Red Hat just erected a paywall in front of the source code to their Linux distribution.Are they burning bridges to the wider open source ecosystem?Referenced...
An exceptionally well explained rant that I find myself in total agreement with.
Which means it’s not bug-for-bug which is quite frankly critical to any dev, enterprise or otherwise…They may be targeting other distros, but it affects all developers who just want to test their applications.
With the free RHEL licenses, I don’t think developers targetting RHEL are going to be affected at all by this, short of having to signup for an extra account. I also don’t think that there’s going to be many situations where a dev would accidentally redistribute in a way that’s so detrimental to RedHat’s business that it gets their license suspended.
You’re right that its mainly targeted at downstream distros and that’s where I think RedHat has a point. I think that it’s entirely fair for RedHat to be annoyed that someone can build a RHEL bug-for-bug compatible Linux distro and then sell support licenses off of it, which is literally RHEL’s business model.
That’s just my two cents. There’s really not many ways for a company to survive entirely off of open-source development like RedHat does and if we start saying that bug-for-bug compatible versions of their software have to exist, then we’ve essentially turned their business model into donations and it would lead to them dying anyways.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not entirely happy about RedHat’s changes, but I also don’t see anyone in this thread suggesting a viable alternative for RedHat to pursue and they’re just piling on the hate. It’s like saying, “Hey RedHat, sorry you’re dying. Thanks for all your hard work, okay good luck, bye.”
Well, the alternative is competing based on what you are actually selling in this model: Support for this product. If I can clone your distro and do better at supporting it than YOU do or at least good enough to sell my support, then you have a situation of possibilities:
Your support sucks
You’re charging too much or don’t have the right market / price options available
Your support in general is not really necessary, and thus your business model is weak in the first place. Another way of saying this one is that you aren’t offering anying particularly unique for new features on top of what’s already freely available to sweeten the deal beyond selling support.
You’ve done other things to your customers to weaken your relationships, and thus income flow
Locking out those “second run” vendors who are riding your coat tails is going to be a self-defeating path, however you slice it. Oracle has deep pockets - they are unlikely to sit back on this one as an example problem. The bigger problem is violation of the spirit of the GPL which alienates devs. You’re correct that they may only be inconvenienced, but inconveniencing any developer is a first class ticket to them working around your shenanigans or just opting out of supporting your platform in general. I already know 2 vendors in my small world who are subtly indicating support for RHEL and CentOS is being considered with some pushes on their customers to consider other distros. That’s in the last few days!
Anyway, they are throwing out the good will they have left with the bathwater of trying to short circuit low-bar competitors because they want to squeeze profit. You may not be wrong to stand by them, but I’m taking my support (and business) elsewhere as a result of their stance. A recent post looks like they are doubling down on the message.
With the free RHEL licenses, I don’t think developers targetting RHEL are going to be affected at all by this, short of having to signup for an extra account. I also don’t think that there’s going to be many situations where a dev would accidentally redistribute in a way that’s so detrimental to RedHat’s business that it gets their license suspended.
You’re right that its mainly targeted at downstream distros and that’s where I think RedHat has a point. I think that it’s entirely fair for RedHat to be annoyed that someone can build a RHEL bug-for-bug compatible Linux distro and then sell support licenses off of it, which is literally RHEL’s business model.
That’s just my two cents. There’s really not many ways for a company to survive entirely off of open-source development like RedHat does and if we start saying that bug-for-bug compatible versions of their software have to exist, then we’ve essentially turned their business model into donations and it would lead to them dying anyways.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not entirely happy about RedHat’s changes, but I also don’t see anyone in this thread suggesting a viable alternative for RedHat to pursue and they’re just piling on the hate. It’s like saying, “Hey RedHat, sorry you’re dying. Thanks for all your hard work, okay good luck, bye.”
Well, the alternative is competing based on what you are actually selling in this model: Support for this product. If I can clone your distro and do better at supporting it than YOU do or at least good enough to sell my support, then you have a situation of possibilities:
Locking out those “second run” vendors who are riding your coat tails is going to be a self-defeating path, however you slice it. Oracle has deep pockets - they are unlikely to sit back on this one as an example problem. The bigger problem is violation of the spirit of the GPL which alienates devs. You’re correct that they may only be inconvenienced, but inconveniencing any developer is a first class ticket to them working around your shenanigans or just opting out of supporting your platform in general. I already know 2 vendors in my small world who are subtly indicating support for RHEL and CentOS is being considered with some pushes on their customers to consider other distros. That’s in the last few days!
Anyway, they are throwing out the good will they have left with the bathwater of trying to short circuit low-bar competitors because they want to squeeze profit. You may not be wrong to stand by them, but I’m taking my support (and business) elsewhere as a result of their stance. A recent post looks like they are doubling down on the message.