgs that are on the hook for anything Oracle already might not share that assessment. IIRC, Oracle's move to eat part of Red Hat's lunch was considered the reason Red Hat stopped making the kernel source available in the form of mainline tree + patches, thus making it less convenient for Oracle's staff to provide support at the same level of expertise as Red Hat, but I don't think anyone working at Red Hat has commented on this on the record.

raincom 3y ago
When Oracle started offering support for the oracle db on RHEL, whenever there are performance issues and other issues, Oracle used to blame RHEL. So oracle DBAs are trained to go back Redhat for issues. Usually, these support issues bounce back and forth: Oracle blames Redhat, which says it’s an oracle issue. In the mean time, oracle support folks just buy sweet time. Then came Oracle enterprise linux: oracle supporting the whole stack, OS and databases. Which enterprise customer doesn’t want that. Not only that, many corporate customers of RHEL switched to Oracle Linux, as oracle charges way less for each installation.
worthless-trash 3y ago
As an employee, I dont think anyone can. I'd make speculation here, but we all know how that ends up being twisted into misunderstanidng. The current kernel source is available on gitlab though (centos-streams) because now centos streams is upstream of rhel kernel.

ddaae2ggg444569 3y ago

Yeah I really think people are way out over their skis if they think that Red Hat/IBM doesn't have at least a somewhat justifiable case to make here. You can still disagree, but at least you need to admit that you can understand why they would be pissed about something like Rocky. They do offer downloads of RHEL for free (or is that gone too?) for anybody not using it commercially, this isn't some poor student cloning RHEL because they couldn't afford it or anything like that.

deleted 3y ago
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totallywrong 3y ago

IIRC they even have a tool to "convert" a RHEL system into Oracle. And it's not just RHEL, they shamelessly distribute AWX (upstream for Ansible Tower, a product 100% made by RH from scratch) under a different name without contributing anything back. Oracle is truly a parasite of the open source ecosystem. The only outcome I see for these "business models" at Oracle, Rocky, Alma, etc. is increasingly less availability of software for us regular users. Say what you might about RH but you can't argue that they put out massive amounts of open source code out there for all to use. Or they did anyway.

jmainguy 3y ago
Redhat bought ansible tower, they did not write it from scratch.
- totallywrong 3y ago
  Thanks, I stand corrected. But to my point, they bought something and open sourced it, only to have it used against them.

phpisthebest 3y ago

This is only true it RHEL was self contained OS Project with no Upstream sources itself... That is not the case, RHEL is not possible with out the wider ecosystem, and to say Rocky Linux is a "dirtbag" for repacking RHEL, would be like saying RedHat is a "dirtbag" for packaging any number of free software projects they consume into their product. It completely antithetical the free software movement for which Linux is Licensed However it is perfectly on brand of the "Open Source" corporatist movement that seems to be supplanting free software

pietro72ohboy 3y ago
> However it is perfectly on brand of the "Open Source" corporatist movement that seems to be supplanting free software This has been happening on HN too. The vilification of GPL and AGPL as ”not free in the truest sense of the word”, the usage of RMS and his personal image to label the free software movement outdated/fanatical/toxic is a testament to how corporate rebranding efforts have succeeded in replacing free software with open-source — software that is conveniently licensed so that corporations can bake it into their product without a single concern for the longevity or well-being of the developer or the software itself.
- reidrac 3y ago
  I think you mean anti-copyleft. Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same, despite the philosophical differences. The issue here is against the copyleft (GPL and AGPL).
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    >>Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same, No ... no they are not >>despite the philosophical differences. And those differences are HUGE and make them incompatible
    - reidrac 3y ago
      Well, go and check: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html Then see how many of those are OSI approved licences (thus open source).

Aaron2222 3y ago

Regardless of your views of cloning a commercial Linux distro like that, alling Rocky Linux and Alma Linux 'dirtbags' misses the point of the entire reason they exist in the first place, RedHat discontinuing CentOS (and drastically shortening the support window on CentOS 8).

freedomben 3y ago
who called them dirtbags? I've seen this mentioned a few times but I haven't seen any source for it
- 0x0000000 3y ago
  It's in one of the comments on the linked article, and was reposted in the top comment in the thread in which you're replying. It seems to be sourced originally from here: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3697733/chatgpt-s-parasitic-machine.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/3697733/chatgpt-s-parasiti...
reidrac 3y ago
Besides it isn't true they don't contribute. As you say, they are filling the gap left by CentOS, and that helps sustaining an ecosystem that benefits RHEL.

