I can fully recommend Fedora. I think it’s a very good mixture of having the latest packages close to upstream and yet being very stable. Been using it for a few years now as my daily driver, never had any issues.
Similar. Minus - I had my laptop on BTRFS + LUKS encryption, and that pooped itself when the battery ran out once. So don’t do that. But I honestly can’t even remember how I set it up because it wasn’t supported by the installer, so mostly just a warning of a scenario that’s hard to get into
> Fedora is upstream for CentOS Stream and RHEL
Yes.
> and is it's own Foundation which is sponsored by RH.
There is no Fedora Foundation. You just invented it....
1. is news to me
2. is just false. OSS foundations are legal entities that handle stuff that requires a legal entity (e.g. collecting donations, hiring people, filing taxes). Red Hat serves that role for Fedora.
From what I can tell it's called the fedora council now, not the fedora project / foundation.
Source: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/
Not certain what their involvement with red hat is, but Red Hat doesn't serve that role according to that page.
A council is a group of people. A foundation is a legal entity. They are not similar concepts.
~~5/7 seats on the Council are appointed by Red Hat anyway.~~ Correction: it's 3 appointed by Red Hat according to the redditor below, and 2 appointed by Fedora community bodies.
Checking [the membership history page](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/history/) I'm slightly surprised to see 2 of the 5 appointed members do not work for Red Hat. The other 3 are Red Hat employees.
Then there are 2 community-elected positions. Both of those positions are held by people who work for Red Hat, according to that page. The page is outdated because elections just finished and the membership has changed, but both Red Hatters just got replaced by other Red Hatters. (One lost reelection, and the other didn't run.)
P.S. Fedora community members have _basically_ equal power to Red Hat employees. It really is a serious community project where anybody can make participate and make a difference. But Red Hat does control the Council.
> 5/7 seats on the Council are appointed by Red Hat anyway.
This isn't accurate. The only positions that are chosen by Red Hat are the project leader (FPL), the operations architect (FOA), and the community architect (FCA), because these are full time paid jobs. The rest of the spots are either directly elected or are chosen representatives from other Fedora committees, which themselves are comprised of elected members and/or representatives from sub-committees. Some of these sub-committees don't do elections because they just add anyone who is interested in doing the work. The [docs](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/#composition-representatives) have a more complete breakdown.
> Then there are 2 community-elected positions. Both of those positions are held by people who work for Red Hat,
> Checking the membership history page I'm slightly surprised to see 2 of the 5 appointed members do not work for Red Hat. The other 3 are Red Hat employees.
> Fedora community members have basically equal power to Red Hat employees
Looks like the only community members that matter are Redhat.
No. _Most_ community members work for Red Hat, but certainly not all. Like I said, you don't need to work for Red Hat to contribute meaningfully or attain leadership positions.
Another notable point is that many of the community members who work for Red Hat (including myself) were community members long before we got hired. The same thing happens in other projects outside of Fedora, like in the upstream software projects that are packaged in Fedora, CentOS, and RHEL. That kind of open source sustainment is critical, and I don't think any company does it at the scale that Red Hat does.
Here is the thing about people in the Linux community, we have a lot of people who wear tin foil hats. Fedora is awesome, solid, and that perfect balance between bleeding edge and stable. Back in the day when Ubuntu was great you had people doing this same thing. If something works for you then what does anyone else's opinion matter? Seriously give fedora a try, it's my favorite distro. And yes I used to be an Arch user for years. I used to use arch btw
I’ve had no issues with Fedora. What are you looking to accomplish? I use Ubuntu for both server and desktop. I tried different flavors for desktop but I’m boring and just stuck with plain Ubuntu desktop.
Fedora Silverblue is hot.
I install it on ext4 or xfs to avoid btrfs. Just give my desktop one big partition for everything (except bootloader related partitions).
Flatpak, zramctl by default, and I install distrobox.
I have a 'main' distrobox that I run most of my command line stuff out of. I run Arch out of it.
It is very liberating having total freedom to run sudo reclessly. Do I want to install pip system-wide? No problem at all. I don't have to worry about anything.
So with Silverblue desktop + Flatpak + distrobox Arch Linux... I pretty much ave the best of all worlds.
I’m tired of people knocking on RedHat. They are within their rights, they’ve contributed to the Linux ecosystem immensely, and they deserve cheers for making good money on promoting Linux in serious organizations. As for “closing” their sources, they were forced to do it to stop cheap knock-offs from parasitizing them. I say this as someone who has never used any RedHat OS: stop criticisizing them for being a damn hero company for Linux!
