[HN Gopher] Red Hat announces no-cost RHEL for small production ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Red Hat announces no-cost RHEL for small production environments
        
       Author : IceWreck
       Score  : 97 points
       Date   : 2021-01-20 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.redhat.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.redhat.com)
        
       | Cuuugi wrote:
       | I'm thinking this news is related.
       | 
       | https://www.servethehome.com/red-hat-goes-full-ibm-and-says-...
       | 
       | I'd still prefer CentOS lived, this is probably meant to keep
       | people from grabbing pitchforks.
        
       | broknbottle wrote:
       | meh if you don't want to use centos stream then I would just
       | switch to openSUSE Leap. Zypper is very similar to yum/dnf, so
       | it's not like your switching to apt/apt-get or alpine apk and
       | learning completely different package manager.
        
         | BossingAround wrote:
         | Is openSUSE Leap more stable than CentOS Stream?
        
           | nix23 wrote:
           | I would say they are the same (LEAP and Centos (not stream)),
           | you can change instantly to SLES if you need too. Leap15 =
           | SLES15, Leap15.1 = SLES15sp1 and so on.
        
         | type0 wrote:
         | Thumbs up for OpenSUSE, RH should have taken an example from
         | how closely SUSE operates with the community, sadly I think Red
         | Hat is too big and too corporate to give a damn now.
        
           | strzibny wrote:
           | I wish OpenSUSE has more love, but it's important to realize
           | some differences are still there. Namely:
           | 
           | 1, OpenSUSE Leap cannot do full version upgrades 2, They use
           | AppArmor instead of SELinux 3, Support is shorter than CentOS
           | Stream[0]
           | 
           | [0] https://nts.strzibny.name/how-long-will-be-centos-stream-
           | sup...
        
       | choeger wrote:
       | The production licenses for RHEL are certainly expensive, but
       | it's not my job to decide whether they are worth it. My job is to
       | develop and ship software to customers that used to run Ubuntu,
       | CentOS, and sometimes RHEL. To compile/build/package that
       | software we use docker containers, which provide nice isolation
       | and hygiene and also guarantee user-space ABI compatibility to
       | the target system. What I'd like to know: How can I user
       | containers to develop for RHEL now? Is there some "short-lived"
       | clause I could depend on or do I have to buy a license for every
       | container I might want to spin up?
        
         | chasil wrote:
         | Red Hat offers a "no support" server license for $350/year,
         | which is the lowest licensing tier. Tiers with more capability
         | and support are available for $800, and $1300.
         | 
         | https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-hat-enterprise-linux-ser...
         | 
         | Oracle has a larger range of tiers. The "no support" license is
         | $120/year. Tiers with more capability and support are available
         | for $500, $1200, $1400, and $2300.
         | 
         | Oracle Linux can be used in production without a paid license
         | of any kind; Red Hat Linux cannot be used in this way for large
         | deployments (excepting the new 16-seat license for a developer
         | account).
         | 
         | Red Hat is aggressive with software audits; I have seen one.
         | 
         | https://www.oracle.com/linux/
         | 
         | Both Oracle and Red Hat now have complete toolsets to convert
         | support between an installed CentOS/RedHat/Oracle OS.
         | 
         | Red Hat can now convert an installed CentOS or Oracle Linux to
         | RHEL; previously a wipe and reinstall was required ("have fun
         | reinstalling your system" is still on Oracle's CentOS site).
         | The description looks much more thorough in replacing all
         | possible packages with Red Hat versions:
         | 
         | https://access.redhat.com/articles/2360841
         | 
         | Oracle does not replace CentOS or RedHat RPMs in their
         | conversion (AFAIK), so it is much less violent on the platform
         | changes.
         | 
         | https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol
         | 
         | https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos/
         | 
         | https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/reasons-for-switching-centos-...
         | 
         | Red Hat has terminated two major platforms over the last two
         | decades - the original Red Hat Linux, which was terminated at
         | v9, and now CentOS.
         | 
         | Oracle has "somewhat" terminated a platform, Oracle Linux for
         | SPARC, which was only supported for two minor releases. The
         | Linux for ARM64 and AMD64/x86 seem reasonably healthy.
         | 
         | There is other baggage in and between these corporations, but
         | the track record on Linux OS platforms between these two is
         | demonstrably different.
        
           | severino wrote:
           | > Oracle has a larger range of tiers. The "no support"
           | license is $120/year.
           | 
           | > Oracle Linux can be used in production without a paid
           | license of any kind
           | 
           | So... what offers this $120/year "no support" license when
           | you can use it with no cost at all for production?
        
           | technick wrote:
           | My previous employer from 2017 was paying around $68 per
           | license from Red Hat and it didn't include support. It wasn't
           | a massive volume deal either, had less than 50 RHEL servers
           | in the environment.
        
             | chasil wrote:
             | We shifted a bunch of Red Hat licenses to a hosting
             | provider, and Red Hat auditors showed up.
             | 
             | Oracle does the same thing, but they don't care about OS
             | licensing. One thing that they do care about is the
             | extended support (RPM updates after end of life).
        
           | dralley wrote:
           | >Oracle has "somewhat" terminated a platform, Oracle Linux
           | for SPARC, which was only supported for two minor releases.
           | The Linux for ARM64 and AMD64/x86 seem reasonably healthy.
           | 
           | You're forgetting:
           | 
           | * They killed OpenSolaris by making it proprietary again
           | 
           | * They effectively killed Solaris (formerly OpenSolaris)
           | without the formality of making it official
           | dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-
           | life-of-solaris/
        
             | chasil wrote:
             | I did say "track record on Linux OS platforms," but I will
             | grant you that Solaris has contracted under Oracle.
             | 
             | However, there is a long list of platforms that would never
             | have survived elsewhere. JD Edwards, Peoplesoft, and Siebel
             | are prime examples.
             | 
             | And I am still using the Oracle RDB database platform.
             | 
             | Red Hat would have euthanized all of these long, long ago.
        
               | dralley wrote:
               | Do you not find it slightly unfair to count RHL, which
               | began in 1995 and ended in 2003, when Oracle Linux wasn't
               | released until 2006?
        
               | chasil wrote:
               | At the time, it ended a major professional chapter of my
               | life.
               | 
               | I do not consider it unfair.
        
           | syshum wrote:
           | The $350 license has some real limits to it
           | 
           | 1. It clearly states "Not for Production" on the license
           | 
           | 2. It says it can not be stacked with other license, I am not
           | sure if that means you can only have this license and not
           | others in the environment
           | 
           | 3. the biggest is Physical hardware Only, no VM's.
        
         | dralley wrote:
         | Look into the RHEL Universal Base Image.
         | 
         | https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/introducing-red-hat-universal...
         | 
         | https://developers.redhat.com/articles/ubi-faq#introduction
         | 
         | re: licensing, the FAQ says:                   Do I need a
         | subscription to use UBI?
         | 
         | _No, the Red Hat Universal Base Images and all associated
         | content can be used for development and deployment without the
         | need for a Red Hat subscription. However, for a fully supported
         | operational experience and access to an expanded list of non-
         | UBI tools, containers built on UBI must be deployed on a Red
         | Hat platform such as OpenShift or RHEL._
         | 
         | Accessing non-UBI content does require a Red Hat subscription.
        
