- cross-posted to:
- bofh@group.lt
An exceptionally well explained rant that I find myself in total agreement with.
I get where Jeff Geerling is coming from, but I think RedHat has a point as well.
I think a lot of people are coming at this from the perspective that RedHat themselves are just repackaging open source code and putting it behind a paywall, instead of also being one of the top contributors of software and bug fixes into the Linux ecosystem. Jeff mentions that Redhat is based on other open source software like the Linux kernel, but at the same time doesn’t mention that they’re also one of the leading contributors to it. I mean seriously, good luck using Linux without a single piece of RedHat code and see how far that gets you. If you’re entering the discussion from that perspective of “Redhat is simply just taking other people’s work as well”, it’s easy to have a biased view and start painting RedHat as a pure villain.
I also think that people are downplaying exactly how much effort it takes to build an enterprise Linux system, support customers at an engineering level, and backport patches, etc. Having downstream distributions straight up sell support contracts on an exact copy of your work won’t fly or be considered fair in any other business situation and I get why RedHat as a business doesn’t want to go out of their way to make that easy.
And it’s not like Redhat isn’t contributing the developments that happen in RHEL back into the FOSS community. That’s literally what CentOS Stream is and will continue to be, alongside their other upstream contributions.
Does it suck that we won’t have binary compatibility between Alma / Rocky and RHEL, yes it is frustrating as a user! Does it suck that we once got RHEL source for free and now we have to resort to Centos Stream? Yes! But the reality too is that open source STILL needs sources of income to pay developers to work on the Linux ecosystem, which is getting bigger and more complicated every day. That money has to come from somewhere, just sayin.
This argument that open source somehow needs to exploit users and blatantly skirt the intent of the GPL because profit must be taken from it is absurd.
Why is it assumed that they weren’t perfectly sustainable before and why is it the end users responsibility to bear the burden of making their business model viable if they weren’t? Being unprofitable doesn’t excuse you from following the terms of your software license.
Red Hat weren’t ever unprofitable under the old model. This is just the classic killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs. They’ll get a short term boost in profit until customers start moving to competitors.
The profit motive is antithetical to software freedom
Except they’re aren’t violating the GPL at all. Their source code is still available to subscribers (and it isn’t behind a paywall because you can get a free license) and available to the public via CentOS Stream. Their code also goes into upstream projects as well.
The GPL exists so that companies can’t just take the code and contribute nothing back. But that isn’t what Redhat is doing here so I find your accusations that Redhat is exploiting users to be very hyperbolic.
My understanding is that if you redistribute the source they provide (whether Paywalled or free dev account) that they can and plan to 1) revoke your payed support access or 2) revoke your free dev account.
That means that people are inevitably going to share out RH source from free dev accounts right off the bat, and just cycle through new dev accounts. That’s an escalating war where they watermark/fingerprint their source so they know who’s redistributing, and any model or distro built on this won’t last or carry considerable risk. Enterprise customers are unlikely to take this risk, though. So this sets up a pretty stupid game and generally goes against the spirit of FOSS if not the letter.
I’d like to address one statement you made above: CentOS Stream is NOT RHEL source. It’s effectively the beta branch. Which means it’s not bug-for-bug which is quite frankly critical to any dev, enterprise or otherwise, and the key reason they moved it upstream of RHEL - because it screws over what they consider to be freeloaders on purpose. They may be targeting other distros, but it affects all developers who just want to test their applications. Now that dev has to explore options for a dev account, be careful not to redistribute or lose that access, etc.
Jeff does an excellent job of explaining it and whether or not RHEL contributes to the kernel or other source, stating it the way you do is akin to giving them an excuse. Oracle contributes. Users contribute (by testing, submitting bugs, providing guidance and configuration templates or advice), Countless Devs contribute. All of that should not excuse IBM Red Hat’s behavior because they want to squeeze more profit out of a model that’s not setup well. The fact that their SNAP is essentially “trust me bro” now and with this move, I’m done with anything dependent upon RH. That may not mean much in my home lab setup with maybe a dozen boxes, but at work, I am in a position to influence thousands upon thousands of instances and I’m just one person paying attention to this. RH is focusing on short term profits over long term health and without disclosing anything, I’m confident will swiftly bite them in the ass. And it will be their own doing.
