Redhat goes CLOSED SOURCE? 

UPDATE: YOU CAN NOT USE DEV ACCOUNT FOR UPDATING - Alma's update: almalinux.org/blog/impact-of-rhel-changes/ Rocky Update: etherpad.opendev.org/p/r.24fab14385c0aa2db6fa7340a8b2aae7 - TLDR - NOT GOOD! The official statement from redhat was "CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public @RHEL-related source code releases. Read more about this change. red.ht/3XoUOYP" We will have to wait and see how this plays out, but I imagine they want to make it very hard for RHEL 1:1 Distros like Alma, Rocky and Oracle.

Moral of the story: EVERY publicly trading company goes to shit. No exceptions.

Was very disappointed by Red Hat's decision. Not completely surprised this happened after IBM took over.

I used to work at IBM... I predicted this as soon as the Red Hat acquisition was made. Everything IBM touches goes to crap.

I'm picturing Debian and Suse getting decent boosts in popularity in the future.

One major company having so much control over Linux was always a potential issue.

I'm honestly not surprised, Redhat is owned by IBM now. Another reason why CentOS was shut down.

Thanks for bringing this to my feed during a busy week last week. This is extremely saddening for me, as I was *this* close to being a Hatter myself 5 years ago (I was contracting with them, and had an employment contract ready for signing, but their laywer would not strike a noncompete, so I didn't sign). I feel like Red Hat has fallen away from the open source ideals and foundations they built their entire business and goodwill from originally, and are trying to define some new "corporate friendly open source" world so they can protect their profits with some licensing quirks and subscription guidelines.

RHEL was bought by IBM years ago. this was expected to happen.

I considered running Rocky Linux for my personal server, but I chose Debian for several reasons. Now this is making me glad I chose Debian, I just did a Dist-upgrade to Debian 12 on it and it still works great (I've been doing dist-upgrade on this server since Debian 9 and I've never had an issue).

I find it hard to understand how a closed source system can be based on such vast amounts of open source. It must be a legal nightmare.

IBM continuing to make the wrong call continuing their streak. I suspect they think this will make CentOS/Rocky/Alma business jump to RHEL whereas they'll likely jump to Debian, maybe Oracle or Ubuntu depending on who undercuts best/availability of budget to pay for support which is a big gamble.

This is why the importance of having different distros cannot be overstated. Fragmentation is a good thing.

That has been coming since Red Hat Linux went fully commercial. Before that (pre-2003) practically all my servers were RHL. They tried to do an image correction with Fedora but it wasn't what enterprise / ISPs needed. Luckily I had some really good Debian guys in my company that brought Ubuntu to the desktop and Debian to our servers which apart from FreeBSD is driving all the racks. When Canonical forced the desktop users to go Unity and then Gnome 3 we moved to KDE and when they brought snap we went to Flatpack but that said Canonical isn't IBM and they do tend to learn from unpopular decisions that failed in the community. Generally, large corporations that strategically acquire user bases for sectoral footprint are rarely doing anyone a favor - no matter open source or not. Let's think of Oracle killing MySQL and Dyn - they just shut down millions of older devices still using their service. How about Internic becoming what Network Solutions is today? How about Macromedia products after Adobe took over or Solidworks after Systemes Dassault? And yeah that will be the year of Debian since Debian 12 is awesome at the right time.

Great time for the Debian 12 release

I'd sooner give cash to Canonical than IBM

Every Linux Programmer who ever contributed to the OS needs to sue Red Hat saying they violated the terms of their contribution, trust me, there is a class action lawyer ready to roll on this.

People say Debian has about 3 years of support (next release year + 1 year), but they provide an LTS, so you get 5 years, instead of the usual 3 years. So you can use Buster and be fine until 2024.

The source code is still available to RHEL customers which is what is required by the GPLv2. That should allow the clones to continue.

Canonical is already big in the Cloud. A move like that will reduce people's confidence in Redhat and will strengthen Canonical's position

You cannot "close" a GPL licenced software. It's the whole point of GPL. It has to stay open if it's GPL.

How can they actually do this? Isn't this against GPL? I mean all the people who've contributed can just revoke their code. Unless Red Hat has just removed all that, which seems unlikely.

I could see OpenSUSE taking advantage of this by saying. With SUSE we keep the source loose. 😂

Welp since IBM acquired Red Hat I was afraid this was coming.we're gonna be in for a bit of a pain period as business and what not evaulate thier options...but I think Debian and Ubuntu Server are probaly gonna see a massive uptick as a result of this.

Expect built-in back-doors enforced by the NSA

This move on the part of IBMHat was only to be expected, a matter of when and not if. This is going to have a significant impact on the HPC community.

Companies are now targeting the open source world for profit, control and data mining. In the Linux world, if they just get control over both Debian and Arch, it’s pretty much game over as these two are the most popular base distros most other distros are based on. By then, BSD will be the way to go.

