Re: [PLUG] Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 7:11 AM brent saner via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 06:08 Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net> wrote:
>>
>> RH is still the one paying for all that, so they're giving back.  They
>> wouldn't be paying for the stuff in the free distro if they weren't
>> getting paid for doing the work to benefit their paid distro.
>
> What, exactly, are they paying for? The patches that are bound by GPL because the software they apply to are GPL? The ones they can't restrict redistribution of?
> They aren't making those patches available out of the goodness of their heart; they're required to make them available as well because they contribute to building GPL-covered binaries.

They aren't required to create the patches in the first place.  If
they distribute binaries they have to distribute the sources, but they
don't have to create anything.

That's what they're paying for.  The code doesn't write itself.

>
> Perhaps it's on me for not stressing enough how little RH does development, so let me make it clear-

According to the most recent Linux Foundation release that I could
find, RH has authored about 9% of all Kernel commits, which makes it
the #3 source of contributions.  The #1 source as unaffiliated
authors, making up 12%.  So Redhat alone contributed 75% of what all
unpaid contributors wrote combined.

Now, that document was historical and covered 2007-2020.

I ran the following:
git log --since=2022-01-01 --pretty=oneline | wc -l
14720
git log --since=2022-01-01 --pretty=oneline --author='.*@redhat.com' | wc -l
756

That's 5% of recent commits, though it should be noted that this
includes merge commits and so on.  I wouldn't exclude those since that
merge activity represents a lot of integration/QA that is real
contribution.  This also just looks at the author field alone, and it
is possible that redhat is doing contributions reflected elsewhere in
the record - really anybody mentioned anywhere in a kernel commit has
done something to add value.  My guess is that even if they just
report a bug, they're probably not just throwing a vague report over
the fence but are probably contributing real analysis and data.

The linux kernel is probably the most complex and active FOSS projects
in existence, and a company paying for 5% of it shouldn't be
downplayed.

>
> CentOS Stream is, quite literally, the curation and QA. RHEL is a minor-release-frozen version of a point in CentOS Stream major with RHN thrown on. There's a reason it's "CentOS Stream 9" and not a pure rolling release.

I'm not sure I'm following you.  So, you're saying that somebody
running CentOS Stream 9 has the exact same code (minus RHN packages)
as somebody running RHEL 9.0 (not 9.2) today?  Ie same patches to
kernel, glibc, other system packages, etc?  If a new kernel release is
issued, the patches it contains are backported to neither or both, but
never just one or the other?

I thought CentOS Stream was supposed to be closer to a rolling
release, while RHEL releases were supposed to get backports.  As we
agree, though, I'm not really an expert on the RHEL ecosystem and if I
have that wrong I invite correction.

If they really were identical, I don't see why people are making a big
deal out of the RHEL patches not being publicized since they'd be
public via CentOS already.  My suspicion is that they aren't actually
the same.  If they aren't the same, then there is your curation and
QA.

>
> The majority of this curation is via community-submitted bug reports.

Well, sure, but reading and dealing with all those reports takes
effort.  Then the RHEL users benefit from getting the fixes before
they get the bugs.

> Nobody has ever chosen RHEL over a free EL based simply on the merits of RHEL over the others because there's no reason to; the "value-add" you seem to think exists really doesn't

Well, keep in mind that until recently my understanding is that CentOS
had bug-compatibility with RHEL, so there wasn't a value-add there.
My understanding is that RedHat killed that with Stream, but I could
be misunderstanding things.

You might be describing a transitory state that only existed after
CentOS was created, and before the non-Stream version has been
completely phased out (which hasn't actually happened as I understand
it, at least for CentOS 7).  RHEL hasn't gone through any of that,
which is also the sort of thing companies are willing to pay for.

It isn't entirely clear to me exactly what we are and aren't in
disagreement about.  Some of this could just be choice of words.  My
basic point is that RedHat actually contributes quite a bit to the
FOSS community, and their business model, like most FOSS business
models, is a bit clunky because the GPL eliminates many of the
traditional methods of monetization.  You can't really say they aren't
adding value when they're writing huge volumes of code and it is just
that the method of charging for it is awkward because they have to
release the code itself for free.

-- 
Rich
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