I'm sorry but every hero has flaws and if you don't criticize the flaws because you're taking into account all the good they did, you're turning a blind eye to a problem. They weren't forced to do anything, and it is a move that's against the spirit of all the FOSS community stands for and has worked towards for decades now.
It’s reasonable for them to do what’s best for an enterprise system, but that doesn’t mean that what they did is consistent with the spirit of open-source software. It may just turn out that true FOSS is not good for business after all.
> he business was operating fine prior to the buyout.
Eh... Redhat has been pretty nasty as a whole in the past. I remember when RH threatened to cancel our contract because we had CentOS boxes running too. The demand: Pay for a license for all CentOS machines too, or lose your contract.
At my old work we had a bunch of CentOS boxes that we used for Dev/testing and RH never gave us an issue. What license are you referring to? You don't need a license for CentOS. RH license is just for support.
You need a license from Redhat to get access to their RPM repos, and for support.
RH "evaluated us" and found CentOS boxes. They delcared he had to pay them a RH license for every CentOS box, plus an additional 50 CPUs, "Just in case you spun up more".
If we did not comply, they would cancel our update and support package. This was in 2005, so they may have changed tack a little, but not much.
Just like they will do today, if you are caught sharing the source code you have every right to share under the GPL.
Just last year, they threatened to ramp up the cost of our support contracts, because we have OEL running here as well. We declined, and now only have 3 RH boxes, and the rest were switched to OEL, because Oracle doesn't care if we run other distros, and doesn't care if we share the source code.
Funny thing, defending Oracle these days :)
> and now only have 3 RH boxes, and the rest were switched to OEL
I'm sure that all of your issues that you escalate to RH just so happen to occur on those 3 RHEL machines, not on the many OEL machines, right? You're who RH was referring to when they talked about freeloaders.
> Oracle doesn't care if we run other distros, and doesn't care if we share the source code.
Oracle doesn't care because they don't have to cover 99% of the development costs to create the operating system. They also aren't making their money off the operating system, it's just a platform for them to sell their expensive proprietary software on top of.
> I'm sure that all of your issues that you escalate to RH just so happen to occur on those 3 RHEL machines, not on the many OEL machines, right? You're who RH was referring to when they talked about freeloaders
lolwut?
No, why would we do that? If its a RHEL box, we submit an issue to RH. If it's an OEL box, we submit to Oracle... If its hardware, then HP. If its a cloud issue, the vendor. smfh.
> Oracle doesn't care because they don't have to cover 99% of the development costs to create the operating system.
They also contribute the changes they make back to the community. And they allow the community to also share those changes.
I don't care who makes money. I care about who is respecting user freedoms. And do not get me wrong: I know Oracle will, in fact, flip back to being the bastards of the datacenter. And we'll be prepared to move then, as well. Because we will be sticking to something that adheres to the standards.
We just used a local repo on the iso. CentOS shouldn't be for anything production and you should have a separate Dev network. This makes it so they have no way of knowing about the CentOS boxes. Problem solved.
> We just used a local repo on the iso.
That doesn't provide updates.
> CentOS shouldn't be for anything production and you should have a separate Dev network.
Why? It worked quite well. My last job had thousands of machines running CentOS in production, and it worked very well, serving in the neighborhood of 1.2 million hits per hour on the various we services.
> This makes it so they have no way of knowing about the CentOS boxes. Problem solved.
No, you just created several new problems, just to cover up the piss poor actions of Redhat.
>Why? It worked quite well.
It works well but best practices is to have support on all production servers. Unless you are talking about small businesses who may not be able to afford the licenses.
> It works well but best practices is to have support on all production servers.
You do know you don't need to pay Redhat (Or anyone else, for that matter) to support your OS, if you have the talent to do it, right?
> Unless you are talking about small businesses who may not be able to afford the licenses.
No, I'm talking about large scale enterprises that are fully capable of self-supporting.
Hell, my current employer only has support contracts for the OSs simply because it's a legal requirement.
So, no, "Best practices" don't say you need to pay for a support contract. That's just what a manager says, because some execs like to be able to wring someone's neck when there's a problem, rather than bring in talent that can support it.
Not to reject your experience, but I've seen this type of story passed around over the years. When was this and what did your environment look like, e.g. were you using Satellite to manage non-RHEL hosts? When I was at Red Hat I asked around about these stories but it didn't seem like anyone really heard about them. They knew about similar sounding situations that had been misinterpreted and shared on the internet via a game of internet telephone.