I'm still a novice in the linux community but here is my perspective: I never was attracted to RHEL, for me it defeated the entire purpose of escaping microsoft to pursue open source and free software. I've really sought a path of true freedom both in terms of money and transparency. For me it's less about the money and more about the transparency. RHEL decision to go closed source means transparency is gone and for me that was the largest driving factor that attracted me to linux in the first place. However it plays out for RHEL I will remain focused on the freedoms of open source and will shun all closed source software.

I can only imagine the pressure. From big corp to abusing it from trying to adquire it, to a huge user base using it for free.

I truly can't say that I'm surprised, It was always a matter of time before this would happened. When I set up a server years ago, I wound up choosing Gentoo. That was the time I moved away from RedHat at the time. While it's a niche OS, it served me well for years.

Debian 12 is a great contendor. Maybe its time to consider it more for the server side.

My biggest question with this change is how it will impact them contributing upstream to all the projects that they consume and include in RHEL

I'm wondering what'll happen to Oracle Enterprise Linux now, since they're also downstream from RHEL, plus their own Unbreakable kernel. This is gonna rattle some cages in lots of places.

don't care too much for debian personally but I think this will be the year of debian. Especially with debian 12 looking objectively good

Chris this suck but then again we shouldn't expect any less from large companies

Upstreaming is a thing; patches from downstream can very well make it's way upstream. There may be cases where it doesn't make sense (such as upstream moving past needing the patch) hence the name "bug for bug compatibility", however it is not impossible. That's how ubuntu contributes back to debian

They must have concluded that there aren't enough CentOS users who matriculate into RHEL to prohibit the company from force-converting those users to RHEL or off Red Hat products altogether. This way, Red Hat's revenue stream should see at least a modest bump (and it may be a significant bump). I can't imagine existing RHEL customers are going to drop Red Hat over this change. That being said, it will be interesting if the lack of a free release thins the pool of entry-level SysAdmin talent who have RHEL-specific skills. I'm an educator in this space and we're currently still using CentOS 7 and AlmaLinux due to the tight similarities with RHEL, but I imagine we'll switch over to a different release for educational purposes moving forward. Ultimately, I don't think this move will really hurt Red Hat but it will shake up stuff all around them.

I first used Redhat back in 2001, I remember the main distros were Redhat, Mandrake and Debian. I think Suse was starting to get popular at the time. 22 years later I'm still just dabbling with Linux and don't really know wtf I'm doing haha.

openSUSE is a fine alternative that has Leap which is like CentOS, but also SLES that is like RHEL with commercial support. Best is that these are 1:1 of each other.

Yeah I heard about that. I'm both a Desktop Support Tech and Linux Admin all in one as we still deep in the Red Hat eco system but I'm starting to see some organizations uses Ubuntu. There even a certification exam for Ubuntu.

Violation of GPL.

All the servers I run are either FreeBSD or Debian Stable (or Windows Server) + 1 Ubuntu because the software on it is only supported on Ubuntu. Don't think I've touched an rpm-based distro in about 15 years since Mandriva died.

Wait, I just realized something: Aren't the GNU coreutils GPLv3? (Unlike the Linux kernel, which is famously still on v2.) Would what Red Hat / IBM is doing violate the GPLv3?

First CentOS and now this. It all makes sense now

I wonder what the Linux Bible author is going to say in the 11th Edition in reference to this. He's been working at RHEL for over a decade now and every edition of his manual spends at least a few pages singing the praises of opensource software.

This is a huge mistake by Red Hat. They are going to anger many Linux admins who are going to switch from RPM based distrubutions to Debian based.

All of this also came about as I am busy migrating my Asterisk PBX servers away from CentOS 7. Was moving to Rocky. Yes. Asterisk works well on other base OS but I have 3de party software for reporting that is RHEL based. This has been a nightmare. Luckily all of this happened before any current production servers got changed.

I guess biggest problem is time between patch appearing in RHEL and upstreaming or exposing it publicly. E.g. for GPL licensed code patches probably can be demanded. And for more premissive licenses I doubt they'll maintain internal forks for many projects.

This is more of a question than a comment. IBM announced its IBM Artificial Intelligence Unit processor recently. Is it possible that by not open sourcing the RHEL Kernel which will support this processor family they are protecting their unique hardware?

Been using Debian for 20 years. And now i feel so vindicated 😛

Here in Portugal, Rocky is used by a big supermarket chain, at least in the check out machines.

The title is misleading. Just because your open source software is paid doesn't mean it's closed source. In fact, one of the main requirements for a software license to be certified as Open Source or Free Software is being able to commercialize it.

