@geerlingguy
Howare you going to get people to contribute back if they aren't first users? Sure not everyone will, but if you don't let them be users first no one will
@geerlingguy They also don't understand that giving back can be more than contributing directly one step upstream.
With Rocky and Alma I can quickly spin up an LXC container on proxmox to help support RHEL users of my software. They help build up the wider ecosystem around the OS, and encourage folks to get involved in the RHEL world.
I can't get my head around, especially, the whole "sure, we'll give you the source, but you're literally only allowed to keep it if you do the ONE THING OPEN SOURCE IS SUPPOSED TO ALLOW YOU TO DO"
@geerlingguy
I was about to get started with Ansible and buy your book but I'm really getting second thoughts now about Ansible...
I guess a small example on how they are hurting the whole community by decisions.
CC: @geerlingguy RedHat is not entitled to your good work; the corollary to that is that you are not entitled to theirs.
Forget them. Move on. I am sure this will bite them in their proverbial buttocks.
@geerlingguy it is interesting that people seem to be avoiding or manipulating the entire quote to suit their purposes, "Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere." No ill will towards users or the community, just wanting people to not profit off work they are doing nothing to support.
@lukedary I think the intention of that line was not kind.
It seems to indicate that Rocky and Alma provide no value to the Red Hat ecosystem, when in fact, they did. An extraordinary amount. Which I think is patently obvious at this point.
@geerlingguy I am just trying to keep the discourse honest. There were no statements in the blog that should make people think that Mike was saying users of open source who don't contribute are a threat to open source as was claimed. To imply otherwise, with a misquote or partial quote out of context is dishonest.
@lukedary@geerlingguy that depends if you think those that "Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way" are considered users or not, which is kind of the point being made here by Jeff.
@geerlingguy I'm sure you hear this a lot these days but my firm is a RHEL customer and we will be moving away when our licenses expire.
I know this because I am the final budget authority. The only freeloaders I see here is IBM and Red Hat. Their product wouldn't exist without this community. Perhaps they forgot that.
@geerlingguy I lost track at how many super profitable and well known companies had benefited from the CentOS/red hat clone situation and I have conflicting feelings about it since I wouldn't have a career because those companies would have insisted on a red hat certified technician instead of "some guy" who knows Linux 15 years ago; but they're not wrong at the very least
Don't get me started on what they're doing to Ansible. Lol
@geerlingguy I guess Red Hat is finding out just now what other open source devs have seen in the past decade: people (and mainly corporations) don’t want to pay for free software.
I’ll be holding on the popcorn for now, as Red Hat has always been the “role model” for how to make money with free software, and if anyone has enough market power for find any formula that fixes this issue, it’s for sure RH.
@geerlingguy About 20 years ago when I gave up on my last personal Red Hat system, my work laptop. The end of Red Hat Linux and the animosity towards community was tough then too. https://lwn.net/Articles/40201/
After years of our LUG building our own custom up to date Red Hat based bistro, us freeloaders "simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way" spent our time supporting and helping people get started with Linux were made unwelcome then and it won't stop.
@geerlingguy it's essential to recognize the reciprocal nature of open source. The community shares code freely, which companies like Red Hat leverage to create valuable products. While Red Hat has done much for open source, this move hurts #OpenSource.
In this post, Red Hat is upset that they went to a community recipe swap potluck where everyone looks at them funny for being the only one who refuses to share the recipe.
@geerlingguy rh has been scared shitless of centos since at least 2008.
Like I've asked and got engineer to do a patch and push it to EPEL in matter. of. minutes, but every exec/vp/director has always been centos is stealling our money.
That's why they bought the people behind centos, a while back and I guess why they are doing what ever it is to the git repo now
@geerlingguy#Twitter, #Reddit, #Netflix, and now #RedHat. Rapid #enshittification is happening in numerous companies, many of them largely unrelated, all at once. Something's got the whole tech industry's higher-ups scared, desperate to make a lot of money quickly, regardless of the long-term consequences. I dread to think what that might be…
I'm also not reading much appreciation for the upstream developers in all those words. However I believe I can hear seagulls in the background... mine! mine! mine! mine!
I don't know if RHEL has any of the packages I'm involved with, so I can draw my own statistics. It would be interesting to see some numbers for fixes and additional support for non-essential packages that have a reasonably large user count.
Red Hat also needs to remember that they're profiting of the work of volunteers, whether in upstream distributions (i.e. Fedora) or upstream projects. I don't think it's in their long term interests to lock out and alienate those people.
Pure bullshit corporate spin on justifying STEALING the contributions of others to build a moat around it and Make Line Go Up, they should be axed from everywhere
Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity.
So they are trying to tell me exercising the right those FOSS licenses give me might lead to all the systems out there running Linux to start turning proprietary all of a sudden?!
Right, right, that's surely going to happen…
This truly is the age of enshitification :Blobhaj_Sad_Reach:
@geerlingguy Ahhh, I get it now. I was misreading it in my head, that he was called by an IBM exec who was "installed" (Which I thought was a misspell lmao) to turn it closed source lol
@geerlingguy man. "I feel that much of the anger from our recent decision around the downstream sources comes from...those who want to repackage it for their own profit. This demand for RHEL code is disingenuous. " Like...have a little self-awareness. They are literally repackaging open source upstream products for their own profit! "I can do it, but you can't" is a heck of a bold take.
"We do not find value in a RHEL rebuild..."
> That may very well be the case, and Mike has every right to sour grapes over that. #RedHat/IBM does not have the right to deny and harass (by removing their access) people who distribute source. That's Right #3, for goodness sakes!!
"Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere."
> That is not and has never been the primary concern of FOSS. Of course we want FOSS companies to thrive, but not at the expense of what makes FOSS FOSS.
"This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity."
> The only threat to FOSS here is companies corrupting it. Linux started as a hobbyist and hackers-only endeavour. It should never forget those roots. If you want a code base you can use and exploit any which way your heart desires, you should be making a BSD, not a Linux distro. (2)
> Finally, I’d like to address every open source company out there, whether your code is open today or you’re considering moving to an open source model. By any measure, Red Hat has “made it” and I hope many open source companies can succeed as we have.
Then why make this change if they have "made it" and have "succeeded"? They have got this far with their code being accessible. Why make things more difficult for others at this stage?
@danb@geerlingguy They had succeeded until the IBM shareholders came around asking for more dividends. It was no longer sufficient to simply cover engineering costs with a bit of profit left over...
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