Red Hat's open source rot took root when IBM walked in
- Reference: 1688747410
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/07/07/red_hat_open_source/
- Source link:
It's not Red Hat's fault, I blame IBM for the company's recent Linux code licensing changes and all the misery it unleashed.
While I know about [1]Red Hat as well as any outsider can, I'm not an insider. I should have taken co-founder Bob Young up on his Red Hat IPO stock offer in 1999 instead of sticking with the lucrative world of tech journalism. But while I think Red Hat has badly mishandled its [2]change in how the company will release its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code , I don't blame Red Hat's management. No, I look above to Red Hat's C-officers at IBM. There is where I think the open source rot begins.
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Let me start by saying [4]I don't think Red Hat is violating the letter of Linux's GPLv2 license . The spirit is another matter. But there's nothing new about the tension between Red Hat's commercial interests and the open source licensing rules that led to its rivals.
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Let's go over some history.
Ever since RHEL became popular – which, by the way, [7]was not the slam dunk you may have thought it was – [8]other groups started building RHEL clones . These included White Box Linux, Caos Tao Linux, Lineox, Scientific Linux, and the one you will all know if you're reading this article – CentOS.
[9]
Why? As White Box Linux [10]explained back in 2004 , its initial creation came out of self-interest. "We have several servers and over 50 workstations running Red Hat Linux and were left high and dry by their recent shift in business plan. Our choices were a difficult migration to another distribution or paying Red Hat an annual fee greater than the amortized value of our hardware. So we chose a third path, made possible by the power of Open Source... White Box Linux."
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
CentOS, which eventually became the most organized of the RHEL clones, proved popular with web-hosting businesses and other companies that had in-house Linux expertise. It was still a non-profit then. So If you needed support or a faster release cycle in 2011, [11]CentOS's developers told you to "purchase a subscription from the upstream vendor."
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But while CentOS was urging people to use RHEL, then, as now, far more users were sticking with CentOS and its variants. Today, even though CentOS is no longer supported, the [13]SimilarTech research company reports that [14]over 10 times as many businesses are using CentOS over RHEL .
Red Hat was, and is, leaving a lot of money on the table. So the company tried to get some of it back. For example, in 2005, Red Hat went after CentOS for violating its trademarks. That's when [15]CentOS dropped any mention of Red Hat and replaced it "with Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor."
Then, in 2014, with the problem still festering as far as Red Hat was concerned, [16]Red Hat acquired CentOS . But that didn't work out either. So Red Hat in 2020 [17]closed the doors to CentOS and started CentOS Stream.
CentOS fans were ticked off. You know the immediate result. AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, a new generation of RHEL clones, were born. And now, once more, Red Hat is trying to get more control of the issue.
[18]Open source licenses need to leave the 1980s and evolve to deal with AI
[19]Will Flatpak and Snap replace desktop Linux native apps?
[20]Red Hat promises AI trained on 'curated' and 'domain-specific' data
[21]EU's Cyber Resilience Act contains a poison pill for open source developers
You'd think they'd know how this works out. Clone users scream, Red Hat's reputation takes a knock in open source circles, and the clones continue on their way. Indeed, Gunnar Hellekson, Red Hat's VP and general manager for RHEL, told me:
I want to reiterate that, despite the perception being pushed by some, Red Hat remains fully committed to honoring our open source license obligations and delivering, openly and transparently, the source code that we use to build ALL of our products. For RHEL, in particular, this code is available in multiple places, including CentOS Stream, which is an open window into how and what we use to build RHEL. We also deliver many RHEL sources through Red Hat Universal Base Image, which includes the dependencies and packages needed to build a containerized application that will run on RHEL but can also be distributed however and wherever the developer wants. These are just a few of the places that non-customers can access RHEL source code – we do expect all users of Red Hat subscription services to abide by the enterprise agreement, which, again, does not supersede the GPL but acts in parallel with it.
This sounds to me like [22]Rocky Linux will be able to get away with its RHEL clone endeavor .
So why did Red Hat do this? As I said at the start, I don't think they did. Does Red Hat want you to pay for a RHEL subscription? You bet. Does it think that this PR fiasco will help? Nope. But does IBM understand? No, I don't think Big Blue's top brass gets it.
I see this as a bad trend for Red Hat. First, in 2021, instead of moving former Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst into IBM's top slot – which many of us had hoped for – they [23]let him leave . Instead of IBM becoming more like Red Hat, the stage was set for Red Hat to become more like IBM.