Fine if that's how they want to play, Id rewrite the GPL license on all Fedora / Centos distros to specifically ban IBM and Red Hat Enterprise from being allowed to use patches or code from those projects.. What's that? You're supply of free developing is gone??.. They'll become the Openoffice of the Open source world. On a side note, the amount of Microsoft Execs running inside high levels of the linux foundation is a bit concerning.

Ever since IBM/RH killed CentOS 8 in the most Darwin award winning way possible for consumers, I have been avoiding RHEL and its derivatives. Now I'm done with Fedora too. And I won't be back. (Arch user currently.)

I'm glad I hitched my wagon to SuSE a while back. OpenSuSE and SLES are a nice mix.

Oh man I've just converted CentOS Stream to Rocky yesterday!! It wasn't smooth as well because of my fault kind of, didn't check if third party repoes are ok. :D

Don't take this title seriously. There seems to be people who think that the licenses changed and RHEL suddenly became proprietary. This is a little bit more complex than simply that.

the GPL only allow people who have been given the binaries - i.e. the users - to view the source code anyway

Could these distributions that are currently based on Red Hat switch to being based on SLES? Or is SLES also based on Red Hat?

And the Oracle process is complete! I wonder what XCP-NG is going to do now?

We use Oracle Linux which is based on RHEL. I wonder how this will affect that.

That sucks!!! I'll have to switch from Rocky to Debian. Debian is great, but I've gotten used to Redhat off chutes. Thanks much for the heads up! Wonder if Debian will do this too?

My last encounter with red-hat whatever (including systemd), was Mandrake. That sets the timeline right :D

Can you explain how Red Hat is “close sourcing” RHEL? All of the source is available per the terms of the GPL

Who would have thought that Ubuntu would look like a good guy (well, less evil)?

Game changing news about the Internet Archive, Reddit and now Red Hat. I wonder what is next.

5:38 If I had to guess, businesses that take issue with this will probably switch to Ubuntu LTS where they can pay Canonical for support. I love Debian and run it on all my systems, but there's not really a company behind it with the resources to provide paid support to companies at large.

An honest question: is there community code directly in RHEL or only from the developers that Red Hat pays to develop?

This is great news for Canonical. With AWS having long offered Ubuntu AMIs alongside the RHEL and (RHEL-based) AL2 images, and with Docker images most commonly based off Debian, there's really no reason for Enterprise to stick with non-deb-based systems, which (although you're right that Desktop Linux usage is minimal) is still what the majority of IT, SWE and DE/DS nerds cut their teeth on.

Please do a video on how Redhat is getting around GNU General Public License.

I wonder what will happen to CloudLinux, and what additional effect that may have on AlmaLinux or vice versa :/ Although Alma is well backed currently.

It can be the perfect opportunitty for openSUSE leap.

Well we are on Debian over 1year (~300VMs ) ... so this was expected i think. :)

I've moved all of my servers to FreeBSD and loving it honestly! Sucks seeing what's happening to RHEL, but it be that way sometimes

So one person in the project could sign RHEL licens, grab the source code and use it for the clones?

I was just thinking of getting a Redhat certification (RHCSA).... Wondering if that will be a good choice now.

This is just my personal opinion, but here's my two cents. Red Hat is not going closed source. This is a blatant lie. If you pay for RHEL binaries, you get the sources. GNU defines Free Software by saying it means "the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software". It does NOT say you can demand a company give you product for free. You can purchase a license, get the source, distribute the source. Just because people have a misunderstanding of what Free Software is doesn't mean something isn't Free Software. And what security patches made it into RHEL but not CentOS/Fedora? I also don't understand the hate for CentOS. You mentioned using Rocky for a monitoring solution that's a "set-it-and-forget-it" where "you don't need a subscription", but you need the product that comes from the subscription. You need cockpit, systemd, sssd, and all these other tools that come from Red Hat. Those tools still exist in CentOS. If the box doesn't need support, use CentOS. If it does, use RHEL. As for Rocky/Alma, RHEL builds from CentOS (Stream), why can't they? What benefit do they add by taking RHEL and slapping a new logo on it? I agree Red Hat's marketing/communications is down-right terrible, but we don't need tech reviewers making it worse by lying.

The developer subscription to the RHEL sources is free. Also, both Rocky and AlmaLinux are funded by their own respective foundations. They could fund access to the sources if they decide to charge money for the subscriptions. They have access to the source code but it's just more inconvenient. So, it shouldn't cause too much of a problem for them, right?

What about the license of the linux kernel? Does it allow close sourced distros?

For my latest desktop build I switched from Debian to Fedora, and at one point requested a developers license to have access to RHEL9, and came very close to installing it for daily driving. I'm glad that I did not and I'm going to be switching back to Debian now that 12 is out because I'll be damned if I'm going to let whatever contributions I make to my desktop OS benefit a company that will not reciprocate.

they still have to complain with GPL, so paying costumers that go acces to the source code have the right to redistribute the source code if they want

This most likely will hurt red hat a lot I would believe.

