3 ms·

At any point in building your entire business' infrastructure so it was dependent on RHEL, or more likely an ersatz clone, did you ever consider you might have

At any point in building your entire business' infrastructure so it was dependent on RHEL, or more likely an ersatz clone, did you ever consider you might have to buy a license at some point? It's like building a diet exclusively based on eating the free samples at Costco then going "oh those evil bastards, I'll starve to death" when they take them away. Maybe use platform-agnostic architecture next time or don't build your house of cards on proprietary-adjacent distros.

mort96 3y ago
Red Hat never indicated that they had any trouble with CentOS, rather the opposite; their disposition towards it has always been very positive until recently. It would have been like using Ubuntu Server and worrying that Canonical might kill it off and force you to buy Ubuntu Pro; not completely out of the question, but also not something you would expect.
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  That's because CentOS didn't meaningfully cut into their major business which is support. Anyone running CentOS outside of a lab setting understood they were on the hook for their own support. Most CentOS users were never going to be paying RHEL customers. You can't lose what you didn't have to begin with. Along came Oracle which is taking big customers and literal bags of money away from RH's core business by reselling a warmed over version of their own product at a lower cost.
  - mort96 3y ago
    Well apparently CentOS somehow became a big enough problem for Red Hat for them to kill it off...
adr1an 3y ago
Nice example, but to be fair your analogy is flawed since there's no consideration on the GNU Public License, which is at the center of this conflict. Those free food samples were part of the 'contract' Costco made with the food producers... ;)
- pjmlp 3y ago
  The licence is being followed to the letter.
  - sudosysgen 3y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. The GPL does not allow any restriction on the redistribution of sources. Is retaliation in this manner a restriction? It is to a layman, lawyers are not in consensus. The Software Freedom Conservancy has warned Red Hat they believe this is not following the letter of the law, for example.
  - Qem 3y ago
    There's some controversy on that: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis...
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      "Now, to be clear, the GPL agreements did not obligate Red Hat to make its CCS publicly available to everyone. This is a common misconception about GPL's requirements"
      - Qem 3y ago
        On further reading: "Due to this ongoing bad behavior by IBM's Red Hat, the situation has become increasingly complex and difficult to face. No third party can effectively monitor RHEL compliance with the GPL agreements, since customers live in fear of losing their much-needed service contracts. Red Hat's legal department has systematically refused SFC's requests in recent years to set up some form of monitoring by SFC. (For example, we asked to review the training materials and documents that RHEL salespeople are given to convince customers to buy RHEL, and Red Hat has not been willing to share these materials with us.) Nevertheless, since SFC serves as the global watchdog for GPL compliance, we welcome reports of RHEL-related violations." TL;DR: To be sure they were complying, marketing department is as important as the legal one, and they were fearful of people taking a good look there.
adr1an 3y ago
(deleted)

mort96 3y ago

Red Hat never indicated that they had any trouble with CentOS, rather the opposite; their disposition towards it has always been very positive until recently. It would have been like using Ubuntu Server and worrying that Canonical might kill it off and force you to buy Ubuntu Pro; not completely out of the question, but also not something you would expect.

housemusicfan 3y ago
That's because CentOS didn't meaningfully cut into their major business which is support. Anyone running CentOS outside of a lab setting understood they were on the hook for their own support. Most CentOS users were never going to be paying RHEL customers. You can't lose what you didn't have to begin with. Along came Oracle which is taking big customers and literal bags of money away from RH's core business by reselling a warmed over version of their own product at a lower cost.
- mort96 3y ago
  Well apparently CentOS somehow became a big enough problem for Red Hat for them to kill it off...

adr1an 3y ago

Nice example, but to be fair your analogy is flawed since there's no consideration on the GNU Public License, which is at the center of this conflict. Those free food samples were part of the 'contract' Costco made with the food producers... ;)

pjmlp 3y ago
The licence is being followed to the letter.
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. The GPL does not allow any restriction on the redistribution of sources. Is retaliation in this manner a restriction? It is to a layman, lawyers are not in consensus. The Software Freedom Conservancy has warned Red Hat they believe this is not following the letter of the law, for example.
- Qem 3y ago
  There's some controversy on that: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis...
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    "Now, to be clear, the GPL agreements did not obligate Red Hat to make its CCS publicly available to everyone. This is a common misconception about GPL's requirements"
    - Qem 3y ago
      On further reading: "Due to this ongoing bad behavior by IBM's Red Hat, the situation has become increasingly complex and difficult to face. No third party can effectively monitor RHEL compliance with the GPL agreements, since customers live in fear of losing their much-needed service contracts. Red Hat's legal department has systematically refused SFC's requests in recent years to set up some form of monitoring by SFC. (For example, we asked to review the training materials and documents that RHEL salespeople are given to convince customers to buy RHEL, and Red Hat has not been willing to share these materials with us.) Nevertheless, since SFC serves as the global watchdog for GPL compliance, we welcome reports of RHEL-related violations." TL;DR: To be sure they were complying, marketing department is as important as the legal one, and they were fearful of people taking a good look there.

adr1an 3y ago

(deleted)