The two ways they have for getting source code are kind of funny and easy, and kind of makes fun of RHEL in pulling this maneuver, getting so much community backlash and ultimately having so little effect other than to negatively impact future business. But will they go further to violate the GPL? Or concede defeat? Say what you want, but to cut off paying customers if they share source code which is their right under the GPL is a really bad move that exposes the character of those running the company.
Don’t forget Red Hat wouldn’t have problem with the “rebuilders” eating their lunch if they didn’t kill CentOS in the first place. People that don’t need support would just use CentOS, and people that do need support would still buy RHEL instead of paying Rocky. But greed (or IBM?) got the better of them and they killed CentOS to increase their short term revenue. Now they’re getting bitten in the ass for that short-sighted decision (NASA contact with Rocky) and double down with an even stupider decision. They will surely get bitten in the ass again over this decision and probably will double down with an even more stupider decision.
Nobody and nothing living forever is one of the reasons centralization is bad. But humans sadly like to flock.
RH is approaching the end of its life cycle. First they were hackers. Then they became a useful and aspiring business. Then RPM-based distributions were what made Linux not marginal anymore (though probably this also has something to do with Mandrake’s success). Then they became something in the center of things, connected to everything happening with Linux and other Unix-like systems (at least on desktop). Then they realized that and started milking that slowly. Then they became arrogant.
I’m not 100% on this as I don’t work for NASA so don’t shoot me if I’m wrong however I suspect/speculate the NASA contract is purely because someone needed X machines for a task and that their IT contracts would require support for the years the project runs for. There may or may not be a stipulatio/recommendation on the OS for the software stack. Meaning that because they want to run software Y they need to run Rocky and so corporate requires that to have support. Not that Rocky were simply undercutting RHEL.
I repeat, this is purely speculation.
Just FYI “Software” in that agreement specifically refers to Red Hat branded software, so it isn’t quite as clear cut if you debrand it before redistributing it.
People said the subscriber agreement applies to the RHEL source code because the source code for specific RHEL releases can only be downloaded from the subscriber portal now. Especially this part:
But yeah, we shall see if Red Hat would actually enforce that as many people feared.
I’ll see if I can’t dig it up.
Judging on their own blog post, a lot of this decision making wasn’t because of the people using rebuilders because they “don’t need support,” which was never really the goal IMO. CentOS seemed, to me at least, to fill the gap of “people who want to use RHEL but can’t or don’t need to afford the price tag; for hobbyists and learners.” And RHEL is reporting that their research shows the majority of people using rebuilders right now are not those groups of people, they’re professional enterprise environments who are trying to avoid RHEL’s fees.
To me, if you are a business who wants a Linux server but doesn’t want to pay RHEL’s price tag… Use something else. There’s Ubuntu Server, Fedora Server, Debian, and dozens more distros that cater to enterprise usage for absolutely free. RHEL does not. From what I can tell, the rebuilders are not adding any kind of value to the situation. And, again, RHEL’s own word on the situation seems to be “the sources are still there, we just won’t do your job for you anymore.”
EDIT to add: I am not against the rebuilders doing their thing. I am actually for it. But right now, everything I am seeing on the practical side of things is this: RHEL used to put in a lot of work making the rebuilders’ job easier. They don’t seem to want to artificially increase the difficulty of rebuilding RHEL sources, just to stop actively spending money making it easier when that work doesn’t return any money for the effort. Which is… Totally fair.
Yes, that’s totally fair, but a lot of people in the open source world, especially individual contributor, will only support an open-source product based on how many goodwill the backing company provides. Red Hat, before the IBM acquisition, is on the top of the list due to their enormous goodwill towards the open source community. Their willingness to support CentOS, which essentially making RHEL free and cutting into Red Hat’s revenue, created a lot of respect among Linux supporters, which in turns promoted usage of CentOS and RHEL and provides integration for CentOS/RHEL on their own open source projects. Red Hat became this big was partially due to the support and promotion from the Linux enthusiasts advocating their use in their companies.
The recent moves understandably made those people feel betrayed by Red Hat. Sure it’s within Red Hat’s right to do so, but in doing so, they burn a lot of goodwill and trust from their open source community.
I have since changed my overall view on this topic as others brought up their license’s verbiage that seems to be designed to threaten people into not rebuilding their source lest they lose access to their rightfully paid for license, but I’ll comment on this specific point.
Per RHEL, their metrics show that this:
But that’s all kind of a moot point now, since their ToS is kind of damning.
In a way, this seems like a divorced couple quarrel. One party is super angry and felt betrayed, while the other part feels they didn’t do anything wrong and was the actual victim instead.
The community is like “How could you betray our trust! After all these years of our support!” and Red Hat is like “I didn’t do anything wrong! Also, your support is overrated anyway. You’re actually more like a leech.”
“Would” happen? That’s literally what initially happened. They just hoped for something impossible.
They are adding popularity. Enterprise is slow to change in some ways, but I can totally see the trend of moving to Debian. RH seems to have forgotten their own history and how they’ve started with one Red Hat Linux, with paid support for those who wanted it, and that’s what gave them the popularity to be profitable.
They are, in fact, going to reduce their revenue. Which is the main criterion for a business, no?
I mean, just like humans wither and die with time, so do companies.