Glad Fedora isn't going this route as I just moved my desktops from Ubuntu to Fedora this year and I really love it so far.

Unless you're an MSP and part of the partner program getting or renting bulk cloud licenses, the pricing just doesnt make sense. Higher compliance rate if ibm hadnt 2-3x the cost over the last 10-20yrs...

So long as they allow users to request the source code, this shouldn't violate the GPL. In a way, it's kind of a nothing burger story, even if it _feels_ alarming.

I don't think this is as much as a game changer as you think. Nowadays, most things are in containers, and in the container world, it's much more common to see either Ubuntu or Alpine based systems than Red Hat. I don't know what your working background is but I worked with many businesses and it's much, much more common to see enterprises deploying servers that is based on Ubuntu and Debian than Red Hat. Ubuntu and Debian has pretty much been the de facto standard in the container world, much more so than Red Hat. When people build applications and infrastructure, Debian based systems are the first choices, not Red Hat. Red Hat is such a niche that most talents we employ here are much less likely to have experience deploying Red Hat servers compared to Debian-based systems. I can't remember any instance where I've looked into any popular containers that are based on rpm image, those are extreme rarities. Big systems, small systems, it doesn't really matter, Red Hat influence isn't as big as you think they are. In any case, the business model of Red Hat has long become outdated. Nowadays with containers, and orchestrators like Kubernetes, and then Cloud systems like AWS, the selling point of 10+ years of security patches just sounds very antiquated. Nowadays, businesses buy enterprise services from the likes of Red Hat or Ubuntu not because of the length of the LTS period, but rather it's more for the technical expertise. Having someone who knows the software you're using well on call is always very valuable. Backporting security updates to a 10 years old system, resulting in an chimera of a software that isn't even supported by the original author, that kind of model just doesn't really make sense when nowadays an OS upgrade is usually just updating a single line in a Dockerfile.

So, I hope I understand this correctly: CentOS-stream is "upstream" from RHEL and does not contain all of the patches that make up RHEL. Assuming most of the packages in RHEL are still built from Open Source software sources, and that those software sources are published under the (A)GPL, Apache License, etc, to me it would logically follow that any of the in-house patches RedHat makes should also be published under the same license. Am I wrong to assume that those software packages, including in-house patches, should always be published under the same license, source code and all, without restriction? The whole concept of copyleft is centered around the idea that if I use OSS, I am also morally obliged to contribute any of the patches I made to the community as well. This means that I can build my business around my product or service and any of the OSS components I might use, so long as I provide the source code to those OSS components, including any modifications to them I may have made. What I cannot do is claim ownership, authorship for, change the licensing of a piece of Open Source software or restrict access to the software packages in a paywallesque manner. Historically RedHat has built its business exactly like that: the provide services to customers with regards to Open Source software, but would still provide packages as well as the sources for the Open Source software they support, including any patches made. I don't see how RedHat could change this and still be compliant with the concepts of Open Source and Free Software. It would probably be the largest single finger salute to the community in history. I leave it up to the imagination of the reader(s) as to which finger it concerns. It is a worrying move to say the least, though not surprising. Security wise it is far from a wise move as well, as the package sources, nor the patches to them are for everyone to review, only to people with a subscription. While obviously subscriptions are how RedHat get their revenue - and there is nothing wrong with that, mind you - RedHat chose to be a supporter of Open Source. That includes contributing back to the community what was changed, not just to people who pay for their services.

So what will happen for those who have RHEL workstation on their laptop? Will I not recieve updates?

I have been waiting for linux based youtubers to break this story & discuss

Just need to start calling them IBM-Linux and be done with it.

Will SUSE follow up next? I love Debian and know there is always Arch but I prefer tumbleweed then fedora as nice polished out of box OSes. Maybe this won't affect Fedora? I don't completely understand how the upstream stuff works.

I am newbie to Linux and I want to learn Linux commands and the structure of Linux system OS . what Linux distro do you recommend?

Well, I was excited for a Fedora project but considering Red Hat's decision, I'll stick with Arch.

I didn't knew Linux license could allow closing the source. Anyway, I think it will be a time to leave RH alone and move to Debian, Ubuntu, Alpine, ALT, or maybe even BSD actually.

I ran Centos 6.x for 10 years and really miss it. Instead of RHEL, I wish IBM would bring back OS/2 Warp!

We just upgraded half a dozen CentOS Stream 9 machines to Alma Linux last week. Not sure the opposite move is even possible. Oof.

Red Hat is an IBM Company and that's the way to operate to monetize everything.

Off to OpenSUSE 💪😎

What legal capacity does Redhat have to go closed source? I mean, most of, but not all, of Linux is copy left, right?

Chris!..Thanks Much !.......