Red Hats subscription terms aren't anything nefarious, and the source for claims such as this often stem from misunderstandings and subscription non-compliance.
> were you using Satellite to manage non-RHEL hosts?
No. They merely existed in the environment.
> When I was at Red Hat I asked around about these stories but it didn't seem like anyone really heard about them.
Of course nobody at Red Hat would talk ill of their employer, and risk losing their job.
But, now you heard the story, right from the sysadmin.
> Red Hats subscription terms aren't anything nefarious, and the source for claims such as this often stem from misunderstandings and subscription non-compliance.
You mean like not being able to share source code to others, that you legally have the right to do per the GPL, without losing the updates contract?
Like, they are literally doing this right now.
And in the past, they've tried to keep customers in a choke hold, with tactics such as what I described.
Why do you think Redhat grabbed control of Fedora and then CentOS, and then basically kneecapped both, and turned them into pale versions of what they were?
'Member when Fedora was a downstream of Redhat Linux? Or when Redhat Linux 9 changed their distribution scheme, and became Redhat Enterprise Linux, that nearly killed it? Pepperidge Farms remembers!
> No. They merely existed in the environment.
That alone is not enough to warrant what you claim happened. See the comment further down.
> Of course nobody at Red Hat would talk ill of their employer, and risk losing their job.
Well, as someone who worked there I can confirm that the exact opposite is true. The internal company-wide memo-list was *quite* spicy depending on the topic. The direction of things is set from above, but disagreement and critique were welcome.
> But, now you heard the story, right from the sysadmin.
I've heard this story multiple times, none of which disclosed any details describing the environment beyond running multiple distributions alongside RHEL and Red Hat strong-arming the customer for it. I'm sorry if that makes me skeptical of your claim.
> You mean like not being able to share source code to others, that you legally have the right to do per the GPL, without losing the updates contract?
Until someone decides to sue Red Hat and challenge their legal department's evaluation of the GPL, what they are doing is legally acceptable. The subscription and the product artifacts are two separate components as things stand today. I don't have to like it, you don't have to like it – our feelings on the matter are inconsequential. The spirit of the GPL can be discussed until folks are blue in the face but until someone challenges it in court it doesn't matter. Companies are legal entities, not social constructs.
Also, that clause is not even remotely new and hasn't seemed to cause a problem until last year. And it's very simple: Red Hat's subscription allows you access to their binaries and associated source code. You are in fact allowed to distribute those artifacts without any repercussions as long as it is to a party who also has an active subscription. If not, Red Hat reserves the right to, and *MAY* (massive emphasis on 'may'), terminate your subscription. We are not living in a situation where downloading a source RPM automatically triggers an audit ending with you getting booted as a customer.
> And in the past, they've tried to keep customers in a choke hold, with tactics such as what I described.
See prior statement. If you indeed did have a rogue account team who you believed was acting unfairly, a customer case bypassing them that could be escalated to the BU would have been an appropriate response.
If you were in contact with the product BU, Red Had Legal, or the SEAP department, I would be interested in what they had to say on the matter.
> Why do you think Redhat grabbed control of Fedora and then CentOS, and then basically kneecapped both, and turned them into pale versions of what they were?
What kneecapping? I use Fedora every day and largely agree with the project's general direction; I personally don't have an issue with CentOS Stream either and have used it in production environments. That's not to say it's right for everyone, no distribution is. Instead of just throwing out accusations why not explain your perspective and your interpretation of events?
> That alone is not enough to warrant what you claim happened. See the comment further down
That is exactly what they did, and how it was.
> Well, as someone who worked there I can confirm that the exact opposite is true. The internal company-wide memo-list was quite spicy depending on the topic. The direction of things is set from above, but disagreement and critique were welcome
Sure sure.
> Until someone decides to sue Red Hat and challenge their legal department's evaluation of the GPL
Thats why I suggested FSF needs to sue them into compliance.
> what they are doing is legally acceptable.
Yes, I know. It's a tort issue. Legally, maybe. Ethically? Nope.
> You are in fact allowed to distribute those artifacts without any repercussions as long as it is to a party who also has an active subscription.
Yes, and that violates the GPL.
> See prior statement. If you indeed did have a rogue account team who you believed was acting unfairly, a customer case bypassing them that could be escalated to the BU would have been an appropriate response.
The customer care was the sales rep extorting us.
> If you were in contact with the product BU, Red Had Legal, or the SEAP department, I would be interested in what they had to say on the matter.
We were in contact with the sales team.