JohnFen 3y ago

> which is why one person in the Linux space called them the “dirtbags” of open source. That's funny, because that's how I tend to feel about Red Hat.

xyst 3y ago

Yup. One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison. I avoid anything Oracle. Their licensing model is hell. Their products are usually terrible compared to competition. Cloud products are subpar. Products tend to require a support contract since it’s proprietary dogshit. Some tidbits of Oracle and Larry Ellison (founder, CEO): - in the early days of Oracle DB, it was benchmarked and compared against other RDBMS and Oracle DB was found to have poor performance. Ellison and Oracle tried to get the professor fired and introduced language into their EULA preventing benchmarking [1,2] - then there is the growing list of controversies documented on Wikipedia [3] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150313140846/https://starcounter.com/the-story-of-professor-dewitt/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150313140846/https://starcount... (2015, archive.org) [2] https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation

disordinary 3y ago
Oracle is now in the keep customers locked in business rather than the get new customers business.
brightball 3y ago
SQL Server did something similar too. There’s a famous Reddit post that goes deep comparing it to PostgreSQL but can’t name it for takedown reasons.
- dizhn 3y ago
  Takedown reasons?
  - runjake 3y ago
    Takedown == getting issued a scary cease-and-desist warning letter by high-paid lawyers.
    - sieabahlpark 3y ago

yetanotherloss 3y ago

I have no raw feelings towards organizations trying to keep themselves in business, but I'd be happier if it was literally anyone besides Oracle.

m463 3y ago

Isn't redhat profiting from all the software upstream to themselves? I'm reminded of the definition of a linux distribution: a package manager and a source repository. (that said, unbreakable linux, yeah)

zaphar 3y ago
Redhat contributes back to upstream in a lot of cases. I don't know if Rocky and co do or not but Redhat definitely does.
- m463 3y ago
  I'm not denying that important point. But imagine being a contributor to a package which redhat incorporates and using it via centos/rocky.
- fredski42 3y ago
  RedHat actually helps Rocky and co by basing RHEL on Centos Stream. Rocky and co can now file bugs on Centos Stream and have it fixed faster for their distribution. Before they could not do that. They had to report further upstream and had to wait until that landed in RHEL. Also RedHat is helped by these fixes. Only winners here.

passterby 3y ago

[dead]

Phrodo_00 3y ago

> Most recently in Linux, for example, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux both promise “bug for bug compatibility” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while contributing nothing toward Red Hat’s success. CentOS was huge towards equipping smaller IT departments, startups and student on the RHEL ways, allowing them to jump on "real RH" when they got bigger. Alma Linux is the same. Rocky Linux does sell support, but even then it's still advertising RHEL.

jzb 3y ago
CentOS was also huge towards allowing a lot of larger companies to just run CentOS in production instead of RHEL and avoid paying anything at all. However you may feel about Red Hat's actions, I'd trust that folks at Red Hat have done enough legwork to figure out that "CentOS as a loss leader for RHEL" wasn't working out the way people like to imagine it would. (Note: I am a former Red Hat employee, but I do not have and haven't had specific access to any data estimating what CentOS Linux was expected to add to or subtract from the bottom line. But I feel pretty sure that many deals won and lost have been examined, many customers spoken to, and numbers crunched to inform their actions.)
- Phrodo_00 3y ago
  And I'm not sure I'd agree with their analysis, but they're clearly free to make the decision. If larger companies can run CentOS in production, they also can run Debian or any other distro without a support contract. They could even use a competing loss leader distro like OpenSuse Leap.
  - jzb 3y ago
    Yes, they could. But they (often) don't. The certification / training ecosystem that exists around RHEL has a lot value, even if a lot of folks like to handwave it away. The engineering that goes into RHEL and the very predictable lifecycle has a lot of value, too. I'm not going to say that Debian or SUSE aren't equally good, engineering-wise, but it seems like a lot of large companies have chosen RHEL clones over Debian. (Not all! I am sure plenty of companies do as you suggest with Debian.) Don't get me wrong - I think it'd be great if Debian became the standard, assuming that meant that companies helped develop Debian and poured resources into it as a commons. That'd be much better than depending on Red Hat to do all the work and then not paying for it.