       | hiram112 wrote:
       | I'd love to support RHEL financially, both on the server and on
       | the development laptop. But I just don't trust that any of this
       | extra cash flow they may see will go towards anything but 5% IBM
       | dividends, obscene executive and sales salaries, with nothing
       | left over for R&D and especially continued American jobs (IBM is
       | basically an Indian company, now).
       | 
       | I hope my large government customers ditch RHEL for something
       | else - maybe a derivative that's home grown.
        
       | chomp wrote:
       | I appreciate the thought, but am still miffed at the "embrace,
       | extend, extinguish" that caught me off guard here. I can't
       | exactly pull out too many pitch forks because CentOS did let me
       | enjoy some of their packaging labor for free.
       | 
       | It's obvious in retrospect that their intention was to pull this
       | when they acquired the CentOS project - plotting to turn CentOS
       | into a RHEL on-ramp while dressing it as an embrace of the
       | community feels like a kick in the groin.
       | 
       | Also, 16 servers is barely enough for tech companies caught by
       | this, and is less of a good will gesture, and more subscription
       | growth hacking.
        
       | ehutch79 wrote:
       | I had to wade through a bunch of modals, and then the page kept
       | jumping around...
       | 
       | Doesn't engender a bunch of trust.
        
       | ArcMex wrote:
       | Works for my current use case. Will still keep my eye on Rocky.
        
       | ogre_codes wrote:
       | In other news, farmer Bob announces that he's closed the barn
       | doors and asks all the cows which left to please come home.
        
       | awill wrote:
       | First, they should have announced this when they killed CentOS.
       | 
       | Second, this is only of value to the teeny tiny companies and
       | individual users with a single server in their home. Small
       | companies with any expectation of growth should probably just use
       | Rocky instead from the get go.
       | 
       | I have a single server in my home running CentOS 7. I gain
       | nothing by using RHEL over Rocky in the future, except with RHEL
       | I have to accept ToS, do some subscription checks, and run the
       | risk that Red Hat cancels this programme down the road. I only
       | see this of value for someone who actually runs real RHEL in
       | prod, and needs to test/validate hardware/software. For anyone
       | just wanting 'free' RHEL, they should just use Rocky.
        
         | ehayes wrote:
         | I manage a "tiny company", but we have 10-ish production CentOS
         | 7/8 servers and this sounds interesting. Although my web-app
         | use case is probably fine with Stream, I don't know why
         | everyone is assuming Stream will be completely broken and
         | useless.
        
           | 1337shadow wrote:
           | Okay but I can't help but think about the social security in
           | my country which I know runs likely to be more than hundreds
           | of CentOS servers ... It's not like social security is a
           | company making any profits, it's even the opposite, and now
           | they are in such situation.
        
           | ziml77 wrote:
           | It's not that the expectation is that it will be broken and
           | useless. It's that the reason to choose CentOS was for the
           | fact that it has slow release cycles which allow for long
           | support periods.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | > I don't know why everyone is assuming Stream will be
           | completely broken and useless.
           | 
           | It probably wont be _completely_ broken and useless, but they
           | replaced a stable OS with a beta, which is particularly
           | galling to many users who picked that OS _specifically_
           | because it was so stable.
        
             | freedomben wrote:
             | Curious, do you consider Fedora to be an alpha? Did you
             | consider RHEL to be a beta for CentOS previously?
             | 
             | Just trying to see how you define "beta"
        
               | eropple wrote:
               | To me, Fedora is a desktop environment (my preferred
               | one!) and absolutely an alpha/early-beta server option at
               | best.
               | 
               | CentOS Stream seems like "Fedora, again" and does not do
               | what CentOS did. And now, the willingness to blow up
               | CentOS with so little warning means there is a massive
               | trust deficit here.
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | > Curious, do you consider Fedora to be an alpha?
               | 
               | Slightly detached because of their processing/release
               | process (Fedora X never quite matched to RHEL Y even if
               | there was some derivation), but yes, Fedora is absolutely
               | the alpha for RHEL. It gets changes, including breaking
               | changes, on a fast track (IIRC, Fedora frequently goes
               | toe-to-toe with _Arch_ for having the most recent
               | packages), has a 13-month lifecycle with a strong
               | expectation that you 'll `dnf system-upgrade` regularly,
               | and doesn't shy away from pushing on tech that they
               | believe to be desirable even if it's not (yet) widely
               | used (Wayland, BTRFS, CGroupsV2).
               | 
               | > Did you consider RHEL to be a beta for CentOS
               | previously?
               | 
               | Now _that 's_ an interesting point that actually makes me
               | stop and consider:) It is true that previously CentOS
               | could legitimately claim to be even more stable/slow-
               | moving than RHEL. I think the distinction that I would
               | make is that RHEL had its own betas that were called
               | betas, and that each point release was frozen/stable
               | until the next one came along, while Stream is explicitly
               | unfrozen all the time. So yes, I suppose a person _could_
               | have described RHEL as CentOS 's beta, although probably
               | only jokingly because it still had Red Hat supporting it
               | and feature freezes to control changes.
        
               | awill wrote:
               | I think you're digging in the wrong place, and focusing
               | on the label. This shouldn't be kicking fedora down. It
               | has a place, as does stream.
               | 
               | The point is that with CentOS you expect a super stable
               | release. Red Hat replaced that with what is clearly a
               | less stable project. And as was said before, if you used
               | CentOS, it's probably precisely because you want
               | something super stable with long term support. Those are
               | not the sorts of users who'll want to use Stream.
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | Many people use CentOS to run "Enterprise" software that
           | expects to be run on RHEL.
        
             | alexhutcheson wrote:
             | Those are probably the users that RedHat is trying to nudge
             | onto RHEL. "Enterprise" software is normally quite
             | expensive, so the marginal cost of some RHEL Server
             | licenses is probably a small fraction of the total cost of
             | deploying the software in most cases.
             | 
             | More generally, orgs that are running "Enterprise" software
             | are already set up to pay for software. Going from spending
             | $X to spending $X+Y is often not a big deal ("Ok, I'll run
             | that through the same process I used to get approval for
             | buying FooSoftWorks"), while going from $0 to $Y can be
             | very hard ("I don't even know who I'd need to ask to get
             | purchase approval for that").
        
               | oarsinsync wrote:
               | > Going from spending $X to spending $X+Y is often not a
               | big deal
               | 
               | Except when $Y == $1000X. Then it really _is_ a big deal.
               | 
               | When you only have a tiny minority of RHEL hosts that you
               | have full support contracts on, and an overwhelming
               | majority of CentOS hosts that you administer in-house, it
               | really isn't trivial.
               | 
               | It's almost certainly cheaper to migrate to Oracle or
               | Rocky. Migrations aren't cheap either.
        