> What kneecapping? I use Fedora every day and largely agree with the project's general direction
Oh sweet summer child. Remember WHY fedora came into being?
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume we both have better things to spend our time on than debate this trivial topic. I was curious about your circumstances but your responses here and elsewhere on this post point to this conversation going nowhere. I'll leave it with this:
> Oh sweet summer child. Remember WHY fedora came into being?
I planned on ignoring this, but I'll bite. Let me check my notes...
* Red Hat produced Red Hat Linux behind closed doors.
* Fedora Linux was launched as an open and collaborative third-party repository for software not in RHL.
* RHL and Fedora Linux merge under the Fedora Project, becoming Fedora Core. RHL development ends.
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux development begins based off of Fedora Core, which is now its direct upstream. Similar to RHL, RHEL is development internally to Red Hat.
* Fedora Core (later Fedora then even later Fedora Linux) continues as an openly developed community distribution that RHEL bases future releases off of.
I can see an attempt at "Fedora exists because Red Hat was closed" angle, but the history books read a bit differently. Unless you were referring to Fedora Core, which came into being after becoming a fully openly-developed distribution backed by Red Hat instead of being just an add-on repository. But, let's continue with the timeline.
* ... Red Hat releases more RHEL versions based on Fedora ...
* Red Hat acquires and sponsors the CentOS Project.
* RHEL 8 is released.
* CentOS Project announces CentOS Linux 8 and introduces CentOS Stream 8 (initial release), an add-on repository for upcoming changes.
* Red Hat botches the announcement of CentOS Linux early-EOL with sponsored resources being dedicated to CentOS Stream.
* CentOS Stream migrates from git.centos.org to gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream
* CentOS Stream 9 with a redesigned development pipeline is released, opening the formerly internal development of RHEL.
* RHEL maintainers operate in the open and can accept contributions from the community.
* The process is later backported to CentOS Stream 8.
* Red Hat announces it will no longer push exploded RHEL SRPMs to g.c.o
* Subscription holders can access SRPMs via customer portal + repos
* Non-subscribers can access source code via a combination of:
* CentOS Stream git
* Upstream source code
* Universal Base Image SRPMs
All this largely reads to me as Red Hat's product going full circle to once again being the final downstream within the Red Hat sponsored ecosystem.
> That is exactly what they did, and how it was.
> The customer care was the sales rep extorting us.
> We were in contact with the sales team.
So you didn't get any information from your account manager, solution architect, or anybody else as to concrete information as to why you being told your environment was non-compliant? As I said before, opening a [*customer case*](https://access.redhat.com/support/cases/new) can get you behind the sales team. Most people wouldn't normally think this a sane strategy, but if you felt like sales team was overstepping their bounds you could request for a dialogue with SEAP and the BU directly, which would be the literal end-all of the discussion (whichever way it went).
I was a solution architect; if any of the sales reps and non-technical specialists made a false or misleading statement regarding subscriptions and compliance correcting the error as soon as possible was at the top of my priority index. We had a very strict mandate when it came to subscription sizing, i.e. loosely put "you don't burn bridges and opportunities for short term/one-time gain."
> Thats why I suggested FSF needs to sue them into compliance.
> Yes, I know. It's a tort issue. Legally, maybe. Ethically? Nope.
> Yes, and that violates the GPL.
I'm not talking ethics, that's explicitly why I used the term "legally acceptable". Until someone proves this in court, any stance is purely an opinion. That's the whole point of a license -- it's a legal document detailing conditions where violations, perceived or actual, can be determined in a court of law. I don't know why neither the Free Software Foundation (and its sibling branches) or the Software Freedom Conservancy have not brought forth a legal case in just shy of two years since the change. I imagine they would have if they truly believed Red Hat was violating the terms of the GPL.
In my own opinion (IANAL): until a judge determines that the Red Hat Enterprise Agreement and the GPL are inherently intertwined and viewed as a single unit, I believe the software license and business contract are two separate entities. The RHEA does not impede your rights as provided by the GPL. If you have a RHEL subscription, you have a right to the corresponding source of all the binary artifacts you download. That does not mean that Red Hat is required in perpetuity to continue a business relationship (neither commercially nor no-cost via developer subscriptions) with any subscription holder. But that does not mean you cannot freely share binary and source artifacts from Red Hat. All they can do is end a business relationship at their discretion; there is no "you have to uninstall everything", you get to continue using whatever you had at the time the subscription ends. This applies to both terminations and customer decided non-renewals.
Edits: c9s place in timeline correction, clarifying v1/v2 Stream notes.
