No it's mostly from people with a commercial interest. I can't take Rocky seriously when they are selling support for a thing they don't make, but demand it's readily provided for free and no hassle.
So just like RedHat and IBM?
That's one of the benefits of open source. It helps small guys to get started and make it big. Once they become big, they can contribute back.
Red Hat has benefited from previous contributors, but then added a ton of open source work of their own.
RH are open source contributors; Rocky Linux are mere users.
https://old.reddit.com/r/redhat/comments/14jq5i7/red_hats_co...
(Which is only what I, an ignoramus, would expect - if the project aims for "bug-for-bug compatibility", then it doesn't really gain much value from fixing bugs, while a fork would.)
If you think his evaluation of Alma/Rocky contributions is incorrect or incomplete, I'd be interested in hearing your POV as a Rocky engineer.
Looking at their GH profile https://github.com/rocky-linux seems to show some public repos with code in them?
https://old.reddit.com/r/redhat/comments/14jq5i7/red_hats_co...
Those Rocky Linux repos are either not code (website, wiki, etc.), and a few are tools for repackaging/rebranding an existing Linux distro's source code bug-for-bug - an activity which, by definition, does not and cannot offer anything more than the original code already did.
It seems that Rocky Linux have contributed code as open source, just not directly to RHEL.
not migrate2rocky, or almalinux-deploy. But if you look closely, they are mostly 'infrastructure' tooling to sync sources or deal with build nodes.
Alma at least addresses this: https://almalinux.org/blog/our-value-is-our-values/
Rocky?
Second, the sole direct beneficiary of this hypothesis, IBM, apparently thinks it isn't true, and from what little comments they have released appears to have come to this conclusion after quite a bit of analysis.
Third, from my position of ignorance, I think IBM is probably correct. Why? Because the free burger in your analogy isn't Alma/Rocky, it's Fedora. A user who runs Fedora on workstations or small production servers is very likely to consider RHEL when choosing an enterprise distribution for large deployments, because they are already familiar with the ecosystem but they want stronger stability guarantees than Fedora Server. But a user who is running Alma/Rocky has much less reason to move to RHEL: they gain nothing but the license hassle.
(I'm not a heavy user of RHish distros, mind, I only ever anticipate using Rocky if somebody else already decided to deploy a particular project on it so you probably shouldn't put significant energy into whether -I- notice, but there seems to be a perception issue here that's sufficiently widespread that you might get a decent ROI in terms of community growth from doing something about it and I'm pretty much always in favour of community growth whether I anticipate being one of the happy users of the project or not)
Contributing starts from day one https://old.reddit.com/r/redhat/comments/14jq5i7/red_hats_co...
You can't all of a sudden expect you to have gained respect and trust, just because you are part of something 'big'.
I'd appreciate a small community more when they reach out, to grow them, than for a big one to lend them a hand with the basics.
What more should they do?
Also note, Red Hat pays engineers for the extended support, the compliance https://access.redhat.com/articles/2918071, etc that customers expect from RH. Engineers contribute both upstream (first) and backport those changes to older releases.
They're paid to work on FOSS projects. Gnome isn't a RedHat project. Nor is the kernel. And they're IBM projects even less.
And most of those projects started without RedHat and RedHat stepped on them to become what it is first. Plus, there are thousands of essential projects they don't have anything to do with, still in the distro.
Because Red Hat wants to work with the community, it doesn't just start projects and slap a CLA on top of it.
https://redhatofficial.github.io/ is only a small part of what Red Hat has contributed to.
What is Redhat demanding for free? They spend more than anyone else on developers for all of the Linux stack.
Their whole business started and grew on FOSS stuff people wrote for free...
Rocky is absolutely a separate entity, both legally and in practice. In fact, the project and foundation board bylaws limit undue influence in a number of ways including maximum number of board seats per employer. We try to show our values both in our words and actions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36417968 https://sam.gov/opp/2e0365ce1e3c4c179b50fb15573d68e4/view
Read this post from Carl who works on CentOS and Streams: https://old.reddit.com/r/redhat/comments/14jq5i7/red_hats_co...
Redhat are the parasites, not Centos.
If Redhat don't agree to the deal that the gpl makes, they are free not to use any gpl code.
Trying to paywall gpl software is simply theft, and it's an incredible expression of the art, when something is free, and yet you still manage to steal it.
No, it's not, and I've seen your comments elsewhere. I don't think you even know what the "free" in "free software" means.
You are COMPLETELY allowed to SELL free software. "Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can." See: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html
Red Hat is still distributing full corresponding source code to anyone they distribute a binary to. That is what the GPL class of licenses require, and that is what they are doing.
You are free to get the software elsewhere. You don't have to get it from Red Hat. And if Red Hat wants to charge you for it, you can take it or leave it.
It's always been a fact that RH can't actually prevent a Centos-alike from reproducing the binaries from the same source, since RH are obligated to make the source available to anyone they hand a binary to. So you are right, they are still doing that. Congratulations on something that was never contested.
The problem is simply that they are trying, and HAVE at least issued statements asserting policies that they don't actually have the right to make. For instance they said that users can not legally redistribute the source they have access to, because it has RH trademarks in it. Well, fortunately that doesn't actually fly. The GPL isn't nullified by just including your cooyrighted or trademarked logo into the package. If anything, it just creates a derivative work and you just gave away all rights to your logo. Presumably they were'nt that stupid and carefully only do that to software they wholly wrote themselves, or things that are MIT and not GPL.