         | arbitrage wrote:
         | they didn't have this when they announced the death of centos.
         | this is what they scrambled to come up with when they realized
         | how much of an "oops" move messing with centos really was.
         | 
         | as a peace offering to prevent mindshare from fleeing the
         | redhat ecosystem, i am underwhelmed. i don't think that redhat
         | really realizes yet how cheesed off this made a lot of people.
         | 
         | being shrewish about money is one thing; we can deal with that
         | (see: oracle, IBM). it's really the complete unpredictability
         | and how arrogantly hamfisted this centos debacle was. I can put
         | up with a lot of shit in my job, but what i especially don't
         | like or need is more unreliable unpredictable shit.
        
           | chasil wrote:
           | Oh, I think they know at this point.
           | 
           | https://devops.com/centos-rebellion-against-red-hat-gains-
           | mo...
           | 
           | https://www.infoworld.com/article/3601202/red-hats-crime-
           | aga...
           | 
           | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/centos-linux-is-
           | gone...
        
         | pinewurst wrote:
         | It's easy enough to suggest "just use Rocky" but Rocky doesn't
         | exist beyond a collective promise. What about production now,
         | or in the next few months?
        
           | awill wrote:
           | Agreed. But Rocky is supposed to launch before CentOS 8 is
           | EOL. There should be time to wait and migrate.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | > What about production now, or in the next few months?
           | 
           | Pay for RHEL, use CentOS 7, or switch to Ubuntu.
        
             | merlinscholz wrote:
             | Even though it sounds bad, Oracle Linux works surprisingly
             | well
        
               | alexhutcheson wrote:
               | This page has some interesting details:
               | https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos/
        
               | type0 wrote:
               | It's not just that it sounds bad, you'd have to be
               | willing to sell your soul to the devil.
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | As I remarked to a RH employee when the CentOS 8
               | discontinuation came out - do you have any idea how much
               | trust you have to burn that people are considering
               | _Oracle_ as the good option?
        
               | smnrchrds wrote:
               | RH would have minded. IBM doesn't. They may even take
               | being compared to Oracle as a compliment.
        
               | rescbr wrote:
               | I have heard my share of "at least we aren't Oracle"
               | while I was at IBM :)
        
               | smnrchrds wrote:
               | That reminds me of Animal Farm.
        
             | brnt wrote:
             | Whats wrong with Centos Stream?
        
             | doublerabbit wrote:
             | Or scrap all three and start using *BSD.
        
               | MindTooth wrote:
               | This seems more and more to be the reality we are moving
               | towards. Been dabbling with FreeBSD lately and it just
               | works. Also, ports are updated or new submitted quite
               | often making it feel less out of date.
        
           | conductor wrote:
           | There is also AlmaLinux [0], expected to be available in Q1
           | 2021.
           | 
           | [0] https://almalinux.org/
        
           | macksd wrote:
           | I believe CentOS images are still available and supported as
           | much as they were before through the rest of this year, fwiw.
        
         | dralley wrote:
         | (RH Employee)
         | 
         | > First, they should have announced this when they killed
         | CentOS.
         | 
         | I agree.
         | 
         | >Second, this is only of value to the teeny tiny companies and
         | individual users with a single server in their home. Small
         | companies with any expectation of growth should probably just
         | use Rocky instead from the get go.
         | 
         | Without saying too much - stay tuned for further announcements.
        
           | justapassenger wrote:
           | > Without saying too much - stay tuned for further
           | announcements.
           | 
           | It's a horrible way to treat users.
           | 
           | They aren't paying customers, so whatever for RH short-term
           | bottom line. But amount of community backslash approach like
           | that is bringing can have negative long term impact.
           | 
           | RH pulled the rug from under the people, and is telling them
           | to stay tuned. I wouldn't base my infra on a system like
           | that.
           | 
           | But that's good for overall Linux community - RH has way too
           | much power there.
        
           | arbitrage wrote:
           | yeah, stop playing games, redhat? just say what you're going
           | to say already. i have no idea why you're trying to focus so
           | hard on building mindshare, building a mystery around it like
           | you're a sarah mclachlan tribute band, but you already blew
           | it. go back to what you're good at, please.
        
           | lucideer wrote:
           | I understand as an RH employee you're likely not in a
           | position to make decisions about what you can disclose when,
           | but... (I'm sure you're aware) your first answer contradicts
           | your second.
        
             | dralley wrote:
             | There's no contradiction, only an acknowledgement that (in
             | my personal opinion) the piecemeal way these plans are
             | being announced is understandably frustrating, but that
             | they are legitimately serious about making RHEL easier to
             | use across a spectrum of use cases (which the official post
             | is pretty clear about).
        
               | LeifCarrotson wrote:
               | It's worse than frustrating, it's damaging for Red Hat.
               | 
               | It doesn't matter much to me anymore, I've already
               | migrated my small business internal server that was
               | running Centos 7 to Debian. We had basically just a
               | fileserver, FTP box, and a couple VMs for some time
               | clock, wiki, and building security systems, so nothing we
               | were running yet was CentOS specific.
               | 
               | But in case it can be useful to you, please share with
               | your team that the writing they're putting on the wall
               | looks pretty bad. Knowing I'd have to update eventually,
               | I just took the safe option, _which is no longer any
               | distro controlled by Red Hat._ I didn 't want to leave
               | our server in a state where we could be building
               | dependencies on a platform that was likely to be pulled
               | out from under us, and while RHEL isn't too expensive to
               | just buy for one server, and we might have qualified for
               | something free or something you've not yet announced, my
               | test was surprisingly painless and the migration was
               | easier than I anticipated.
        
           | chasil wrote:
           | Red Hat was not expecting the reaction to killing CentOS.
           | 
           | The need to expand the developer program into production
           | seats could not have been anticipated.
           | 
           | I don't know of any other vendor that wraps developer
           | accounts into production licenses.
           | 
           | Notice that this access is in no way promised to the end of
           | support for RHEL 8.
           | 
           | I will say again, Red Hat has terminated two major Linux
           | platforms over the last two decades - the original Red Hat
           | Linux, which was terminated at v9, and now CentOS.
           | 
           | Oracle has "somewhat" terminated a Linux platform, Oracle
           | Linux for SPARC, which was only supported for two minor
           | releases. Oracle Linux for ARM64 and AMD64/x86 seem
           | reasonably healthy.
           | 
           | There is other baggage in and between these corporations, but
           | the track record on Linux OS platforms between these two is
           | demonstrably different.
           | 
           | The free converters between them should be used fluidly.
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | > The need to expand the developer program into production
             | seats could not have been anticipated.
             | 
             | I don't follow. Are you suggesting that RH actually didn't
             | realize that people were running CentOS at scale in
             | production?
        
