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Comment by NegativeK | Hacker News Reader

Rocky and Alma are doing exactly what CentOS pre-Stream did for _six_ years. Now they're frustrated that their decision to kill the CentOS idea didn't stick?

Red Hat might have the legal right to gate their product, but it seems really slimy to build RHEL on the work of who knows how many people that publish it for free and then to put road blocks around their derivative.

I don't really like reductionist blaming, but I feel basically forced to wonder what Red Hat would be doing if IBM wasn't involved.

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Take a look at this [1] and tell me one company that comes close. RH has surely made questionable decisions, and yes that seems to be increasing since IBM. But the heat they get is precisely because people are used to having free lunch and then feel it's been taken away. I don't see AWS, Oracle, and others getting the same treatment for benefiting immensely from open source, without contributing much in return. Would you rather have an industry dominated by RH-like companies or the others?

[1] https://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source-program-office/c...

Without exaggerating, I think I've read maybe two kind comments about Oracle _ever_. Their handling of the Sun IP alone could overfill thread after thread with vitriol.

And I think an analogy is apt. Someone was one telling me that religions that are slightly different (think Protestantism versus Catholicism) lead to far greater strife than religions that are vastly different (like Buddhism and Catholicism.) Maybe people are just louder about the things they care about and feel close to.

"it seems really slimy to build RHEL on the work of who knows how many people that publish it for free and then to put road blocks around their derivative"

I'm always curious that people get angry at Red Hat profiting on the work of others, but few people get angry at the companies that use a RHEL clone to run their business and pay nothing and contribute nothing.

Red Hat is still releasing source code. The only thing that it's not doing is making it super-convenient to rebuild exactly its product.

Seriously - for most purposes CentOS Stream is just fine if what you want is a distro that feels like RHEL. Its one drawback is that it's not a one-for-one clone of RHEL, which generally only really matters if you are using it to run your business. Which gets me back to - why are people so pissed at Red Hat but not all the organizations that make money using RHEL but don't pay towards its development?

> Red Hat is still releasing source code. The only thing that it's not doing is making it super-convenient to rebuild exactly its product.

Releasing only to their customers and only if not redistributed. If you held redhat to the same standard for the open source they redistribute they couldn't exist.

> Rocky and Alma are doing exactly what CentOS pre-Stream did for _six_ years. Now they're frustrated that their decision to kill the CentOS idea didn't stick?

CentOS wasn't selling support contracts tho.

Not that I think anything they are doing is in any way wrong mind you.

To be fair, neither is Rocky.

https://sam.gov/opp/2e0365ce1e3c4c179b50fb15573d68e4/view

The RESF / Rocky Linux project does not sell support contracts. That is a contract for CIQ. Any company is free to sell support services for Rocky Linux (and many do, including OpenLogic, MontaVista, CIQ, TuxCare, etc).

Yes according to NASA

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