Edit: I should also note that making CentOS Stream the beta sets them up for potentially new customers who do not want to be on that bleeding edge - which is a risk most established enterprise is unlikely to undertake over the more stable RHEL, which will fill their coffers for the support model.
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.
Except that Redhat is trying to literally stop one of the four essential freedoms - the freedom to redistribute. Arguably they might actually be breaking the terms of the GPL.
I don’t think they are. You can distribute the corresponding source for your binaries. You just won’t get updates to the binaries (and their corresponding source) afterwards.
Not only will you not get updates (after they end your subscription), but you’ll probably lose access to the entirety of their packages before you can download all of them in the first place.
Whether or not they’re violating the letter of the GPL is entirely separate from whether they’re violating its intent. The former is debatable but the latter is absolutely happening here.
What do you think the intent of the GPL is though? Genuinely curious, this isn’t meant as a retort or anything.
… the freedom to study, change, and redistribute the software you use.
They are specifically and explicitly trying to limit your freedom with regards to redistribution by making it a violation of their EULA to do so.
But the code is also available in CentOS Stream, which is basically the “git master” of RHEL, and that you can freely redistribute.
The people using RHEL aren’t using CentOS Stream, and they aren’t able to redistribute the actual software they are actively using. I don’t know how to state this any clearer.
I put this together a while ago to help myself understand the licenses. I honestly dont know if its accurate. I am not a lawyer. Philosophy and Intent:
GPL: The GPL is designed to ensure that software remains free and open, in the sense that users should have the freedom to use, modify, and distribute the software as they wish. This is sometimes referred to as "copyleft", because it is meant to counterbalance the traditional copyright system. BSD: The BSD license is more permissive and does not require the same level of freedom. It is designed to allow as much freedom as possible, including the freedom to turn the software into a proprietary product. Distribution and Modification: GPL: If you modify a GPL-licensed program and distribute the modified version, you must distribute it under the GPL as well. You must also make the source code available. This requirement is why the GPL is called a "viral" license: it attempts to ensure that all derivative works are also free. BSD: If you modify a BSD-licensed program and distribute the modified version, you do not need to distribute it under the BSD license, and you do not need to make the source code available. You could, for example, decide to distribute the modified version under a proprietary license. Compatibility with Proprietary Software: GPL: The GPL is not compatible with proprietary software licenses. That is, you cannot take GPL-licensed code and incorporate it into a proprietary software product. BSD: The BSD license is compatible with proprietary software licenses. This means you can take BSD-licensed code and incorporate it into a proprietary software product. License versions: GPL: There are different versions of GPL (e.g., GPL v2 and GPL v3) and they are not necessarily compatible with each other. BSD: The BSD license has two main versions (the "new" BSD license and the "simplified" or "free" BSD license), but they do not differ substantially in terms of compatibility.But since there are multiple GPLs:
GPL v1: Released in 1989 by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), GPL v1 was created to prevent the privatization of free software and to ensure that software could be freely used, modified, and redistributed. GPL v2: Released in 1991, GPL v2 had several changes from v1. One of the main ones was the introduction of the "Liberty or Death" clause. This clause states that if someone adds restrictions (beyond those in the GPL) to a GPL-licensed program (for instance, as a result of legal rulings or laws), they cannot distribute the program at all. This was intended to close a potential loophole where someone could add restrictions to a program and then claim they were forced to do so. GPL v3: Released in 2007, GPL v3 has more detailed terms and is longer than GPL v2. There are several key changes: Patent Clauses: GPL v3 includes explicit patent licensing, meaning that anyone distributing GPL v3-licensed software must also grant a patent license to the users of that software. This was designed to prevent situations where someone distributes software but then sues the users for patent infringement. Tivoization: Named after a controversy involving TiVo, "Tivoization" refers to the practice of designing hardware so that it will only run a specific version of software, thus preventing modifications from running. GPL v3 explicitly disallows Tivoization, whereas GPL v2 does not. Compatibility with Other Licenses: GPL v3 is compatible with more licenses than GPL v2. For instance, it's compatible with the Apache License 2.0, which GPL v2 is not. Protection against Anti-Circumvention Laws: GPL v3 contains provisions that aim to prevent its software from falling under anti-circumvention laws like those in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It's designed so that users cannot be sued for circumventing DRM (Digital Rights Management) in GPL-licensed software. Additional Terms: GPL v3 allows “additional terms” to be added to certain parts of the license, offering some room for adaptation of the license to specific needs.Remember, the different versions of GPL aren’t necessarily compatible with each other. That is, you can’t necessarily mix code licensed under GPL v2 with code licensed under GPL v3. If you’re working on a project that uses GPL-licensed code, you’ll need to pay close attention to the specific version of the license that’s in use.