               | chasil wrote:
               | I see the decision to convert to CentOS stream as driven
               | by two motivations, cost containment, and facilitating
               | outside contributions by pushing CentOS towards Fedora
               | (and away from RHEL stability).
               | 
               | I might be misreading these motivations.
               | 
               | With this management perspective, the CentOS community
               | reaction to the retraction of the end of life date, and
               | potential reduction in stability, was likely not
               | anticipated.
        
               | BossingAround wrote:
               | > pushing CentOS towards Fedora (and away from RHEL
               | stability)
               | 
               | CentOS streams is literally RHEL with fixed major version
               | and rolling minor versions. So, in the past, you got
               | CentOS 7.1, then 7.2, etc., with streams, you get CentOS
               | 8.x.
               | 
               | Saying that this is moving away from RHEL stability
               | sounds highly disingenuous. Are you saying you've seen
               | RHEL 7.X to break as opposed to 7.(X-1) version, and your
               | solution was to wait for RHEL 7.(X+1)?
        
               | chasil wrote:
               | Is a "preview" as stable as the base release?
               | 
               | Are we not reading this correctly? If not, could you get
               | Red Hat's CTO to retract this [mis]information?
               | 
               | 'Another official part of it is, as [Chris] Wright
               | [RedHat CTO] said, is that CentOS Stream as a "rolling
               | preview" of what's next in RHEL, both in terms of kernels
               | and features can be used in today's containerized, cloud-
               | native IT world.'
               | 
               | https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-red-hat-dumped-centos-
               | for-...
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | > CentOS streams is literally RHEL with fixed major
               | version and rolling minor versions. So, in the past, you
               | got CentOS 7.1, then 7.2, etc., with streams, you get
               | CentOS 8.x.
               | 
               | > Saying that this is moving away from RHEL stability
               | sounds highly disingenuous.
               | 
               | If it were so great, they'd do the same for paying
               | customers. That they don't move RHEL to being just 8.X
               | makes me think that Red Hat does in fact understand that
               | that undermines the stability of the platform.
        
             | goatinaboat wrote:
             | _Red Hat was not expecting the reaction to killing CentOS._
             | 
             | It's funny how everyone still says Red Hat when we mean
             | IBM.
        
         | barryrandall wrote:
         | Scientific Linux (sponsored by Fermilab) is a CentOS-like
         | rebuild of RedHat Enterprise Linux and might also be worth a
         | look. https://scientificlinux.org/
        
           | alexhutcheson wrote:
           | Fermilab discontinued work on Scientific Linux in 2019 in
           | favor of using CentOS:
           | https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=SCIENTIFIC-
           | LINUX...
           | 
           | It's possible they could choose to restart work on Scientific
           | Linux, but nothing has been announced yet.
        
       | tux1968 wrote:
       | Honestly these seem like pretty generous and useful offerings. I
       | appreciate the commitment they make to not use them as a sales
       | channel as well. Will be interesting to see what else is offered
       | in the coming February announcement.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | It's generous as long as you ignore the fact that CentOS used
         | to cover all of these usecases without any restrictions on what
         | you could use it for or how many servers you could use it on,
         | for free, with no licensing or registration.
        
           | tux1968 wrote:
           | But since we aren't entitled to any free product at all, it
           | seems unkind to criticize someone for not giving as much for
           | free as they once did. It's still generous, even if
           | previously it was more so.
        
             | runlevel1 wrote:
             | We are as entitled to it as we are to the Linux kernel on
             | which it's based.
             | 
             | That's the cost of building a product on GPL2 licensed
             | software.
             | 
             | The CentOS project itself wasn't started by Red Hat. It was
             | given to them with the expectation that they would be good
             | stewards of it. In killing its core mission, they haven't
             | been.
             | 
             | EDIT: Clarify sentence.
        
               | tux1968 wrote:
               | > We are as entitled to it as we are to the Linux kernel
               | on which it's based.
               | 
               | Are you claiming they are in violation of the GPL
               | license? I believe they still are 100% in compliance.
               | 
               | > The CentOS project itself wasn't started by Red Hat. It
               | was given to them with the expectation that they would be
               | good stewards of it. They haven't.
               | 
               | They stepped in to stewardship of the product quite
               | naturally, with the full backing of the previous
               | stewards. Nobody was forced into that agreement. It
               | wasn't given to them as a gift, Red Hat has sponsored the
               | project for the last 6+ years. The fact that you disagree
               | with the direction it has since gone, does not mean it's
               | wrong. It may be the difference between having something
               | more modest, and having nothing at all.
               | 
               | And if you want something closer to the original CentOS
               | check out:
               | 
               | https://rockylinux.org/
               | 
               | Which was created by the CentOS founder.
        
               | runlevel1 wrote:
               | > Are you claiming they are in violation of the GPL
               | license?
               | 
               | I'm not, they are indeed compliant, and Red Hat is not
               | obligated to directly maintain CentOS. They are only
               | obligated to provide the source to customers under the
               | terms of the GPL.
               | 
               | However, if Red Hat no longer wants to maintain CentOS in
               | the spirit in which it was founded and taken over, I'd
               | argue the ethical thing to do would be to spin the
               | project back out of Red Hat.
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | > But since we aren't entitled to any free product at all,
             | it seems unkind to criticize someone for not giving as much
             | for free as they once did.
             | 
             | Like... sorta? On the other hand, they went on the record
             | saying that they would support CentOS 8 through 2029 [0],
             | so I think it's reasonable to be unhappy with them for
             | going back on that even in the absence of a monetary
             | relationship.
             | 
             | [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20201101131417/https://wiki
             | .cent...
        
               | tux1968 wrote:
               | Yes, I can understand being upset about it, but think
               | such anger should be tempered by no fee being paid and no
               | contractual obligation being breeched. It seems to me if
               | you're in a situation where you truly depend on such a
               | commitment, you should be paying for a contract with
               | someone, not hoping for the best. Had Red Hat not been
               | supporting CentOS for over 6 years, it may have fallen
               | apart even sooner. Who knows.
               | 
               | So while this is disruptive and bound to be upsetting,
               | Red Hat are still being quite generous with their new
               | offerings. And as far as I know, they are not standing in
               | the way of CentOS replacements such as Rocky[0] or
               | Lenix[1].
               | 
               | [0] https://rockylinux.org/ [1]
               | https://www.projectlenix.org/
        
       | tpetry wrote:
       | That is an interesting move. But with more and more organizations
       | moving to dockerized services the real servers operating system
       | is no longer that relevant. I do know that rhel provides free
       | access to a subset of rhel packages for docker image building but
       | so many packages are missing that you can't reslly use it.
       | 
       | So next step for rhel, allowing dockerized rhel images would be
       | nice. That is a real hurting point you created by your centos
       | change!
        
         | dralley wrote:
         | That's already a thing
         | https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/introducing-red-hat-universal...
        
           | geerlingguy wrote:
           | As someone who started testing things with UBI images, I have
           | found them to not be that great in terms of predicting how
           | things behave installed under CentOS or RHEL. There are a lot
           | of seemingly minor packaging differences that cause annoying
           | issues when you go to deploy the same stuff on a real RHEL
           | box.
        
