[GTALUG] Red Hat Paywall...

Tue Jul 4 06:39:30 EDT 2023

My take:

   1. I wouldn't go as far as "I saw this coming", but I have long
   suspected that the IBMification of Red Hat was far from complete --
   layoffs, CentOS Stream, now this. RH employees that I know describe a hard
   shift in corporate culture. And I don't think they're done. It wouldn't
   surprise me the least if they even change the name of the product to "IBM
   Red Hat Enterprise Linux" or even just "IBM Linux". Now that they've
   effectively (and knowingly) destroyed the community goodwill that was
   formed over more than a decade of Linux Expos and Bob Young roadshows, I
   don't even see much added value in the RH brand to IBM; the Red Hat we've
   known for decades no longer exists. Come to think of it, the IBM that
   helped start LPI and championed Open Source against the SCO and Java
   assaults of a decade ago is also long gone.

   2. IBM doesn't really give a damn about Alma and Rocky, they're just
   incidental casualties. The #1 and maybe only target of the
   subscription-wall action is IBM's longtime arch-enemy Oracle, which may now
   be forced to actually maintain its own distro and will no longer be able to
   claim bug-for-bug compatibility with RHEL (or whatever it will be called).
   They've calculated that the value of the harm this causes Oracle exceeds
   the lost value of community rejection.

   3. This unfortunate momentum could be stopped (or at least slowed) by a
   Fedora developer revolt but I don't see that happening.

   4. I see an opportunity for SUSE which maintains both an
   enterprise-Linux focus and good community relations. Are they up to it? As
   a longshot maybe even Oracle could try to seize the moment and try a charm
   offensive to attract a community... but that's unlikely considered its many
   burned bridges (Solaris, OpenOffice, Java)

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56

On Tue, Jun 27, 2023 at 11:23 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <
talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> This Red Hat change concerns me.
>
> LONG: Some thoughts on what my "go to" distro pair should be.
>
> | From: Alvin Starr via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
>
> | On 2023-06-27 08:19, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
>
> | > Yeah I am happy I switched to debian 25 years ago because Red Hat's
> | > quality was so poor at the time.  Debian having a better designed
> | > packaging system was a bonus.
> | >
> | Strangely around the same time I switched to RedHat because I got tired
> of
> | having to apply my own security patches to the kernel and applications
> because
> | the distribution was shipping with largely unmodified sources.
> | Like many things in life "your mileage may vary".
>
> The RHEL / CentOS / clones drama is certainly unsettling.
>
> I don't think that Fedora is directly affected but it is hard to judge
> whether there will be secondary effects.
>
> One upcoming GTALUG talk will be from a Rocky Linux guy.  That should
> be interesting.
>
> I've already been struggling with where I want to go for a stable
> system.  Besides the drama, I just don't think that RHEL's pinning
> versions for 5 years is a good strategy.  Backporting for that long
> feels like a wasted effort, prone to errors.
>
> Why do I care about the effort RH puts into backporting?
>
> - it creates a RH "moat": it prevents others from competing with them.
>   Rocky, Alma, Oracle feel like clones, not creative competitors.
>   That may be unfair to Oracle but that's not a company that I want
>   a relationship with.
>
> - it is labour that feels wasted.  Perhaps that labour could be used
>   for more constructive purposes.
>
> On the other hand RH has added a lot to the community and does do a
> good job of beating back bugs.
>
> I do think that I need a pair of distros: one that is up to date, and
> one that is low-drama.  If they are in the same family, that cuts down
> on redundant learning on my part.
>
> - CentOS + Fedora has been a good pair for me.  TBH, CentOS has left
>   me with technical debt: I get stuck on obsolete versions because the
>   upgrade paths have been disrupted (twice!).  Fedora release updates
>   have been good for some years.
>
>   For my workstation (desktop and laptop) use, I've been very happy
>   with Fedora, but it sure has a firehose of updates.  I don't think
>   that it is affected directly by any of this.  But if a lot of people
>   migrate away from Red Hat stuff, it won't likely be good for Fedora.
>
>   It feels as if RH steers the future of Linux by making so many
>   contributions.
>
> - Ubuntu LTS + fresh Ubuntu has been pretty good.  I've had more
>   problems with package updates on Ubuntu than of Fedora, but it has
>   been pretty good.  Distro version upgrades have been good but not
>   perfect in my modest experience.
>
>   Canonical has repeatedly acted in ways that offend or scare me.  So
>   Ubuntu, although easy, feels like a potential trap.
>
> - debian Stable + Testing + Unstable.  I don't have much experience
>   with debian.  I fear that the lack of full-time paid engineers might
>   reduce the safety relative to RH (that could easily just be FUD).
>   debian's goals are good by me.
>
> So: I'm thinking of switching to debian.
>
> I'd like to learn from others.  How do you choose to solve these
> problems?  Maybe some of them are non-problems.
>
> ================
>
> Giles has a problem with needing a stable distro with a more recent
> FireFox.  I suggested, against my preferences, that this might be a
> perfect use for Snaps/Flatpacks.
>
> I wonder if I should be using a stable distro everywhere but with
> containerized upgraded packages where they matter.  I yet don't think
> so.
>
> The rest of my family uses Fedora on their workstations.  But they
> hate applying updates (even when I do the work).  They are way behind
> most of the time.  Maybe a stable distro + a fresh FireFox would be
> best for them too.
>
> How many other packages would I need to have fresher-than-stable?
>
> - support for newer hardware
>
> - compilers etc.
>
> - more pain-points would be discovered.
>
> ================
>
> A fundamental problem is that feature changes and bug fixes are
> usually mingled in upstream.  In some cases, it is a false
> distinction.  Few developers want to maintain a bunch of old releases.
> It is very hard for a distro to correctly separate these two, and yet
> that is required to maintain a stable distro.
> ---
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