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Why should Red Hat provide its main product (stability, compatibility, support) for free? Why are enterprise users so entitled? Why should Red Hat care about th

• jillesvangurp 3y ago
  While I agree with that partially, unfortunately I don't agree that it's a wise move for IBM. There is indeed a weird dynamic where IBM is basically funding third party companies to make a profit reselling what is advertised as a bug for bug compatible version of their own software while struggling to sell the original. So, I can see the logic of IBM wanting to end that. Of course the flip side is that that might prompt those third party companies to cut loose and join forces on creating a proper alternative that is effectively an independent fork that replaces Red Hat as an upstream. Amazon would be well familiar with that playbook of course. And they already have Amazon Linux as their in house preferred Red Hat derivative. And I seriously doubt Amazon cares a lot about bug for bug compatibility. In fact the whole point for them is probably not having most of those bugs to begin with. They just want a stable upstream that they can pull changes from. That's what makes this such a dumb move. IBM/Red Hat might get a few users to jump ship to the paid Red Hat. But most simply won't. And the further which ever fork emerges as the alternative diverges the less likely it becomes that users will still want to consider switching. Users want a stable upstream but it's not a given that IBM is the ideal steward of that upstream. And with Amazon, Oracle, Rocky, Alma, etc. all needing the same thing, the logical alternative for them would be to unite and form a foundation that takes that role.