https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/dear-red-hat-are-you-dumb Skip to main content Jeff Geerling Main menu * Blog * Projects * About Dear Red Hat: Are you dumb? June 22, 2023 I've had a busy week, so I didn't have time until today to read this news about Red Hat locking down RHEL sources behind a Red Hat subscription. I repeat the title: Red Hat, are you dumb? When Red Hat decided to turn the community CentOS distribution into a leading-edge distro instead of basically "Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but free", users like me were justifiably angered. I don't contribute to CentOS or Red Hat development much, if at all. But I have, for over a decade, provided software and tools that were compatible with RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, and sometimes other more exotic distros. I could test my stuff against CentOS Stream... or UBI... or Fedora. Those are mostly like RHEL. Or I could try linking a Red Hat Developer subscription to my test runners and build tools so I could use a licensed copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, because that would be required for... actually ensuring compatibility. But that's dumb. So at this point, I have to say: fool me once, Red Hat--shame on you. Fool me twice? At this point I'm determining whether I want to continue supporting just Fedora, or just dropping all support for RHEL and RHEL-like distributions on my open source projects. It's not worth the hassle if I'm not even sure projects like Rocky or Alma Linux can fill in the gap left by CentOS's demise for users like me. And no, please don't post "but you can use your Red Hat Developer Subscription!" I don't have to with Debian. Or Ubuntu. Or Arch. Or... you get the point. Update: Just wanted to point out two official statements, one from Alma Linux, another from Rocky Linux. Further reading * Cracks are showing in Enterprise Open Source's foundations * Installing the Asahi Linux Alpha on my M1 Mac mini * I'm thankful for GitHub, Patreon, and my sponsors this year linux red hat open source * Add new comment Comments Jeff Geerling - 4 hours ago It pains me to write this, because there are many people within Red Hat who are amazing folks who I respect greatly. And Red Hat still supports and promotes a ton of great OSS work. I am just mystified by the direction they've taken their bread-and-butter Linux distribution and the community around it. Also, see more context around the announcement from: Alma Linux, Rocky Linux * Reply Tekchip - 1 hour ago In reply to It pains me to write this,... by Jeff Geerling I.B.M. * Reply spl757 - 1 hour ago In reply to It pains me to write this,... by Jeff Geerling We can't have nice things because of greed. * Reply Stavros - 3 hours ago Yes... Ubuntu also has a subscription for some security updates... * Reply Grey Hodge - 2 hours ago I'm very disappointed but nor surprised. RH was early to the game and made good moves to become a PROFITABLE Linux company through authority over time. But this is also why I don't USE Red Hat, the management makes weird decisions sometimes that are very much user-hostile, like this, the CentOS purchase, etc. I have no doubt they'll be around for a long time, and they'll continue to do good work on OSS and make money, but as a USER I can't trust them. * Reply Annatar - 2 hours ago Red Hat was always a company of B and C players. It's a company staffed by idiots, for idiots. * Reply Big Purple sho... - 2 hours ago They still publish the tags on the CentOS stream git repo. This is a non-story. * Reply Hakan Bayindir - 18 min ago In reply to They still publish the tags... by Big Purple sho... CentOS stream is beta software. It's not deemed stable, and is not bug to bug compatible with RHEL. What Alma and Rocky are bug-for-bug, drop-in replacements for RHEL, and they are being used by pretty serious infrastructures maintained by people who know what they are doing and need no support. This move dynamites a lot of production systems compromised of hundreds, if not thousands of instances which run 24/7/365 without any support from RedHat. * Reply JonEffinZoidberg - 2 hours ago I've been a huge supporter & user of CentOS for nearly 2 decades. I've also been a supporter of Rocky linux since they were announced.. But I no longer use Fedora/CentOS in my home labs. I've switched over to Ubuntu. I don't even provide software to others, but as someone who depends on reliability for the companies I work for we've started using far less Red Hat software. My new parent company has even switched to Oracle linux over RHEL because of their crazy behavior. So even people who used to use direct RHEL have switched over to Oracle which I dislike. But there's nothing I can do. * Reply jemisa - 2 hours ago You should change your title to 'Dear IBM: Are you dump?" * Reply Cristian Paul - 1 hour ago A reminder that free software is not "gratis" but "libre" and you can always charge for it. How bad is this from a marketing point of view, that's not for me to understand since I don't work at RedHat... That's a reminder that corporation behind free/open source projects its always dangerous compared with community driven projects like Debian "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible--just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding." https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html * Reply Bryan J Smith - 1 hour ago I agree on most everything you stated. However ... I wouldn't use LTS as an argument against Stream. They are a lot more alike than not. E.g., there is this catch-22 now ... LTS fanboy (then): "I cannot believe Red Hat hasn't patched this customer bugfix or security hole that is already upstream! Even Fedora has it!" LTS fanboy (now): "I cannot believe Stream is backporting and patching all bugs and security holes immediately! That's unstable!" RHEL is for when you only want high/important/critical security fixes, and nothing else. You wait for the next update X.Y+1 for the roll-up of all customer bugfixes and security patches. Stream is for when you want all customer bugfixes and all security fixes as they exit the Red Hat build & unit-integration-regression test system.that feed all RHEL packages as well, but are not held back. Can't have it both ways. But I agree it's wrong for Red Hat to cut off the SRPMS. But I wouldn't use LTS as an example against Stream. Stream stands on its own very, very well, right down to the backporting and kABI of the RHEL release. It just doesn't wait for the next update to release bugfixes and lower risk security patches. * Reply SpikeWatchdog - 1 hour ago You better write "IBM are you dumb?" . IBM ... when Idiots Become Managers is between my favorite ones (ex IBMer here). * Reply Mike Butash - 56 min ago I'd more than lost faith along the way with RH (Linux user since 2000) once the hard sell began for RHEL vs. CentOS began long before Stream, and Fedora was just always some bastard cousin of theirs to me. The IBM acquisition just signaled doom, where anyone that's been around this industry any amount of time knows no good will come from that. IBM will never innovate, they'll simply squeeze the rock harder to bleed it for pension payments. Full time Ubuntu user since 2006, later Arch since 2018. I only do Cent/RH when a vendor product requires only it. * Reply Search [ ] [Search] Geerling Family Crest All content copyright Jeff Geerling. Top of page.