RedHat Limits Access to RHEL Source Code

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Hostmavi

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OMG, what are they trying to do? Get everyone to pay for RHEL? They can forget about that. People would rather change to another distro like Debian or Ubuntu than paying for RHEL.

Hostmavi said:
Linux distributions like Alma Linux, Rocky Linux will be end ?
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At least not for the security updates for the time being. And they are looking for other solutions. Maybe they manage to get an exception to use rpm's from the software sources from the customer portal. Or something else.

We have to wait and see, but this certainly is the second bad news of RHEL in short time, which lowers my trust in RHEL itself (not the downstream products), because it's again a short term notice.
 
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Not the end of anything, just making the maintainers of Alma and Rock pay to get access. Dumb move on RedHat's part.
 
BillyS said:
just making the maintainers of Alma and Rock pay to get access.
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No because even if they pay, the can not re-release it according to the second link of Alma:
Unfortunately the way we understand it today, Red Hat’s user interface agreements indicate that re-publishing sources acquired through the customer portal would be a violation of those agreements.
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So the paid versions are not allowed to be re-distributed.

This is what RHEL wants:
Red Hat has decided to continue to use the Customer Portal to share source code with our partners and customers, while treating CentOS Stream as the venue for collaboration with the community.
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So in other words, direct customers of RHEL can keep using RHEL, but community distro's must change and make use of the Centos Stream source.

And that is not what the community wants or ever has done (except Fedora):
using CentOS Stream sources would make us upstream of RHEL. CentOS Stream sources, while being upstream of RHEL, do not always include all patches and updates that are included in RHEL packages.
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Community wants stable stuff, not being a kind of beta RHEL.

Still a dumb move on RH's part. Out of their point of view, it might be clever to let the community work on creating a more stable RHEL and protect direct paying customers against all similar free releases.
On the other hand, the Community does not want that, so how far will this go and what will be the outcome of this.

But if RHEL will not co-operate for a better solution, there will be loads of people leaving RHEL source in favor of Debian sources.
 
BillyS said:
and I also read the Rocky release, which seems far more upbeat.
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But less clear as far as I can see. They do say there is no interruption for users.
However, it is not saying how. So they might have chosen to use the upstream source versions, while Alma wants to keep using downstream for stability.
It would be good if the users would now how exactly they are going to go further. If they are going to use the Centos Stream we just as wel have keep using Centos Stream or going to Fedora, which is just wat we do not want.
So I'm missing the clarity about that from Rocky.
 
Maybe someone will start a replacement for redhat. Rocky / Alma or the former developers at redhat could.
When there is a market for it or when there is demand, a replacement of redhat could easily take off.

I can imagine many (former) developers at redhat were not entirely behind the new management's decisions.
They could be happy to be working for a new refreshed redhat.

Or am I missing the ball completely here?
Kr
Dries
 
Driesp said:
Or am I missing the ball completely here?
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Maybe not, at this point nothing is clear. But I hope a better solution will be thought of. Because if they all start their own distro, chances are there will be a lot of differences in fairly short time between for example Rocky, Alma and Oracle for example, and that is not to any benefit.

I hope there will be some clarity fairly soon as to what is to be expected.
 
Yeah, when version 9 runs out of support and I am forced to upgrade, I'll probably move over to Debian at that point. Lots of time between now and then for things to change too.
 
Hostmavi said:
Sound not good.

CloudLinux plans to release a free version of CloudLinux OS 8 and 9
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Isn't the "free" version of CloudLinux already called AlmaLinux?

Today CloudLinux OS OS 8 and 9 are based on AlmaLinux OS.

The OS will not have all the extra features of CloudLinux OS, such as LVE, CageFS, AccelerateWP, HardenedPHP, etc…

It sounds like they are just going to rename AlmaLinux to CloudLinux FREE! And that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Still doesn't answer how they how they are going to continue to get access to the RHEL sources.
 
I don't know... could be they rename it but I don't now if the community would support it then, because in that case it might be free but not really open source, unless I'm mistaken.

sparek said:
And that doesn't make a lot of sense to me
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Not? Think commercially. Why have people start with free hosting at a certain time? Commercial interest. If you have the customer with you, the more chance he will upgrade.
Same with Cloudlinux. If you already have a free Cloudlinux, so you probably also get the php chooser with all the options which Cloudlinux give to be used with php (the modules and addons), but as stated, no HardenedPHP, that will annoy at a certain time.
And everytime people run into issues because they have to upgrade PHP and remove older versions because not having the hardenedphp. A customer then chooses a pro version a lot faster than if he's running a "separate" OS. Because the customer is already tied with Cloudlinux.

To me that would make sense as a commercial thought.
If it would be a good thing...... that's another question. But well we have to wait and see what happens anyway, what will Alma do, Rocky, Oracle.
They should wait to long or they will loose loads of people to Debian and alikes.
 
This reminds me of something........ cPanel change their pricing, all flocked to Directadmin and ruined it.

Please don't do the same to Debian - my baby - I beg you all.....

(Note: Humour post)
 
Hostmavi said:
Almalinux drop to be 1:1 wiht RHEL
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If I read it correctly, it looks as this will also be the case for others like Rocky probably:
Red Hat announced they will no longer be providing the means for downstream clones to continue to be 1:1 binary copies of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
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So if RHEL does not provide the means anymore, how can one be able to continue to be 1:1.

Rocky also said:
and to continue to produce future RHEL-compatible versions as long as the option remains,
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but didn't state anything about the 1:1 or what if the option does not remain anymore.

Seems our thoughts to use Debian on next servers has becom a lot stronger with this. I wonder how compatibility will be between Alma, Rocky and Oracle Linux. Will they be 1:1 compatible amongst each other? Probably not I guess.... not good news anyway.

RHEL thought to get more customers and profit this way, but they made a big mistake on that and messed up for all of us.
 
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