Re: [PLUG] CentOS

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 12:45 AM Joe Rosato <rosatoj@gmail.com> wrote:

1. Is it true that redhat is running more of the show than IBM? I heard that a couple of times about the purchase. I have my doubts.

I'll be the first to admit that I've never been happy about or comfortable with the acquisition. There is always a looming feeling that IBM is "there" that I can't quite shake. But the reality that I have experienced is that they have genuinely left us the hell alone. There were a few inevitable and annoying things that happened early when it comes to benefits and such, but as far as how we conduct business, how we go about our days as engineers, and how we engage with the community, there is no influence from IBM that I have seen.

In fact, the most visible changes I have seen since the acquisition have all been in Red Hat's favor. Consider our CEO becoming the President of IBM -- Jim has been the steward and even architect of how a large business operates with open principles, not only with regard to software development but how it applies to management and decision making all the way to the top. His new position puts him at the forefront of affecting cultural changes at IBM, and it's clear to me that he and Arvind are working together to create a "new" IBM, a la the transformation of Microsoft over the past several years.

We have also made a couple of "reverse acquisitions" of technology from IBM, absorbing teams into Red Hat and converting proprietary software to open source, and we have seen IBM abandon projects of their own that are redundant to those at Red Hat. Here is one such technology that my team works with directly: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/open-sourcing-red-hat-advanced-cluster-management-kubernetes

2. Since CentOSs death was proceeded by forcing RHSM on all and moving away from RHN, is the goal to more away from the stewardship model(how it all started) to an ownership model(more of an IBM thing)?

Nobody likes RHSM. It's a pain in the butt. But the plan to migrate away from RHN has been in the works for years, far preceding the acquisition. The RHN model was antiquated and needed to go, I get that, but the RHSM system is a lot more overhead than I think is necessary. The problem there is partially driven, IMO, by good intentions with the technology conflicting with good intentions in how we design the subscriptions from a business standpoint. To my knowledge, there are concerted efforts underway to improve the system and provide new models that can help ease the complications left by the CentOS gap, but I will also readily admit that subscriptions are a microscopic fraction of anything I deal with, so I'm not the best person to talk about them.

The question of stewardship versus ownership seems purposefully loaded, frankly. Open software and open operations are at the heart of everything we do. All products are based on code that is protected by the GPL or other licenses, and we take that seriously. By that nature, we can't really be anything but stewards. Selling subscriptions has proven a successful way to make money and grow a business around open source software, and our growth and success have led to massive improvements in community code over the last couple of decades, which every distribution and every user of Linux and other OSS have benefited from.

3. And since linux is licenced under gpl 2.0, where you are allowed to make $$ off it - provided you don't make proprietary changes and then NOT release them back to the community... Can there be problems in the future as they pull away from the community?

Ah, and here we find the fully unveiled loaded question. ;)

I personally don't see any risk of us pulling away from the community, so I can't really answer your question as it is framed. Reference again the above URL to the ACM (Advanced Cluster Manager) example -- We are actively converting a proprietary project to open source and releasing it to the community because the core charter of our business is Open and we can't operate properly with closed source software in our product mix. I've seen this same thing play out numerous times over my near-decade at Red Hat as we have acquired smaller software companies.

I see more risk when fringe parts of the community treat us like big bad red because we've had the gall to make a few bucks, and they refuse to participate with us, rather than the other way around. But I think that's an outspoken minority, and it doesn't concern me much. I've built a career around open source technology, and that is immensely satisfying to me. Regardless of whether I had accomplished that at Red Hat or somewhere else, I would have Red Hat to thank for it.

Joe 😁

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 10:49 PM Dustin Black via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
I work at Red Hat. AMA

Dustin Black
Manager, Telco 5G Team
Red Hat Performance & Scale Engineering

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:37 PM Tone Montone via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
JP,

I was forced to use Oracle’s “Unbreakable” Linux a few years back because a DBA Manager was sold it ran Oracle databases better... this was proven not to be true. :)

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 18, 2020, at 5:01 PM, JP Vossen via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> On 12/14/20 1:48 PM, Keith via plug wrote:
>>> On 12/14/20 9:52 AM, Rich Kulawiec via plug wrote:
>>> On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 06:12:39AM -0500, Steve Litt via plug wrote:
>>>> I don't know why anybody, other than a big corporation who wants
>>>> handholding and somebody to sue, would use any Red Hat distro
>>>> or recent derivative.
>>> I've had this argument too many times to count. The problem is that some
>>> organizations don't believe in any model of support other than paying
>>> someone (because they weren't around back in the days when we were all
>>> running Unix from Bell Labs and Berkeley and there was no such thing as
>>> paid support) and they do believe that they can sue someone if it goes
>>> sideways (like "suing IBM" is actually going to result in anything other
>>> than a lot of billable hours for attorneys).
>>>
>>> Facts don't matter in this argument. History doesn't matter. Costs don't
>>> matter. The "we must pay someone for support" and "we can sue someone"
>>> mindsets are written in stone at such organizations and nobody's ever
>>> going to change their minds, no matter how much it costs or how badly
>>> it turns out.
>>>
>>> ---rsk
>>> ___________________________________________________________________________
>> **standing ovation** truer words have never been spoken. That is the singular issue that has persisted since the rise and proven Linux viability for anything anywhere skilled people are allowed to make the technical decisions (which doesn't mean Linux always wins- just that its always considered). I still blame '70's MBA culture for this crap but I digress...
>
> I can't argue with any of that, but I'm surprised that I haven't noticed "Oracle" Linux come up. The "Oracle" part is in quotes because they just legally steal all of RHEL's work (for better or worse), break it a bit, then sell support for it.
>
> First, I would never voluntarily use any Oracle product except for VirtualBox, which they haven't managed to screw up yet.
>
> Second, I am forced to use OEL at $WORK, and I loath it.
>
> So https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/need-a-stable%2C-rhel-compatible-alternative-to-centos-three-reasons-to-consider-oracle-linux is...a thing. The article says "Whether running on UEK or RHCK, Oracle Linux is fully compatible with (RHEL)" but that is *NOT true.* I call UEK the "Unusable Enterprise Kernel" because every single time we have been running that kernel and had really screwy unexplainable problems, when we've removed that kernel and used the RHCK one the problems go away. Every. Single. Time.
>
> Later,
> JP
> -- -------------------------------------------------------------------
> JP Vossen, CISSP | http://www.jpsdomain.org/ | http://bashcookbook.com/
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___________________________________________________________________________
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