More recently, [24]IBM laid off just under 4 percent of Red Hat's staff . Those [25]layoffs included some of Red Hat's best open source people . Why? Like so many other tech companies, IBM appears to be under the delusion that layoffs for no real reason except an unfounded [26]fear of recession are helpful. Guess what? They're not.
So it is that IBM wants to squeeze more profits out of Red Hat by making it more like IBM, cutting costs, and increasing RHEL licensing volume. It won't work. This move will hurt Red Hat's culture and IBM's bottom line.
I had [27]hoped for better from IBM's acquisition of Red Hat . Oh well, it won't be the first or last time I was wrong. I feel sorry for the Red Hatters and clone redistributors. They're stuck in a rerun of an old, ugly fight. ®
Get our [28]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.redhat.com/en
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZKiK-TrihatoY9uoqYWiiwAAAsk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/25/30_years_of_linux_red_hat/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZKiK-TrihatoY9uoqYWiiwAAAsk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZKiK-TrihatoY9uoqYWiiwAAAsk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2012/05/15/redhat_rhel_ten_years?page=2
[8] https://dissociatedpress.net/2023/07/03/red-hat-and-the-clone-wars-iii-the-dawn-of-centos/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZKiK-TrihatoY9uoqYWiiwAAAsk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20040630140058/http:/www.whiteboxlinux.org/
[11] https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2011-September/117449.html
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZKiK-TrihatoY9uoqYWiiwAAAsk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.similartech.com/
[14] https://www.similartech.com/compare/centos-vs-red-hat
[15] https://web.archive.org/web/20050222184509/https:/www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=66
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2014/09/23/canonical_oracle_openstack_teamup/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/09/centos_red_hat/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/open_source_licenses_ai/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/09/will_flatpak_and_snap_replace/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/26/red_hat_ai/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/12/eu_cyber_resilience_act/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/04/rocky_linux_rhel_loopholes/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/02/ibm_whitehurst_quits/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/24/ibm_red_hat_layoffs/
[25] https://opensourcewatch.beehiiv.com/p/red-hats-layoffs
[26] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/22/interview_digital_transformation/
[27] https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-an-independent-barony-in-the-kingdom-of-ibm/
[28] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Same here
> and I suspect that a lot of people do that also.
All our prod and even UAT Boxes and VMs ran on licensed RHEL for 10 years straight, while developement, test environment and container images were based on CentOS.
Moved Dev/Test/Container stuff to Rocky last year to keep RHEL going in prod.
Now we are working actively on an exit strategy.
RedHat/IBM shot their own foot with this IMHO pretty dumb move...
"Do it for the advertising/exposure"
One of the business world's Big Lies.
Right up there with "trust me, I'm a manager".
As the article said, RH is leaving a lot of money on the table - that's Why.
"Red Hat was, and is, leaving a lot of money on the table."
But is it? Consider some of the possible scanarios for different customers if the clones closed down.
1. RHEL user for both production and test, training etc - let's call these non-production uses ancillary - no additional money made.
2. RHEL user for production, clone for ancillaries but would be able to afford to convert the latter to RHEL licences - money on table here.
3. RHEL user for production, clone for ancillaries but converting latter to full licences would not be financially affordable , will manage to struggle along with late version clone/CENTOS-stream or some other distro - no additional money to be made.
4. As 3 but decides to use another distro for future projects - no short term gain, likely long term loss as current production purpose reaches EoL.
5. As 4 but decides to actively migrate existing production usage so as not to split work between two distros - complete medium to long term loss
6. As 5 but reluctantly needs to buy extra licence for ancillaries during migration - short term gain followed by loss in medium rather than longer term.
7. Running entirely on clones, could afford to buy licences - money left on table.
8. Running entirely on clones, licences would be unaffordable - no money left on table irrespective of what course of action they take.
9. Not currently RHEL users but were considering it until now - loss of future sales prospects
Those in scenarios 3 - 6 currently using some S/W or H/W product currently RHEL users are likely to be speaking to the vendors of those products in the near future if they aren't already and said vendors likely to be considering their positions already.
So in some scenarios there will have been money left on the table which they could pick up. In others there's no prospect of that happening and in others there's money to be lost in the longer term, especially as 3s slip into 4 or 5.
