What I just read: "Companies coming together to develop a new better Enterprise Linux solution with standards, etc." which seems like a good thing.
What I also just read: "A bunch of companies that couldn't create or maintain a Linux distribution on their own are joining forces to attempt to create a clone of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux offering." which isn't a good thing.
Serious question: Why would I get support from any of these companies? Don't get me wrong, Oracle and Suse have very talented and valuable employees (I don't know enough about CIQ but I'm sure they have smart people over there too!) that contribute to open source communities. But the message I just read is "Our current offerings are all inferior to RHEL".
That is not a message to be celebrated.
Why is anyone celebrating this? If I were employed at any of these companies I would be worried about the future of my job. Am I missing something obvious?
This is exactly what Red Hat wants. They want the 'rebuilders' to contribute to CentOS Stream, and as far as I can tell, welcome the efforts of all contributors to Centos Stream.
An Open Source, community owned and governed, forever-free enterprise Linux distribution.
Main points:
"The AlmaLinux OS Foundation board today has decided to drop the aim to be 1:1 with RHEL. AlmaLinux OS will instead aim to be Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatible" by contributing to Centos Stream.
AlmaLinux "will also start asking anyone who reports bugs in AlmaLinux OS to attempt to test and replicate the problem in CentOS Stream as well, so we can focus our energy on correcting it in the right place."
Yes, that kind of makes sense, but Foo was leaving the TVs outside because they thought that was the most expedient thing to do. It takes effort to move them outside, and Foo doesn't want to do that anymore. So now Foo, as you point out, has moved the TVs inside where only paying customers can get them.
I'm not an expert on the GPL and I'll go out on a limb and assume you're not either. But it certainly seems like experts have weighed in and have said what Red Hat is doing is valid under the license: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/
[Edit: valid. Although I admit, like many others, I am uncomfortable from a 'spirit' of the license point of view.]
Here's where your analogy falls apart. The TV isn't being shipped to everyone. It's being shipped ("rebuilt") by Bar, and then installed by them. They're free to do that but Foo is under no obligation to help them do it.
There is no problem with your scenario, and it's spot on to the issue that Red Hat has raised.
However, the piece you're missing is that the TVs come from Foo. They don't have to give company Bar TVs to install. If company Bar doesn't have TVs then what should they do? They have some choices: work with Foo or develop their own TV.
I don't think there is anyone arguing that a Rebuild by itself is a problem. Given Mike's comments in the podcast linked above, the problem is when one of those (or many of those) Rebuilders competed directly against Red Hat for a contract.
From the general feeling I get from reading many threads on this issue, the general consensus is that the community agrees that, specifically, this behavior by the Rebuilders is wrong.
I don't think Mike McGrath called out any specific company but if you look at that ycombinator link it looks like the 'offender' was Rocky Linux. That is purely speculation on my part.
So joke aside, I don't see anything in that video that is a defence of the Rebuilders against the accusations made by Red Hat. Is there something I was supposed to get out of watching it?
If I listen to that video will I, in fact, get a laptop for free? Inquiring minds wanna know.
Interesting points, but I'm not sure I agree with your last sentence. Clearly, users of the Rebuilds are going to be impacted and part of that impact is their workflow. They may have to switch distros or do some other juggling to continue forward.
One other thing I want to add: I've read a bunch of comments about how the Rebuilds were used in educational and scientific settings, and that there is a prohibitive cost for RHEL in those environments. After reading so many comments about it, I have to believe that Red Hat is going to make some modification to their Developer License program to allow more than 16 'seats' for those use cases.
I want to be clear on my bias here: I firmly believe that open source would not be a 'thing' if it weren't for Red Hat. Linus Torvalds himself once said (albeit 10 years ago) that the shares he received from Red Hat before their IPO was 'his only big Linux payout'. I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that Red Hat has had a major significant positive impact on Open Source across the world.
This morning I listened to an excellent podcast called "Ask Noah" where he interviewed Red Hat's Mike McGrath who has been active on the linux subreddit and other social media. It seems that Mike has been involved in the decision to restrict Red Hat's sources on git.centos.org:
https://podcast.asknoahshow.com/343 (listen at ~20 mins)
It's really worth a listen. Mike clearly lays out the work that Red Hat (I was surprised to find out that it is NOT the Rebuilders) does to debrand the Red Hat sources, why they're pulling that back on those unbranded sources, and that they understand the ramifications of doing so. It's also interesting that Mike is of the opinion that there is nothing wrong with doing a Rebuild, and he defends them by stating "that's the cost of doing business". Noah and Mike go into many of the nuances of the decision and again, it's really worth listening to. Mike also talks about "bad faith" when dealing with the Rebuilders at 40:30, which I think explains Red Hat's decision. I got the distinct feeling he's bound by some ethical code so he won't/can't say too much though.
There's also this discussion about Rocky Linux securing a contract with NASA:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36417968
that had a lot of internal discussion at my company this week, which given what's just happened may shed some more light on Red Hat's decision.
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There are always two sides to every story but in this case there are three sides to this story.
On one side, you have Red Hat, a long time champion of open source software, that has poured billions of dollars into open source development, and which has 1000s of employees who not only on 'company' time but in their own time manage, develop, contribute, and create open source code. They have funded countless successful and unsuccessful projects that we all use.
Against Red Hat are two largely distinct groups. The first is the Rebuilders themselves, who Red Hat has claimed 'don't offer anything of value back to the community'. This is not meant to be a statement on the usefulness of the rebuilds (Rocky, Alma, Oracle, etc.) but rather a very directed statement on whether or not the rebuilders are providing bug report, feedback, and contributions to the packages that Red Hat has included in RHEL.
The second group, which stands somewhat behind the Rebuilders, are the Rebuild users. One could argue that the users are caught in the middle of Red Hat and the Rebuilders, however, I think it is better to look at them as being an equal 'side' in this discussion.
The Rebuild users are in a very unfortunate position: they're about to lose access to a free product that they've come to depend on. They are, as expected, unhappy about Red Hat's decision to stop providing access to RHEL sources. My next statement is callous, and I expect it to be read as such: You get what you paid for. That is not meant to indicate anyone is cheap, it's just that you shouldn't have expectations when you are using something for free.
Here's the interesting part for me. As far as I can see, none of the users are jumping to the Rebuilder's defence of Red Hat's accusation that the Rebuilders provide nothing back to the community. And, as far as I can tell across various social media and news platforms' comments sections, largely the user community AGREES with Red Hat's position. Informed users -- not all users -- are using a RHEL Rebuild knowing that there is no benefit in doing so for the community.
I have yet to read a reply from the Rebuilders where they categorically deny that this is the case. And to me, that's glaring and damning of the Rebuilders' position. Even the 'defenders' (for lack of a better word) of the Rebuilders have yet to provide a response.