Oh and then there is the AGPL:
The AGPL stands for the Affero General Public License. Similar to the GNU General Public License (GPL), the AGPL is a free software license, but it has an additional provision related to software run over a network.
In many ways, the AGPL is very similar to the GPL. It was designed to ensure that the software it covers remains free and open source, and that users have the ability to use, modify, and distribute the software.
However, there’s a key difference between the AGPL and the GPL: the AGPL has a specific requirement that if you run the software on a network server and modify it, you must offer the source code of your modified version to the network’s users. This requirement is meant to cover what’s sometimes called the “Application Service Provider loophole” in the GPL.
This “loophole” arises because the GPL requires you to share the source code of a modified version of a program only if you distribute the program. However, if you run a modified version of a program on a server and let users interact with it over a network (for instance, by providing it as a web service), you’re not technically distributing the program according to the GPL, so you’re not required to share your modifications.
The AGPL was designed to close this loophole.
No, RHEL “exploits” large companies and the public sector that require a lot of compliance certificates and long term service guarantees for the software they procure. If Red Hat doesn’t collect this money, it goes into the pockets of people with much lower upstream contributions than Red Hat.
The regular user doesn’t need RHEL. Fedora or any other non-enterprise Linux distribution is perfectily fine and they will directly benefit from the contribution that Red Hat finances through their enterprise sales.
I agree that they should be allowed a profit. However calling it open source when redistributing rhel code causes them to hold the right of canceling you access to the code and binary, eventhough gpl states that redistributing is a right under gpl rubs me the wrong way.
But they’re not canceling access to the code. All that is still there under CentOS Stream.
Can one discover exactly what versions of the packages is the RHEL distribution using without being a subscriber, in order to build a binary-compatible release?
Or if that information is only for subscribers, can a subscriber use that information to select the correct versions from CentOS Stream without getting their subscription agreement cancelled?
In the video, and in the blogpost that is effectively the transcript of the video, he clearly states that though locking away the source code is within IBM’s or RedHat’s rights.
What seems to have done it for him is, the subscription terms and conditions that prevent redistribution of source code by subscribers or else have the subscription revoked. This is what he argues as being borderline illegal and that RedHat could be banking on the army of lawyers on IBM’s retainer.
And, knowing Oracle, what is to stop them from becoming a subscriber? That way, RedHat has a poster child of a subscriber, Oracle gets access to the code which they can and most likely will, with their own army of lawyers, repackage and publish as Oracle Linux. Admittedly this is my cynical take on Jeff’s.
Time to start debating moving more projects under GPLv3 or AGPLv3 which demand more innovative ways to run a business than what IBM is doing.
