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Red Hat probably contributes to Open Source and Linux more than any other company around. Are they perfect? Of course not, and it's fair and good to discuss and criticise them when warranted. But overall they seem to contribute positively much more than negatively.
How are they "doing its damnedest to consolidate as much power for themselves within the Linux ecosystem." exactly ?
Remember that in 2023 RedHat restricted access to the source code of RHEL packages, which had a big impact to lots of server distros. This article explains really well why that's problematic:
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/
Not really
It isn't a black and white thing. Redhat simply exists like anything else. I don't like everything they do but they also fund a ton of research and development. If Fedora ever becomes problematic people will just move. Ubuntu desktop used to be good but after it turned to shit many people moved.
Yeah but its pretty easy to avoid them. They survive on government contracts not community support. There's lots of better alternatives than Fedora.
IBM sucks. They have bought up a bunch of small data centers and made them worse.
I'm still pissed about CentOS as well. Long live Rocky.
Alma is actually a real community distro. They deserve so much more support than Rocky does.
TIL; though I moved my servers to Debian ... having the ability to sanely upgrade without a reinstall is a major plus.
I'm pretty sure Alma had a way to upgrade major releases. I know RHEL has Leapp, but it is always recommended to do a greenfield reinstall. Although with image mode and ostree that is changing.
@Dark_Arc @LeFantome I've had mixed luck with debian in this regard. Bullseye to Bookworm was a smooth upgrade but some of the others have not gone so well.
Fuck Rocky. They are a leech on open source. They break user agreements to get at Red Hat source and don't contribute upstream. Use Alma, they actually work with the community and contribute upstream.
Ok, but why is there even an agreement required to access to source to something, uh, open source?
The GPL says you can get the source to software that people distribute to you. Red Hat does not distribute to Rocky.
Seems like they use that to circumvent other parts of the gpl, in spirit and possibly in the letter of the law. Others have more and better things to say about it than I:
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/dear-red-hat-are-you-dumb
Because CIQ, the company that bankrolls Rocky, was poaching Red Hat customers. They were hiring Red Hat sales people, then using their contacts to swoop in and drastically undercut Red Hat because they don't do any engineering. It is an effort to stop leeches like CIQ/Rocky.
I don't see the problem with that. Red Hat is bankrolled by IBM. I don't have any qualms about them facing competition, even underhanded competition which I don't think this is. Contributing to open source doesn't and shouldn't guarantee financial compensation, customers, whatever.
So, you're okay with one company taking another company's work, contributing nothing to it themselves, then hiring company A's employees, and finally taking company A's customers? Not even Oracle was slimy enough to do that.
IBM does not bank roll Red Hat. Red Hat acts and reports independently of IBM.
@FlexibleToast @zero_spelled_with_an_ecks If that company built upon open source and had then to release their work because of the original license, then I can't speak for others, but I'm ok with it. They can do original work or they can build on others, if they do the latter then they have to expect the same.
Right, I think you're basically saying what I think most of us would agree with. Don't just copy the homework and poach customers. You can copy the homework and add your own value to it and earn customers. Bonus points for adding that value add back into the community like Alma does with their HPC work.
I guess you consider the parts of open source that are contributed to be owned by the contributors? I don't think that's how open source works nor how it should work.
IBM doesn't bankroll Red Hat? Buddy, IBM owns Red Hat https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-closes-landmark-acquisition-red-hat-34-billion-defines-open-hybrid-cloud-future
Buddy, I know IBM owns them. I also know that Red Hat is basically the only thing making IBM money. Look at the financials a little more closely.
I guess you consider the parts of open source that are contributed to be owned by the contributors?
What would that have to do with anything? That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm against companies that take an open source project to profit off of it without making any contributions to the community. CIQ and Canonical to a lesser extent. I have no issues with people like Red Hat, SUSE, Alma, etc...
I'm against
I'm not. I don't think we're going to change each other's mind, so have a good one.
I'm wary of them and I refuse to use Fedora (because it's basically their testing bed) due to their support of the US military, in addition to the reasons you've mentioned. Also, I'm trying my damnedest to #BoycottUSA
I prefer LMDE. It doesn't check all my wants, but it finds a great balance and I don't feel like an unpaid tester.
due to their support of the US military
What?
They make you sign into their support portal to view most of their documentation and download most of their software. That right there is a deal breaker for me because it violates the spirit of open source.
I'm all for Linux distributions run and owned by the community. With those we don't have to be afreaid of weird business decisions. Debian is a good example, and very democratic. But I believe several other distros are maintained by a community as well, including Arch, NixOS...
It definitely makes me suspicious, considering they're a standard 'money above all else' company (though they're better at playing the long game than some other companies) operating in a fascist state. They don't seem to abuse their power much, yet, but that can change rather quickly.
I do think there are quite a few linux users and developers who are suspicious of Red Hat, they are a small-ish but pretty vocal minority. Suspicion of Red Hat was a major reason why systemd was so controversial.
There is not much criticism of Red Hat? What? In what universe? I never see the name Red Hat absent the army of detractors they attract.