           | tpetry wrote:
           | And as i said the rhel images for docker and supported
           | packages in the registry is very very limited, you will miss
           | a lot of packages.
        
       | strzibny wrote:
       | As a formal Red Hat packager, I am quite happy to see this
       | change. Before I could not use RHEL to run my side project, but
       | now I can!
       | 
       | Also 16 is actually not a small number, people with Kubernetes
       | orchestration sometimes forget how much you can run on a single
       | machine :).
       | 
       | I am even considering adding and marketing RHEL for my book[0]
       | since the difference is just the registration.
       | 
       | Speaking of which, if you use Vagrant, have a look at vagrant-
       | registration. It can register your box automatically (I am the
       | original author).
       | 
       | [0] https://deploymentfromscratch.com/
        
       | kodah wrote:
       | The weird thing here is the consistent recommendation of
       | corporate backed distributions. Debian has existed for quite some
       | time without any need for a corporation. Are there problems? Yes,
       | but Debian isn't going to suddenly announce that it's going to
       | kill itself either. I would suggest getting involved in the
       | Debian community (without trying to take it over), and making
       | meaningful contributions.
       | 
       | If you don't like Debian, pick an open source distribution that
       | is not backed by a business and begin sending the money you
       | would've dumped into subscriptions as donations.
        
       | symlinkk wrote:
       | Cmon, drop the requirement to activate it with an account
       | already, what year is this? No one is going to use this over
       | Ubuntu, even if it is free, if there's that extra step in there.
        
       | tw04 wrote:
       | I think they will come to regret this move in the long run. With
       | Amazon signing up to sponsor rocky linux, it's only a matter of
       | time before the user base moves there vs. dealing with all the
       | headaches of "free" RHEL.
       | 
       | Especially given that they won't make any commitments to long
       | term availability beyond "we have no intent".
       | 
       | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/01/centos-is-gone-but-r...
       | 
       | >We have no intent to end this program and we've set it up to be
       | sustainable
       | 
       | https://rockylinux.org/
        
         | kodah wrote:
         | 16 servers in a data center is probably a medium sized
         | business, if not a larger small business that does zero
         | virtualization. 16 servers in the cloud that are rightly sized
         | sounds incredibly small.
         | 
         | I can't imagine this will sell many people much less attract
         | former CentOS users. Given the fact that they've changed course
         | so quickly on CentOS stream I can't imagine there's much good
         | user faith to go around.
         | 
         | To me, this was much bigger than just a shot in the foot.
        
       | tpetry wrote:
       | How does rhel count these ,,up to 16 systems"? So if i am using
       | 16 physical servers with at least two virtual vmware vms on each
       | machine.
       | 
       | Is that setup still 16 systems or do they count the number of
       | virtual machines?
        
         | strzibny wrote:
         | No, I think they count every virtual machine/container.
         | 
         | Btw. I did not check, it's possible it's based on number of
         | CPUs or smth.
        
           | strzibny wrote:
           | Ok, I apologize, I wasn't sure about containers. It seems you
           | don't count containers per se, but they have to run a base
           | RHEL system.
        
       | bassman9000 wrote:
       | If still you need to login to access repos, same stuff.
        
       | isuckatcoding wrote:
       | What is RHEL?
        
         | technofiend wrote:
         | Red Hat Enterprise Linux. RHEL is a stable platform for
         | businesses to run their apps on; they port upstream code fixes
         | to their kernel and distribution and offer support for a price.
         | 
         | Now that Centos and RHEL will no longer be in lockstep, some
         | people are looking for alternatives. The upgrade from 1 RHEL
         | license to 16 is a way for Red Hat to try and retain small
         | projects and let home labbers and evangelists legally replace
         | Centos rather than switch.
        
         | scarmig wrote:
         | Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
         | 
         | For context, CentOS was a popular Linux distro that tracked
         | RHEL, being mostly identical except for not requiring a support
         | package. Red Hat stopped supporting it, which put a lot of its
         | users in a bind. This is intended to replace it.
        
       | strzibny wrote:
       | I love this change. Will probably run things on RHEL now.
        
         | type0 wrote:
         | Why not CentOS Stream?
        
           | strzibny wrote:
           | I will start with CentOS Stream, but might actually switch to
           | RHEL later.
           | 
           | I don't really have a good rationale hah, but I was working
           | for Red Hat and it could be cool to finally run my side
           | project on RHEL.
        
       | beck5 wrote:
       | As a bit of a self taught sysadmin who only touches Ubuntu/Debian
       | based systems due there ubiquity, could someone explain the
       | benefits of using RHEL?
        
         | tene wrote:
         | The big difference to me is that Red Hat family distros have
         | been a lot better suited to managing a large fleet of servers
         | that I want to treat as cattle, not pets. I've finally managed
         | to get away from Debian derivatives a few years back, but here
         | are some specific complaints I can remember from my last job,
         | managing about 1k Ubuntu servers.
         | 
         | - Installing a package on RH is always non-interactive. To
         | install packages reliably on Ubuntu, we had to set three
         | separate "Please just install the package, don't try to ask
         | questions" options for different layers of the stack, and still
         | occasionally ran into buggy packages that would hang the
         | installation waiting for a nonexistent user to type something.
         | 
         | - On RH, when I try to install or upgrade an RPM that's missing
         | dependencies, it gives me an error and refuses to break my
         | system unless I specify --force. With debian, there's no way to
         | query "Are the dependencies for this .deb satisfied" that I
         | could ever find, and "dpkg -i foo.deb" will instead leave it
         | "half-installed", and your package database is broken until you
         | manually fix it.
         | 
         | - I really missed an equivalent of `rpm -V` (list files in an
         | installed RPM that have been modified since installation).
         | Asking Google now, I see that there's `debsums` which can
         | handle some of this; I don't recall whether I failed to find
         | that before, or if there was some other reason I didn't use it
         | at the time.
         | 
         | - On RH, automated installation with kickstart is fantastic and
         | comprehensive. It's well-documented, and has just worked for
         | every configuration I've thrown at it. Debian's preseed is
         | severely under-documented, and many combinations of features
         | are just unimplemented and silently didn't work. For example,
         | you can reserve unallocated disk space from a raw partition,
         | but that's ignored for LVM, so to keep space free for snapshots
         | in my volume group, I had to configure a "delete_me" volume,
         | and then later delete it.
         | 
         | - Red Hat's SELinux support is fantastic. Ubuntu's choice of
         | apparmor and deficient SELinux support has been annoying.
         | 
         | - I've personally found Red Hat's packages to be higher-
         | quality. The biggest defect I remember finding in Ubuntu's
         | repos was a service whose init script was literally copied from
         | Red Hat, which didn't work, as it tried to source a file of
         | init script utility functions which doesn't exist on Ubuntu,
         | among other issues.
         | 
         | - Red Hat's documentation is fantastic. Ubuntu's documentation
         | is, uh... sometimes present.
         | 
         | - I've found building RPMs to be much simpler and much-better-
         | documented than the process of building debian packages. I
         | vaguely remember being repeatedly frustrated at debian
         | packaging that felt like "this magic thing just interferes and
         | does special stuff when this case is detected", vs RPM's "it
         | just does what the spec file says to do", but I can't remember
         | any details or examples.
         | 
         | - I've had a much easier time building yum repositories than
         | building debian repositories. Just dump a bunch of RPMs in a
         | directory, run createrepo, serve over HTTP. I failed to find
         | something similarly-simple for apt repos.
         | 
         | - Red Hat family had systemd way earlier, and with way better
         | support and integration, than Debian family. While I do agree
         | that there are some implementation issues with systemd, it's
         | been a huge usability and quality-of-life improvement for me
         | professionally.
         | 
         | To me, Debian has always felt like it's designed for someone
         | administering a small number of long-lived pets with a variety
         | of special circumstances, which really isn't what I want
         | professionally. Red Hat has felt like it's engineered for use-
         | cases I care about.
        