It’s not as if they didn’t still get paid under the previous model. It’s just not conducive to a profit line that has to be on an incline forever, else be axed or forever altered, such as in this case. It’s greed, pure and simple. They have to find a new way to make the line on a chart go up and people who are more interested in short term gain figured they can wait out the backlash storm and rake in more profit on other businesses that are already locked in. They’re not dumb, they just aren’t incentivized in anyway to be concerned for the long-term health of what they are built on.
All the good things you said about Redhat should be in past tense. IBM recently laid off tons of Redhat employees, including the Fedora team lead! Redhat is no longer an organization in any real sense. It is only the name of a product now. It’s as meaningful as IBM’s “Watson”. They are only marketing terms.
Don’t expect much investment or technical innovation out of Redhat/IBM going forward. IBM is always going to put its short term (short sighted) self interest ahead of everything else.
IBM is always going to put its short term (short sighted) self interest ahead of everything else
enshitification in a nutshell. Focusing on short term profit instead of long term success. For most public companies it is not even enough to be profitable. If they are not constantly increasing their profit then they are seen as a failure to investors. The vicious cycle continues…
The layoff was less than 4% and only in administrative positions.
I’ve become a lot more sympathetic to RH after learning about Oracle Linux. I still disagree with it, but another mega-corp selling support for a RHEL clone is egregious.
Oracle Linux is 100% the cause of this change.
Imagine supporting 2 other distros to make your own enterprise linux that is your only source of money through optional subscriptions to it.
Then some other big unethical corporation (much like your own parent company) comes in, use the GPL license to clone it and slap an “Oracle db certified” sticker on it. Finally, they decide to use the same subscription model as you except they get insane margins since you did 99% of the work for them.
But looking at what Rocky Linux is saying publicly. It’s not impossible that Red Hat won’t levy their right to remove access to the sources to non-commercial forks of RHEL.
But looking at what Rocky Linux is saying publicly. It’s not impossible that Red Hat won’t levy their right to remove access to the sources to non-commercial forks of RHEL.
I think this is a good theory. I would be surprised if Red Hat hadn’t realized the value of clones and the community (and contributions) they bring.
I hope, but also honestly believe, that this is targeted at Oracle and that publicly saying “Don’t worry we’re only gonna use this against this company” would be make Red Hat liable to a lawsuit.
Ok, but lets say IBMHat wins here. If the selling point of OEL is Oracle db certified (which is almost HAS to be, no one else wants to touch Oracle), they are also the people who could just certify for Amazon Linux or Debian Stable based OEL. This doesn’t achieve anything good for IBMHat.
IMO, this is the elephant in the room.
If you’re looking at what people used CentOS or Rocky or Alma for - dev systems, CI systems, … These aren’t lost sales. If you forced them to off of their solution, they aren’t going to pay the price tag and management/installation pain of RHEL. If they have people knowing how to run Linux, they’ll use something else. And sure, they are drawing some resources from RH (bandwidth for packages at the very least), but they are giving the RH system a larger footprint in deployed systems. And people running it had a positive opinion about the system.
But Oracle Linux is a different beast. Here a company is poaching large customers willing to pay for support by repackaging your product for less effort. It sucks, but it’s entirely consistent for Oracle to be part of ruining a good thing.
I gotta admit I was being pretty reactionary about this and didn’t know about the Oracle Linux thing. That’s just… Plain wrong. Can’t say I wouldn’t do thr same as red hat in their shoes
I honestly don’t see why. Oracle is also bringing in newer kernels they support in OEL. How much additional contribution is needed before it’s basically the same as any Linux distro bringing together FLOSS and tweaking it into a system they want?
I honestly don’t get this take at all. Especially for Oracle Linux. Oracle does write / package much newer kernels and some other features. Why is it OK for Red Hat to package up the Linux kernel and other GPL software and sell support, but not for someone else to do so with Red Hat as the base? It’s just the base is in a slightly different location, RHEL instead of CentOS Stream. Is Amazon OK for doing (now) Fedora -> Amazon Linux? Should Red Hat need to pay Linus for the kernel? Is Amazon doing “enough” modification that they’re not “freeloading” but Oracle isn’t? What’s the threshold, and does it have any relation to the GPL?