deleted 3y ago

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PeterZaitsev 3y ago

Is not this something what Open Source exactly suppose to allow you to do ? I have no love for Oracle but I would imagine one of the reasons Oracle embraced RedHat Enterprise Linux early on was the fact they could fork it if it was in their interest - this was tremendous value for RedHat for a time and helped its establishment as leading Linux for Enterprise. Remember also what RedHat itself "stands on the shoulders of the giants" - there are a lot of packages which RedHat includes. Years ago when I worked at MySQL AB RedHat used to include MySQL packages, say they are covered by their "subscription" but have no revenue share with MySQL AB (as creators) Note I'm not complaining I'm saying this is exactly how things upposed to work - MySQL got great value from being Open Source and allowing Linux distributions to include it (and make money on it) freely.

throwaway2037 3y ago
MySQL got great value Mindshare? Market share? Support contracts?

wkat4242 3y ago

I don't really agree. RHEL is nothing special. Important for Enterprise and thus free availability is handy for people having an interest in becoming a sysadmin to learn it. Dogfooding work stuff is the only reason I'd consider using it or its derivatives at home. But I don't care even about that and my stuff all runs BSD :P But other distros are much better IMO. There's good reasons that a totally free distro like Debian is forked so much. It's just a really solid base. Software doesn't need to have a business model to be great. I'd be a lot sadder to see Debian disappear than RHEL and its derivatives.

bonzini 3y ago
There is no single criterion by which you can decide which distro is better. All I know is anecdotes. RHEL 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 came out around the same time. Around May, upstream QEMU started getting bug reports from Canonical developers that you couldn't reset a virtual machine that had been created in 12.04 and migrated to 14.04 due to some firmware incompatibility. In RHEL we had started testing cross-version migration 6 months in advance.
deleted 3y ago
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bubblethink 3y ago

>The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move They are not. Maybe this is how the YC/VC crowd sees everything. Dollar went in, two dollars come out. Two points: 1) RHEL is not an island. It uses (and contributes) upstream. 2) They undercut the spirit, if not the letter, of GPL by forbidding customers from releasing the sources. Don't want derivatives ? Don't use copyleft free software. Can't have your cake and use it too.

awill 3y ago

There's a huge difference between Rocky/Alma, and Oracle. Oracle actually tries to steal RHEL business. They offer support, which I think is ludicrous when they don't even build the product. Alma/Rocky aren't to my knowledge offering any support (and if they plan to, they shouldn't). Are customers cross-shopping RHEL with Alma? You either want support, and buy RHEL, or you don't, and you use something else (Alma/Rocky, or Debian/Ubuntu etc..)

progmetaldev 3y ago
Rocky does offer support, but your comment about Oracle still stands. I believe Rocky works with Red Hat.
- awill 3y ago
  Rocky can offer support on helping you install it. But they can't offer real support. They can't fix bugs or do any real work on RHEL beyond requesting that Red Hat accept a fix. If Red Hat declines, Rocky can't even ship their own fix.
  - progmetaldev 3y ago
    Doesn't Rocky offer their own repositories, where if they had an upstream fix that was important enough, they could just include it in their own repositories?
    - yrro 3y ago
      They can't do so while claiming to be bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL.

Shorel 3y ago

The complementary relationship is also true. RHEL became the enterprise Linux distribution because it was the one used and supported by Oracle, back then, when many companies still used Oracle as their database. I am talking about 15 years ago. Even nowadays at work, we all use Ubuntu in our workstations, but the servers run CentOS (another repackaging of RH). Without the support of Oracle, we all would be using SUSE in our servers, instead of a Red Hat based distro.

ilyt 3y ago
We just use Debian for everything (sooo much less issues than with RHEL or Ubuntu ), but the RHEL bias is high in enterprise clients we support.

rrauenza 3y ago

Prusa has made a similar statement regarding their open source 3D printers. A lot of cheap knock offs leveraging their work … https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-printing-in-2023_76659/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-prin...

birdyrooster 3y ago

It has ocfs2 working out of the box which is a pretty good clustered file system.