           | xuhu wrote:
           | I think you can use apt install ./file.deb instead of dpkg -i
           | file.deb, in order to check and install dependencies.
        
         | tw04 wrote:
         | Enterprise support. Most enterprise hardware and software
         | vendors don't have Ubuntu or Debian as a supported OS.
         | 
         | Additionally the length of support, Ubuntu LTS gets close but
         | RHEL will sell you support FOREVER.
        
           | johannes1234321 wrote:
           | > Additionally the length of support, Ubuntu LTS gets close
           | but RHEL will sell you support FOREVER.
           | 
           | A question is whether that is truly positive. A long cycle
           | means that each update becomes a project in itself disrupting
           | whatever else you are doing. (After 10 years so many things
           | changed everywhere, that you need to bring so many things
           | together ...) With frequent updates it is part of the ongoing
           | process.
           | 
           | (And yes, there are cases for which one can make an argument)
        
         | NDizzle wrote:
         | The main benefit for me was that systems I stood up in 2011
         | received security updates until last month.
        
         | sound1 wrote:
         | I am not a linux guy but had the same question and found out by
         | googling a bit that it was because of software support. Major
         | Linux vendors support only enterprise distros (like Redhat,
         | CentOS and Suse)
        
         | vbezhenar wrote:
         | 1. SELinux. It's configured for all packages in RHEL
         | distribution and it works. It's an additional layer of defense
         | and think that's the most important denominator from other
         | Linux distributions. I saw recent Ubuntu distributions shipped
         | with AppArmor, but I'm not sure that it's as good.
         | 
         | 2. First-class support for systemd. Well, I'm not sure that's a
         | fair point.. But with Debian I'm always seeing some messages
         | about sysv scripts, even when I'm using systemctl. It feels
         | like some scripts were not fully ported to systemd or something
         | like that. Some people don't like systemd, but I, personally,
         | think that it's a good solution. AFAIK systemd development is
         | sponsored by Redhat and its support is very good, all services
         | are shipped with proper systemd units.
         | 
         | 3. First-class support for NetworkManager, Firewalld. I think
         | that those packages are available for Debian, but it's nice to
         | have them installed and configured from the start, they're very
         | convenient to use.
         | 
         | 4. Documentation. Most of that documentation is hidden behind
         | loginwall, but http://access.redhat.com/ contains plenty of
         | information.
         | 
         | There are some drawbacks of RHEL. The major one for me is
         | limited software selection. You need to enable EPEL even for
         | some basic software like Strongswan, Certbot or OpenDKIM. And
         | EPEL is not RHEL (although it's quite good).
        
           | strzibny wrote:
           | I second all of that.
           | 
           | For anyone who might be interested in Fedora-family, namely
           | systemd, SELinux, and firewalld bits I am writing a book now
           | about deploying with Fedora and CentOS Stream[0] and I am
           | almost finished. With this announcement I might add RHEL
           | support directly - the difference is just in running a
           | subscription manager.
           | 
           | Also, if you are using Vagrant, you can use RHEL with a
           | vagrant-registration plugin that automatically subscribe you
           | (disclaimer: I made the plugin when working for Red Hat and
           | packaging Vagrant for Fedora).
           | 
           | [0] https://deploymentfromscratch.com/
        
         | xorcist wrote:
         | Support for enterprise-type products.
         | 
         | Last workplace had a storage array. Tested on Red Hat,
         | supported on Red Hat. The same is true for lots of other
         | things. Enterprise databases, drivers for hardware, CAD
         | software, that sort of stuff.
         | 
         | Once you have it in place, you are guaranteed not to have to
         | change it a decade. All security fixes is backported. They also
         | vet upstream changes to minimize nasty surprises. You do pay
         | handsomely for the privilege.
        
         | guenthert wrote:
         | Other then what has been already mentioned (chiefly commercial
         | 3rd party software support), I enjoyed the set-up time. Now
         | there are better provisioning methods, particularly when
         | setting up hundreds of hosts, but when doing it naively for a
         | single or few hosts using the interactive installation
         | software, I preferred RedHat/CentOS. That got me to a booting
         | system in some ten, fifteen minutes, while the dreaded
         | installation in Debian used to take easily 1.5h. Once
         | installed, I found Debian easier to maintain and upgrade in
         | place, but initial installation was a time-sink for many years.
        
           | freeone3000 wrote:
           | To also comment here: _every_ red hat system boots from
           | dracut. There 's no separate PXE for netboot: provisioning is
           | consistent whether your boot medium is local, LAN, or
           | ephemeral. It ships netboot-capable out of the box, and this
           | is huge.
        
         | ralphc wrote:
         | Don't know if this is still true but Oracle only had installs
         | for the RHEL/CentOS family, which of course included Oracle
         | Linux.
        
           | toyg wrote:
           | Last i checked (2 years ago), when it comes to linux, Oracle
           | Database officially supported only RHEL and OEL. I don't
           | think CentOS ever made it to the various support matrices,
           | although of course its close compatibility with RHEL meant it
           | likely worked just fine.
        
         | xenophonf wrote:
         | A ton of compliance stuff is already done for me if I use RHEL.
         | For example:
         | 
         | https://nvd.nist.gov/ncp/checklist/811
        
         | Blikkentrekker wrote:
         | in my experience, systems such as _Debian_ and _Gentoo_ for
         | servers have an entirely different market than _RHEL_ , _z /OS_
         | or _SUSE_ : the former seems to be more so used by i.t.
         | companies themselves that of course also need to run an i.t.
         | infrastructure, and the latter more so by companies whose
         | primary services are not i.t., but that need such
         | infrastructure nonetheless.
         | 
         | Looking at Red Hat's customer list, most of them are based in
         | finance, transportation, retail, hotel, and other such sectors.
         | 
         | Looking at _Debian_ 's statistics of use per sector, the
         | plurality is companies that develop computer software, though
         | retail comes second, but after that it's i.t. again.
         | 
         | This is primarily the difference and the gap that _RHEL_
         | attempts to bridge through it 's extensive inclusive support,
         | which is what one is really paying for. The target of _RHEL_
         | has never been i.t. companies.
        