But even if they didn’t - you do know there are consultants out there for just about any software providing support. Heck, reading this one way, you would be against users of a distro supporting themselves. This doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
If it was just that they were repackaging source code and putting it behind a paywall, then there would be no problem at all.
The problem is, as I understand it, that they are selling modified GPL code without giving people access to it. That’s against the GPL license. Out of all people, Red Hat should be aware of what the GPL states.
So I think it’s pretty fair to accused Red Hat of being intentionally evil here. If it was just a mistake, then I’d say it’s a very very dumb mistake. Either way, if these are the kind of people who run Red Hat now, things don’t look good.
The access is given as per the GPL, it doesn’t have to be publicly available.
This said it all perfectly. Think I’ll check out more of his videos.
You should. He’s done very entertaining stuff around Raspberry Pis and other fun projects.
I’ve been watching ol Jeff for quite some time. He’s so delightfully nerdy I love him
Ive only recently started to follow him, and yeah, hes awesome.
He really seems to know his stuff
I dont understand how redhat is going to police this policy of “we’ll keep source code open to paying customers, but reserve the right to cancel a customer that shares said source”.
Toss in GUID’s or randomly place identity files to anyone that downloads the RHEL source hoping they get accidentally published as an identifying attribute if someone does decide to publish it elsewhere.
And make sure that identifier scheme still works if different people on different subscriptions download the source and compare to filter identifiers like that out…
They could try that but I suspect it would be rather easy to find anomalies like that. These are ultimately patches to an upstream and already open-source project, so one can just diff the RHEL version with the release it’s based on and quickly notice that random GUID in the sources or random spaces/indentation. Or have multiple sources leak the code independently, and then you can diff them all between eachother to verify if you got exactly the same code or if they injected something sneaky to track it, and remove it.
Lots of companies in enterprise also want to host their own mirror because the servers are airgapped, so they can’t even track who downloaded all the sources because many companies will in fact do that. And serving slightly modified but still signed packages sounds like it would be rather computationally expensive to do on the fly, so they can’t exactly add tracking built into the packages of the repos either. And again easy to detect with basic checksumming of the files.
Unenforceable for individual users, maybe. But the distros that depended upon it will need to be open and honest about their sources so cannot do that. Users trust distros because of transparency.
This is not about an individual sharing the source. This is about near verbatim copy distributions like Oracle Linux. And they can easily see who contributes code from RHEL into those distributions.
I think Jeff has a point that a Linux distribution is a collective effort, but I honestly don’t see why he can’t just target Fedora which is for all intends and purposes the testing release for RHEL and most of the development work that Red Hat does goes directly into Fedora. RHEL adds little of value to that other than some compliance BS for large companies.
Oracle really does eat Red Hat lunch. Oracle practically recommends using Oracle Linux to their own customers. After paying a lot of money to Oracle, you probably aren’t thrilled to pay for yet another expensive license and just install oracle linux.
Fedora isn’t the testing distribution for RHEL, CentOS is. Fedora is upstream of CentOS and could be viewed as the bleeding edge in that regard. CentOS used to be downstream of RHEL, but that changed a few years ago when IBM did its first shitty thing at Red Hat. The tree is like:
Fedora (Top of code stream, “unstable” from a business perspective)
|
|
v
CentOS (midstream, much less frequent feature updates)
|
|
v
RHEL (end of stream, stable/predictable/reliable/etc)
And I couldn’t disagree more about RHEL adding little value. You’re not going to run a server on Fedora for something you want/need to rely on, and especially rely on not to change much/cause breaking changes. That’s what RHEL is for and it is the gold standard in that regard.
And that’s not even mentioning the fact that Red Hat support is some of the absolute best in the world. Motherfuckers will write a bespoke kernel module for you if that’s what it takes to fix your issue. Not sure if that’s still true after the IBM takeover though, but that was my experience with them before that.
