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No one expects that. Use it or not. But don't demand the final product for free.

vetinari 3y ago
Who demands final product for free? The final product includes support; nobody is asking for that. There is no expectation for dedicated engineer time or solving their support cases. Nor is there any expectation of certifications or any other value-adds that RH provides. Afaik the cloners demand the access to sources and patches to what is being shipped, which is their right. They are GPL, and not Redhat's for most part.
- totallywrong 3y ago
  > Who demands final product for free? Just about everyone. The final product is RHEL in this context. > which is their right No, as per the GPL they only have to provide sources to paying customers.
  - vetinari 3y ago
    > No, as per the GPL they only have to provide sources to paying customers. If they were providing binaries only to paying customers, that would be right. But they aren't. Anyone, who spins up RHEL VM in the cloud, uses UBI image or downloads it from the developer account has the same right. In all cases, RH cannot prevent anyone, who obtained the sources, from distributing them further; not even threatening with contract termination. That would be "further restrictions", which GPL explicitly forbids.
- jzb 3y ago
  "There is no expectation for dedicated engineer time or solving their support cases" Sorry, but yes there is. The final product includes the outcome of all that. Especially the minor and z-stream releases are the culmination of all the work of customers reporting bugs and Red Hat applying that dedicated engineer time and solved support cases to the next release. There are many companies (including the one I work for) who treat clones as equivalent to RHEL. So, yes, it effectively conveys many of the certifications and system requirements to receive support from other companies. The clones have been promising "bug-for-bug" compatibility for a reason, and that reason is (in part) to ride the certification coat-tails. If these things were not true, there'd be none of this drama. Rocky and Alma could easily base Linux distros off Stream and do additional testing and add or modify features to be more interesting. The code is there. The product is not.
  - vetinari 3y ago
    > are the culmination of all the work of customers reporting bug Aren't these supposed to go into Stream? > So, yes, it effectively conveys many of the certifications and system requirements to receive support from other companies. The clones have been promising "bug-for-bug" compatibility for a reason, and that reason is (in part) to ride the certification coat-tails. Yet, it is not the same as certifications. Certifications apply only to the original RHEL; clones are in the gray zone: it should work, but if there are problems and you need to use them, you better have it on RHEL. > If these things were not true, there'd be none of this drama. The drama is there, because RH/IBM thought, they could squeeze those customers, that use both CentOS and RHEL (usually CentOS for dev or staging and RHEL for production); they wanted it all. I can understand if those companies file support cases that originated in CentOS and RH things, that they abuse their support contract. That's not OK. But RH has it's own skeletons in closet, too. The clones themselves are a collateral damage there.

Who demands final product for free? The final product includes support; nobody is asking for that. There is no expectation for dedicated engineer time or solving their support cases. Nor is there any expectation of certifications or any other value-adds that RH provides. Afaik the cloners demand the access to sources and patches to what is being shipped, which is their right. They are GPL, and not Redhat's for most part.

totallywrong 3y ago
> Who demands final product for free? Just about everyone. The final product is RHEL in this context. > which is their right No, as per the GPL they only have to provide sources to paying customers.
- vetinari 3y ago
  > No, as per the GPL they only have to provide sources to paying customers. If they were providing binaries only to paying customers, that would be right. But they aren't. Anyone, who spins up RHEL VM in the cloud, uses UBI image or downloads it from the developer account has the same right. In all cases, RH cannot prevent anyone, who obtained the sources, from distributing them further; not even threatening with contract termination. That would be "further restrictions", which GPL explicitly forbids.
jzb 3y ago
"There is no expectation for dedicated engineer time or solving their support cases" Sorry, but yes there is. The final product includes the outcome of all that. Especially the minor and z-stream releases are the culmination of all the work of customers reporting bugs and Red Hat applying that dedicated engineer time and solved support cases to the next release. There are many companies (including the one I work for) who treat clones as equivalent to RHEL. So, yes, it effectively conveys many of the certifications and system requirements to receive support from other companies. The clones have been promising "bug-for-bug" compatibility for a reason, and that reason is (in part) to ride the certification coat-tails. If these things were not true, there'd be none of this drama. Rocky and Alma could easily base Linux distros off Stream and do additional testing and add or modify features to be more interesting. The code is there. The product is not.
- vetinari 3y ago
  > are the culmination of all the work of customers reporting bug Aren't these supposed to go into Stream? > So, yes, it effectively conveys many of the certifications and system requirements to receive support from other companies. The clones have been promising "bug-for-bug" compatibility for a reason, and that reason is (in part) to ride the certification coat-tails. Yet, it is not the same as certifications. Certifications apply only to the original RHEL; clones are in the gray zone: it should work, but if there are problems and you need to use them, you better have it on RHEL. > If these things were not true, there'd be none of this drama. The drama is there, because RH/IBM thought, they could squeeze those customers, that use both CentOS and RHEL (usually CentOS for dev or staging and RHEL for production); they wanted it all. I can understand if those companies file support cases that originated in CentOS and RH things, that they abuse their support contract. That's not OK. But RH has it's own skeletons in closet, too. The clones themselves are a collateral damage there.