Whether this is a real money earner in the long term depends on the balance between the scenarios.
My guess would be that there are bonuses to be made in the next quarter or so as the immediate gains are made after which it will be time for the execs to emulate the rest of their customers and move on.
> I blame IBM
As do I, but everyone knew some kind of crap would come from from the sale And Red Hat still sold, and everyone working there (that wasn't laid off) still works there, etc.
Only so many excuses can be made on their behalf. The fact IBM now owns them doesn't absolve them of anything at all.
Red hat sold to IBM knowing the risks. Red Hat are now IBM. Ergo, I blame Red Hat and IBM.
But RedHat no longer exists as an entity. It is IBM's RedHat product line.
Fedora developments...
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f40-change-request-privacy-preserving-telemetry-for-fedora-workstation-system-wide/85320
*Proposal* to use a telemetry system developed by the Endless OS people to gather data to improve yada yada.
I think the hatters are pretty good at being controversial all by themselves without IBM.
> It's not Red Hat's fault.
There was never any real chance that IBM would get it.
That must have been obvious before the takeover, so in that sense at least, it is Red Hat's fault, or at least their director's fault.
Embrace, extend...
...extinguish? Just work your way down the stack, from apps down through the toolchain to the OS, and Red Hat will end up as DB2 over z. We'll know that is complete when it gets rebranded Blue Shoes. :o(
Great liberators ??
Not sure how so many people are so one-sided on the topic and paint RHEL clone builders as some great liberators
Competition in the open source Linux market is healthy - you have Red Hat, Suse, Canonical, Amazon, and recently Microsoft, with their own range of Linux offerings.
All of these companies share open source Linux code to build their offerings, and hire and pay lots of people to work on the engineering, test. documentation and ecosystem building of their products. This allows open source Linux offerings to be more widely used and to help the technology advance.
The Linux model enables Joe Blow Linux or Rocky or Alma, to start their own Linux version and do the same as the others above have done. But Rocky and Alma have chosen to just clone someone else's version, where that company invests in making the offering, and Linux overall, better. There is little to no value in what they do, and I think it is shady. But for some reason people paint them as some sort of hero's. Not getting it. Many Red Hat paying customers are likely angry when they see peer companies in their industry, not paying Red Hat for RHEL, but getting the majority of the value of RHEL for free.
Articles like this seem to take that same one sided view, and hark back to days of Bob Young at Red Hat, when Red Hat was losing money and had less than 1,000 employees as some sort of panacea...Don't get it.
Re: Great liberators ??
> The Linux model enables Joe Blow Linux or Rocky or Alma, to start their own Linux version and do the same as the others above have done
The "linux model" is version 2 of the GPL, which permits everyone to do anything with the software except deny anybody else the same right to do anything. If you don't want people to take your stuff and wrap it up in a box to sell, don't give it away under a license which explicitly permits them to do exactly that. Being able to do that is the *very purpose* behind the GPL and if IBM don't like it they can go and play some other game.
> Many Red Hat paying customers are likely angry when they see peer companies in their industry, not paying Red Hat for RHEL, but getting the majority of the value of RHEL for free.
Nobody is stopping them from hiring people who can run a server without an American corporation to hold their hand.
Re: Great liberators ??
A* corporation, please? I don't care if they're American, that's not relevant. Red Hat were a positive force for a long time, and American the whole time as far as I'm aware.
The problem is the megacorp, not where the megacorp was born.
Re: Great liberators ??
> ...Don't get it.
The issue at hand is that what IBM seem to be doing is against their own legitimate business interests. I don't see any way that IBM/Red Hat actually benefit from this shutdown of access to source.
Re: Great liberators ??
It's against their long-term interests. However one of the reasons for IBM's long slow decline is that it's barely concerned with its interests beyond the next quarter.
Re: Great liberators ??
In a nutshell.
It appears that business decisions aren't made on the basis of long term health and profitability of a company. But rather the demands of equity traders who make their money on the basis of shirt term share value. In effect liming the soil.*
*For non-gardeners, putting lime on the soil releases nutrients quickly. But it also depletes the soil by releasing the nutrients without replenishing them. In the short term you get a good crop, but long term you can end up with very poor harvests.
Re: not paying Red Hat for RHEL, but getting the majority of the value of RHEL for free.