You can absolutely run important services on Fedora server edition. Most of the stuff in containerized anyways, so having a more up to date version of the base system is actually an advantage.
It is really only those large corps with massive closed source lagacy applications and loads of compliance regulation that need a stale but long term supported distribution like RHEL.
I really hope this doesn’t affect ansible. I’ll be so fucking mad.
It’s crazy that we’re even considering that, yet we are. Redhat have become so unpredictably malicious, it’s really depressing.
“IBM won’t affect our culture” they said…
One could always fork it, though I like the name. I’m a LeGuin fan.
Guess they really wanted to be the Reddit of Linux
exactly my thought. now we’re realising these tech companies are led by huge assholes.
That was great! I mean the circumstances are not great but I like the video. It seems there’s a lot of talk about how big companies take over open source projects and ruin them, which is a good conversation.
Somehow I’d kind of not known who Jeff Geerling was until this. And damn, he does a good presentation. Succinct, very clear and gets his point across extremely well without too much heat. No way I could I do that!
Red Hat is dead to me.
Damn, couldn’t have put it better even if I spent weeks trying to sum it down.
I’m so annoyed with this. We were using CentOS, which was effectively killed, then I did a lot of research and spent time moving everything over the AlmaLinux.
Having to now do it all again another time is so frustrating; the only pragmatic long-term option is to bite the bullet and get things working on Debian.
Look in to Rocky Linux. It was started by the original developer of CentOS the day Red Hat announced that CentOS would be moving upstream of RHEL. They’ve already put out an announcement saying that it’s essentially going to be business as usual for them.
Thanks tool.
From what I understand, Rocky and Alma are essentially the same and so I found it difficult to decide between the two when moving from CentOS. Whatever happens now, will apply to both.
The writing is on the wall and it’s similar to Twitter and Reddit: they wanted to kill CentOS as it was, weren’t expecting the community to come back with Rocky and Alma, so now they’re trying to kill those too. The above video posits a scenario where Oracle’s legal team help the little guys by going to battle with IBM, but I don’t see it.
At this point, I don’t think it’s smart to go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over, but then again I’d be very happy to see the little guys succeed.
Gotcha. I understand your opinion, but they seem pretty confident about their ability to continue to deliver.
And also, never get into bed with Oracle. I quit a job once when they started seriously sniffing Oracle’s panties. Oracle has hostages, not customers.
ORACLE - Not Even Once
I’d just finished migrating around 70 Centos 6 machines to Centos 8, a month ahead of them killing the distro that was supposed to last until 2028. We went with Rocky, but the problem is the same as Alma’s.
Fortunately both companies seem to have pretty well developed plans for coping with this, and no doubt Oracle and Amazon distros will too, so no need to jump ship yet.
That said, we’re also considering a debian shaped future, at least in part. There’s absolutely no way we’ll sign up for Rhel accounts. Not because they’re expensive, but because decisions like this undermine our trust in them as a business partner.
Yea, we’re just starting a EL7 to Alma 9 migration. Kind of not looking forward to having to throw out all that work and try and migrate somewhere else if the rebuilds become impossible to make in the next few months or even few years. And if this doesn’t work, I don’t see why they don’t try something else in 2 years again, so I’m far less sanguine than I was back with them ending CENTOS.
It is a worry, isn’t it? I built two more Rocky 9 servers today and it certainly would be a major faff if Rocky went away. However, I have a lot of faith in them, and I also respect Alma. Both are strong, well run organisations with a lot of clever people working together for the benefit of the community. I think we’ll be fine, even if the details have to change a little bit.
We certainly won’t be trusting Redhat in any way though, but we’re not big enough to be useful to them. They’ve proved they have complete disdain for the foss community they depend upon, and showing ones colours like that is not going to help their bottom line. It’s a shame.
Ooof, I feel ya. Good luck!
Truly the year of enshittification.