         | freeone3000 wrote:
         | RHEL documentation is second-to-none. It's akin to old UNIX
         | documentation, or the pre-10 offerings from Microsoft.
         | 
         | As an example, I wanted to set up kerberos. Red Hat had a guide
         | on setting up IdM, covering every step in the process, often
         | with two alternates depending on desired final state and having
         | an intro paragraph to choose between them, full command line
         | docs for every command ran, steps to test this was ran
         | correctly, and troubleshooting steps for commonly-encountered
         | errors. In contrast, the Ubuntu docs for setting up a IdM
         | client were a wiki, half of which was for the old version, and
         | a detailed stackoverflow response. Server and client setups
         | took the same amount of time; the client should have been much
         | faster.
        
       | garbagecoder wrote:
       | Yeah, I'm not running anything with some weird contingent license
       | if I'm running Linux. Completely defeats the purpose. Also, now
       | more than ever, after last month's big hacks I think building
       | things from source makes more sense. I'll be sticking with gentoo
       | for my mission-critical bare metal installs when I need Linux.
        
         | symlinkk wrote:
         | I would not trust the community of volunteers that maintain
         | Gentoo in their free time for anything mission critical. I
         | would use Ubuntu or Red Hat, which are backed by companies.
        
           | nisa wrote:
           | I've got bad news for you - most of Ubuntu is repackaged
           | Debian which is from a community of volunteers that maintains
           | the packages. Besides that Ubuntu used to be sloppy in
           | backporting important patches and doing some NIH here and
           | there... not sure about Redhat but they source heavily from
           | Fedora which is also community-based.
        
             | strzibny wrote:
             | Red Hat sponsors Fedora big time. I was part of the
             | packagers team for Ruby. Next to us were sitting Perl guys
             | (you would never believe how many Perl packages are still
             | there...!) and somewhere else folks doing Python packaging.
             | 
             | Source: Formal Red Hat packager working on Fedora.
        
             | symlinkk wrote:
             | It doesn't matter that Ubuntu packages originally came from
             | Debian. At the end of the day, Canonical employees are
             | being paid to make sure they are up to date. I trust that
             | over a bunch of volunteers who do it out of the goodness of
             | their heart.
        
             | akerl_ wrote:
             | I'm not sure I can agree with this concern. All Linux
             | distros work by repackaging upstream code, the majority of
             | which is written by volunteers. For Debian, they're
             | repackaging directly from upstream. Ubuntu repackages from
             | Debian.
             | 
             | The value of going through a company is that you can choose
             | to write a check to Canonical or RedHat and say "I'm
             | hitting this issue with the software you repackaged, here
             | is money, fix the problem". There's no similarly direct
             | pay-to-win for Fedora or Debian. You can shop around for a
             | consultancy or engineer and pay them to try to debug the
             | issue, but they're always going to be coming in as a 3rd
             | party, which has an impact on the levers they can pull to
             | resolve an issue.
        
               | nisa wrote:
               | It's not a concern but just an observation that things in
               | universe in Ubuntu get rarely if at all backports. It's
               | okay. I agree about having a company especially regarding
               | timely security updates.
        
               | jamiesonbecker wrote:
               | > You can shop around for a consultancy or engineer and
               | pay them to try to debug the issue, but they're always
               | going to be coming in as a 3rd party
               | 
               | Except for software that was written in-house or the
               | packaging itself, RH or Canonical would _also_ always be
               | coming in as a third party.
               | 
               | ... whereas your consultant might be the original author
               | of the upstream code.
        
               | symlinkk wrote:
               | Most Linux software is written by Red Hat. GNOME,
               | Wayland, and systemd are all Red Hat projects. They are
               | even a major contributor to the kernel itself.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | jamiesonbecker wrote:
               | > Most Linux software is written by Red Hat.. _even_ a
               | major contributor to the kernel itself.
               | 
               | Oh! I didn't realize Red Hat had hired RMS. :-/
               | 
               | Setting aside the controversial nature of those three
               | specific projects (and the fact that this statement is
               | demonstrably false), this statement demeans the
               | contributions of thousands of coders, even from before
               | Linux existed.
               | 
               | (let alone before Red Hat was a gleam on Bob Young's
               | head.)
        
           | sigzero wrote:
           | You just described just about every OS that isn't Microsoft
           | of Apple. Good luck with that attitude.
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | That just shows a lack of knowledge of the quantinty of
             | commercial OSes available out there.
             | 
             | Were are the volunteers for Sony and Nintendo console OSes,
             | Android, ChromeOS, Fuchsia, IBM i, IBM z/OS, INTEGRITY,
             | QNX,Unisys ClearPath, Solaris, HP-UX, Aix, vxWorks.....?
        
         | doanerock wrote:
         | Shit you have time to compile everything from source. What is
         | this a air gapped laptop?
        
       | naranha wrote:
       | Hey, I like that I can play around with RHEL without too much of
       | a hassle.
       | 
       | Nevertheless for me that is not a replacement for what CentOS
       | was: easy to deploy for small or personal projects without
       | requiring registration/sign-up and you could leave it (mostly)
       | alone for 10 years or so. Though for now I'm fairly happy with
       | CentOS Stream, we'll see where it goes.
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | How about no-cost _no-registration_ self-support RHEL for
       | _unlimited number_ of systems?
        
         | ognarb wrote:
         | Someone need to pay for a service, not everything is free as in
         | beer.
        
           | merlinscholz wrote:
           | What would be the service on this case? Redhat already is
           | open source and is being compiled anyways.
        
             | mrweasel wrote:
             | So grab the source and compile it yourself.
             | 
             | What RedHat provides is an enormous development effort and
             | an extremely long lived LTS platform. That doesn't come for
             | free.
             | 
             | Many seem to want RHEL for free, but there are free
             | alternatives. You can run: Debian, Ubuntu or Slackware, if
             | the cost is such a huge issue.
             | 
             | I won't argue that RedHat has handled the change to CentOS
             | in a good way, they clearly haven't. On the other hand I
             | don't free sorry for those companies how want all the
             | benefits provided by RedHat, but not pay to keeping RedHat
             | in business. Open source isn't about free, it's about
             | giving you the option to make changes to the code yourself,
             | or pay others to do it for you. RedHat would like to get
             | paid for their work, if you don't want to do that, that's
             | fine to, but then you need to do the work yourself.
        
               | zokier wrote:
               | There has been a freely downloadable Red Hat available
               | for the past 20 years, either in the form of CentOS, or
               | before it good old classic Red Hat Linux. That got them
               | this far, where they are now. So you can understand how
               | people feel bit miffed, especially now that they have Big
               | Blue backing them they should be financially more stable
               | than before.
        
