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Comment by KillerDiller | Hacker News Reader

What a sham. Very few packages are available in the yum repos from the UBI unless one is a RH customer. This will be a nonstarter unless anyone can install any package from the RHEL collection by default.

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But isn't that the point? This is intended for RHEL users who previously had trouble shipping Docker images based on RHEL that Red Hat would provide support for. Not so much for non-RHEL users.

It will also be attractive for ISVs who want to partner with Red Hat.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, we compete with Red Hat in a number of areas.

If there is a particular package you need in UBI, we would be happy to evaluate it. Please file a BZ under RHEL 7 or 8 under the ubi-* Product Component at http://bugzilla.redhat.com

Yeah, I think they'll struggle with adoption over the existing docker ecosystem and they should not be introducing such barriers just yet.

Red Hat doesn't necessarily care about adoption unless it leads to subscription revenue. It's easy enough to switch between CentOS and Red Hat. At some point I care enough about enterprise support and Red Hat's add-ons to make that switch and pay for it. And if I don't, Red Hat doesn't care. I really don't understand this pressure for companies to just literally give stuff away. It's hard enough convincing corporate leadership that free-as-in-libre software is a good thing. If people just complain when it's also not free-as-in-gratis, the community is shooting itself in the foot.

TallGuyShort1, you are awesome :-) Thank you for the defense. We will evaluate adding packages to UBI as necessary, but you are right, we can't give all of RHEL away for free...

I think it should be straightforward to install CentOS packages instead.

Sure, but then why stop there and not just go

> FROM centos:8

So the complaint is that this Red Hat product is best for Red Hat's paying customers, and that if you want to use Red Hat's products without being a paying customer, you not only have to use the community edition's packages, but you may as well start with the community edition's base image? Am I understanding that right?

You are fully correct, and it is only a complaint in regard to the submission originally titling UBE as an "Alpine alternative".

UBI lives in between community and product. It's a community thing if run without a subscription and a product if run on RHEL/OpenShift.

Presumably because Red Hat is a business and is trying to make money. You only get updates if you have a subscription. If you aren't a subscriber, these images probably aren't what you want. Get the CentOS equivalents instead. If CentOS doesn't meet your needs but RHEL would, I can only think that you should be a paying customer then.

You get updates with UBI, free of charge.

Thanks for the info, that's good to know. I was speaking form ignorance on that point, obviously (since I was wrong). The point still stands though, Red Hat needs to make money, so we shouldn't expect them to eliminate all their options for monetizing something (which I assume you agree with given your other comments :) )

I do :-)

Because "FROM centos:8" can't exist until after "FROM ubi8" exists. UBI will offer betas for RHEL 9, 10, 11, etc. It solves a chicken and egg problem for partners who need early access.

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