This is where the Red Hat defenders are getting it wrong IMO. The majority of the value of what RH provides exists in terms of professional support. You don't get that using a clone. The majority of the value of the OS was not created by RH, they didn't write the kernel, the user shells, the desktop ........ all these are open source and were taken by RH from the community, for free. And the condition of doing so was abiding by the GPL.
Re: Great liberators ??
"Don't get it."
Read the first post in this thread and EricM's reply. Remember that EricM is just one of a large number of RHEL users who took a similar approach. Then try again to get it.
Ubuntu
Because of CentOS RHEL was the default distribution for third party software. If a company needed third party software they choose RHEL because you knew it was either your only choice or was the primary platform for the software you needed. That's not true anymore, everything is available on Ubuntu and in many cases Ubuntu works better. I used Fedora and CentOS for over 20 years, all of my new systems run Ubuntu now. The older hardware with CentOS7 will continue to run it until they are decommissioned. The same is true for my clients.
I remember years ago being quite a Red Hat fan. I used Fedora personally and felt that it was a good choice because Red Hat were a great company who had given a *lot* to open source.
(also I did find Ubuntu's new releases to be crash-tastic most of the time, and Fedora to be quite stable, this outweighing the effort required to enable patent-encumbered things on Fedora).
I remember reading about how many projects/companies and how many millions of dollars Red Hat had spent acquiring companies and then open-sourcing the acquired technology. Seemed like a good idea to be a Red Hat / Fedora guy.
Feels like things have changed a bit.
No sane person will use Stream or Fedora for any kind of prod business app. Not even the simple Django+Vue tools that I have started to chuck out for free here and there. The OS support lifecycle is too short/non-existent.
I'm so happy that I got lucky 30 years ago ...
... and discovered Slackware.
Imagine, 30 years (in 10 days) of politics-free, board-room free computing that just works. It could have been yours, too.
There is no reason it won't last another 30 years. Is there any reason you shouldn't start now?
slackware.com
"Big Blue doesn't get it and doesn't care"
Honestly... how clueless is IBM these days?
They were the biggest leaders of the hottest tech in the world and they flushed all that down the drain.
They couldn't arrange a piss up in a brewery. I certainly don't expect them to understand open source or the nuances of a third-party developer community around a product.
Re: "Big Blue doesn't get it and doesn't care"
All companies are ephemeral.
Where are Burroughs, Sperry, Allied Signal, Philco, Amdahl, Remington Rand, DEC and ROLM?
Don't underestimate the ability....
In M&A situations, it is not unusual for the acquiring party to destroy much of the value they saw in what they acquired. Often it is because of the imposition of mindless bureaucracy on something that was successfully dynamic. Often it is because the acquiring party makes their problems your problems. Finally some mindless bean-counter or HR idiot will say "oh our costs just went up, we need to make savings and RA people" - blow the brains out of what we purchased. Having worked on some Italian projects in the 90s the general saying was "never underestimate their ability to disorganize you". Same principles apply here.
Red Hat was, and is, leaving a lot of money on the table.
That's purely imaginary money... You'll find when you try to FORCE free users to pay full price, they instead quickly cease to be users at all.
And more to the point... Red Hat is in the "free users" tier as well. They built their product upon the work of many thousands of others, which they did not have to pay for. They would not exist otherwise.
No, I don't think Big Blue's top brass gets it.
That's a difficult argument to sustain, as you've just listed several (but far from all) of the previous times Red Hat (before the IBM merger) did stupid things like that, too. Perhaps it's true, but we don't have any evidence to that effect.
Right cause, wrong target
While I agree with your analysis that the dictat came from above (IBM). I disagree that it was against clone in general. I think it was directed at one clone specifically, Oracle. IBM are in direct competition in cloud hosting with someone who is not only offering a comparable product, they are offering Their product. And undercutting their prices for it! That situation could only be allowed to continue for so long, and Rocky and co are just collateral.
I always understood that RedHat's real value wasn't the source or the binaries, it was the support that they offered and where they get their revenue from.
Which is why this move makes no sense to me. A company that I worked for used CentOS as a testing ground for products to be deployed to customer's RedHat instances and I suspect that a lot of people do that also. I know that RedHat allows free development licenses but licensing is a royal pain in the ass when you are developing, spinning up VMs and the like. But then we didn't require the support. From that perspective, CentOS was an advertising tool for RedHat itself.
Makes no sense.