               | mrweasel wrote:
               | I can certainly understand people being "miffed", but
               | that was a risk when choosing to base your infrastructure
               | on RedHat. Again the handling was extremely poor. Had
               | they announced this new program along with the changes to
               | CentOS, I don't think as many would have been upset.
               | 
               | But gambling that a for profit company will always
               | provide you with a free alternative to they commercial
               | offering is a calculated risk. In this case it might not
               | have paid of.
        
         | Spivak wrote:
         | I mean although this sounds like an absolutely outlandish ask
         | for a company this was very literally what we had with CentOS
         | so I'm surprised at all the comments saying it's impossible.
        
       | ziml77 wrote:
       | After their killing of CentOS, I hope anyone who reasonably can
       | avoids RHEL. I'm positive they're going to change policies again
       | in the future and fuck over people who decided to go with this
       | zero monetary cost RHEL offering.
       | 
       | > When we announced our intent to transition to CentOS Stream, we
       | did so with a plan to create new programs to address use cases
       | traditionally served by CentOS Linux.
       | 
       | This is a load of bullshit. If that was their plan they would
       | have announced both of these changes together. It's not like they
       | were under time pressure to get the announcement out.
        
         | dralley wrote:
         | >This is a load of bullshit. If that was their plan they would
         | have announced both of these changes together. It's not like
         | they were under time pressure to get the announcement out.
         | 
         | I work for Red Hat, opinions are my own, etc. I don't know why
         | they decided to announce the CentOS plans before announcing at
         | least some of the expanded RHEL offerings, and many people are
         | just as confused as myself. However, whatever the reason was,
         | it's absolutely true that expanding access to no-cost and low-
         | cost RHEL was always the plan, and the original announcement
         | effectively stated as much.
        
         | freedomben wrote:
         | You've obviously made the choice to hate, but for anyone else
         | reading this comment, the CentOS announcement specifically
         | mentioned at the time that an announcement like this was coming
         | regarding expanded RHEL options. Not sure what more evidence is
         | needed that it _was_ the plan. If you 're a conspiracy person
         | go look at archive.org's version. If you believe archive.org is
         | in on the conspiracy, well, I'm not sure what to tell you.
        
           | syshum wrote:
           | Not the OP, and I have no doubt they had plans to "expand"
           | RHEL options
           | 
           | I also have no doubts they wanted to see how much bad PR the
           | announcment made before figuring out that those expanded
           | options where
           | 
           | It was from be beginning a Monetary Grab, Redhat did a global
           | scream test to see how much they would have to give away to
           | take the screams down to a dull roar and stop the bleeding
           | just enough to not lose any market share
           | 
           | They have landed on 16 as the magic number for now, but like
           | the OP I have visions of Darth Vader saying "I am altering
           | the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further." while wearing a
           | RedHat
           | 
           | It does not fill me with confidence that I should make use of
           | that 16 server license...
        
       | abfan1127 wrote:
       | As someone not running these small to medium sized businesses,
       | this is an honest question. I quickly looked at the pricing for
       | RHEL. It didn't seem outlandish. Can anyone comment on this?
        
         | protomyth wrote:
         | Its really not especially compared to Microsoft or even IBM
         | itself. My problem has been really crappy ability of Red Hat to
         | answer any questions and the general friction of the purchase.
         | 
         | They seem to have some company blindness about answering
         | specific technical pre-sale questions with "I will have X call
         | you." and that call never ever comes. So the next person calls
         | you and you ask again and the cycle repeats.
         | 
         | They are another company that likes you to go through partners
         | and some of their partners aren't exactly quick about it.
        
       | k3oni wrote:
       | Until they change their minds in a few months/years. I really
       | wish they would just go 100% paid and stop pretending they care
       | about anything free at this point. RH isn't the company that it
       | once was anymore.
       | 
       | Edit: I'm sure this is not a popular opinion but it is what it
       | is.
        
         | dralley wrote:
         | >I really wish they would just go 100% paid and stop pretending
         | they care about anything open/free at this point.
         | 
         | As a Red Hat employee for ~5 years, every line of code I've
         | ever written professionally has been open source and licensed
         | under the GPL. The same is generally true across the entire
         | company (with the exception of contributions to external
         | projects licensed Apache / MIT / BSD).
         | 
         | Can you explain what you mean by "open/free"? Perhaps "free
         | beer" rather than "freedom"?
        
           | stonogo wrote:
           | Licensed under the GPL is one thing -- intentionally
           | obfuscated to make actual compilation difficult is compatible
           | in letter but not in spirit of the license. Red Hat's
           | citizenship in the FLOSS community varies from "savior" to
           | "nuisance" depending on the project...
        
             | nix23 wrote:
             | True, then Oracle made his own UEK...and now on OL you can
             | choose between two Kernels....good job RH.
        
           | nix23 wrote:
           | >Can you explain what you mean by "open/free"? Perhaps "free
           | beer" rather than "freedom"?
           | 
           | You installed 16 systems and a half year later RH says, and
           | in 1 year you have to pay for these or change to CentOS
           | Stream, i think it's a very founded consideration after the
           | CentOS debacle.
           | 
           | But not sure what he means that RH does not care about
           | Opensource...
        
             | k3oni wrote:
             | That was more a nod to the whole CentOS debacle and the way
             | RH is doing business the last few years, plus this article
             | relating to the free part. Not really related to opensource
             | as i doubt they'll be able to escape that aspect, if they
             | could they would have probably done that already as well.
        
               | nix23 wrote:
               | To be honest it broke my heart a bit when they where sold
               | to IBM. But hey there is SLES and in my opinion a much
               | better option with the free tumbleweed, leap and the paid
               | SLES and all the free services like OBS, openQA and
               | Kiwi....and no i don't use BTRF...XFS all the way down ;)
               | But if i have the freedom to choose the solution it
               | nearly always choose is FreeBSD, one exception...OracleDB
               | where i use OracleLinux.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | type0 wrote:
         | Percent-wise I don't think there is any other company that
         | contributes as much to open source software, I do think it was
         | a dick move from them but let's not conflate the things.
        
           | k3oni wrote:
           | My comment wasn't really related to opensource, but in
           | general to their new way of doing business. Nothing wrong
           | with changing the company's direction and trying to go full
           | profit mode, just don't try to pretend everything's the same
           | as before.
        
             | type0 wrote:
             | The change in company culture is probably real. Just an
             | anecdata but I feel like over the years radhatters are
             | behaving more and more corporatish compared with how it was
             | years ago, then again that can be just the "climate" of the
             | Internet nowadays.
        
       | jitendrac wrote:
       | If a developer gets a hold of a RHEL copy[legally] regardless of
       | its subscriptions terms, he have all the rights to re-distribute
       | it due to the nature of GPL2 licensing, only thing is he cannot
       | claim to be IP/copyright owner of redhat assets like logo.
        
         | joshuaissac wrote:
         | Red Hat has provided free RHEL downloads and licences for
         | development use through their developer programme for nearly
         | five years now. They do require that you sign up for an account
         | on their website.
         | 
         | https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/03/31/no-cost-rhel-d...
        
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