Comment by ytjohn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ytjohn | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

When I was young and optimistic, I was doing a bunch of side IT jobs. At one, a local insurance company needed to replace their Windows NT server. Instead of going with Windows 2000, I talked them into me setting up a RedHat Linux server running Samba. I had a few hiccups as the workstations weren't actually connected to a domain originally, but I eventually got them all going with AD login, roaming profiles, tape backups, etc. The big selling point was the open source nature, free updates forever.

Less than six months later, Redhat announced that the were going to discontinue RedHat Linux and start releasing their new RedHat Enteprise Linux. This left me rather angry and embarrassed. It was definitely a turning point in my understanding of FOSS. It also made me a lifelong Debian/Debian derivative user.

I've supported RHEL professionally, even getting RHCEs in it. RedHat has also contributed a lot to the open source community. But I've certainly never forgot that first pivot, so I'm not surprised with their recent decisions regarding RHEL's source code.

I understand embarrassment, but anger might be misplaced. Red Hat was a newly public company trying to turn a profit. It identified its market and Red Hat Linux wasn't serving it, and the model they were pursuing with Red Hat Linux wasn't working.

But I am a solid supporter of the "pay for RHEL or use Debian" philosophy. If you need promises about the future, pay for RHEL or use a project that doesn't have commercial motives. Debian is great and I wish more companies would standardize on it and support it.

I'm not such a fan of the middle road of hoping that vendors will continue supplying things of value for free. It's especially ironic that an insurance vendor got burned by placing a bet on a free operating system with no assurances whatsoever. The RHEL subscription is insurance.

Pay for RHEL or use Ubuntu

Edit: I guess people don’t like Ubuntu that much

Both Canonical and Ubuntu have their own share of problems, and they've been struggling to monetize Ubuntu for the past few years. Once you get burned by one commercial vendor (not once actually… it's the third time afaik), it's probably wise to use this opportunity for migrating to a more stable distribution where commercial interest doesn't have much influence, and which has never intentionally burned its users (since Debian developers are users too and are also doing it for themselves).

Heh. Saw the edit, but responding anyway. Canonical has its own issues. I can overlook some, others (like forcing Snap on users) have put me off a lot.

Ubuntu did a lot to popularize Linux and make the Linux desktop experience more usable. It struggled for a long time to figure out how to monetize that, though. They seem to be profitable now[1] claiming a growth in revenue to $205.4m and operating profit of $44m with a headcount of 858 (up from 705 the prior year).

The "Ubuntu Pro" move this year (which also raised many hackles, briefly) will probably pad the coffers a bit more.

[1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... (See "Group of companies' accounts" through December 2022. The PDF link is atrocious.)

I don’t see a reason to use Ubuntu over Debian

AKS and AKS Engine uses Ubuntu. From an Enterprise point of view, Ubuntu LTS and RHEL are more attractive.

For what reason? The certifications?

> Pay for RHEL or use Debian

In this climate, that is a solid philosophy

> The big selling point was the open source nature, free updates forever. Less than six months later, Redhat announced that the were going to discontinue RedHat Linux and start releasing their new RedHat Enteprise Linux.

I wish there were legal consequences when companies lied about future prices of things or durations of support.

I mean there are if you are under contract or otherwise paid for a product as advertised…

How about if you are under EULA, and paid $0 as advertised?

Indeed. It's absurd for them to be able to treat EULAs as real signed contracts when you violate them, but as nothing at all when they do.

You were not the only one.

Notes and presentations from various HEPiX conferences around 2003/2004 will reveal the reaction to academic licence fees for RHEL, and the birth of Scientific Linux as an EL rebuild.

Remember these were/are publicly funded projects with budget time-lines.

Fedora was released and all of us that used Red Hat Linux just moved right over like nothing happened.

Remember kids, if you're not paying for it, you're the product.

Open Source was supposed to be the opposite of that though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com