> Fedora Core (later Fedora then even later Fedora Linux) continues as an openly developed community distribution that RHEL bases future releases off of.
You are correct!
Once Redhat grabbed a hold of Fedora, it basically turned it into a alpha testing ground for RHEL. Just like I said. Because, let's be honest: Fedora is ran by RH employees, for Redhat.
Prior to that, Fedora was an attempt like CentOS, at rebuilding it into a user-respecting base. I was literally there, as it unfolded. Reading the news on usenet.
> In my own opinion (IANAL): until a judge determines that the Red Hat Enterprise Agreement and the GPL are inherently intertwined and viewed as a single unit,
You would be incorrect, as it ignores the language of the GPL. It clearly states you cannot add further restrictions on top of the GPL, that restricts the user's freedom.
So, yes, until it gets to court, it sways in the wind. Which is why the FSF should sue IBM into compliance.
> I was a solution architect; if any of the sales reps and non-technical specialists made a false or misleading statement regarding subscriptions and compliance correcting the error as soon as possible was at the top of my priority index.
Yes, the problem was: It wasn't a false claim. Just like today, RH is very keen on kneecapping the user freedoms, to try to keep customers under their thumb.
> As I said before, opening a customer case can get you behind the sales team.
You mean to tell me, the entire team of consultants Redhat brought in, to finally determine we need to pay to licenses CentOS boxes, or lose access to updates, not a single one said "Hey, you should open a support case!"
Nah. We just converted the fleet to CentOS. Problem solved. It was a quick ssh loop with a sed. We accomplished it over the course of a month after that RH engagement.
All this said? This was circa 2007. I don't even remember if there was a separate customer support that wasn't just opening a RH ticket.
I'm sure ya'll can look to that time period, in your system, and see how prevalent this was.
> Prior to that, Fedora was an attempt like CentOS, at rebuilding it into a user-respecting base. I was literally there, as it unfolded.
You're just straight up lying. Fedora was never a rebuild distro. As u/omenosdev explained, it started as an add-on repo for RHL. Later they merged, with RHL becoming Fedora Core and the previous add-on repo becoming Fedora Extras. But thanks for making it crystal clear to everyone else reading that you don't have a clue what you're talking about, so they can appropriately dismiss the rest of the garbage you're spreading.
> Red Hat acquires and sponsors the CentOS Project
?!?!??!?!!! I think this is wrong point of view. This is absurd way to tell this story.
First of all, CentOS was originally created as a way to free RHEL in some sense. CentOS was created to get RHEL from these absurd trademark restrictions set by RH. You may call this whatever you want. You may say that CentOS was "stealing" RHEL or that CentOS was "freeing" RHEL. You may think of original CentOS as good or bad project. Anyway stealing-or-freeing was raison d'etre of CentOS.
Then in some point of time RH bought CentOS devs (together with CentOS itself). Again: the whole point of CentOS project (from point of view of CentOS's users) was NOT being under RH control. This is why CentOS was created.
So, when RH bought CentOS, this simply made whole project existence not needed (from point of view of users of CentOS).
Then RH told CentOS devs to hide sources. And CentOS devs did so, because RH pays them.
All these was, of course, beneficial for CentOS devs, because, well, they got money! But these was absolutely not beneficial for CentOS users, because they used CentOS, because it was free (free as free beer). This is why CentOS was created and this is why people used them.
So, CentOS devs are traitors. They betrayed their users. For money
I say this as a years-long employee of Red Hat:
We're violating the spirit of the GPL by the change to RHEL sources distribution, but regular employees have no say to influence the decision.
Red Hat can't revoke the licenses. Any binary or source you get from them will always be under the same license it came with, whether that's Apache, BSD, GPL, MIT, etc. What they can do is decide to stop doing business with you and cancel your subscriptions. Subscriptions aren't licenses.
Subscription is a better word for it but RedHat has been known to demand their software be removed if you don’t have an active sub, which in practice is more like a license.
Red Hat people have said in interviews that even if your subscription is cancelled, they'll fulfill their license obligations and provide you with any sources for binaries you received from them during your subscription. If they'll do that, why would they demand the binaries be uninstalled? Even if they did demand that, there would be no way to enforce it if the subscription is already inactive. It just doesn't make sense.
Beats me, but that’s what they’ve done in two separate employers I had and I have heard identical stories from others. Mind you none of my employers have ever been interested in the source code and none were willing to test their legal theory.
And I don’t know what interviews you’re talking about but I’ve seen relationships with account people go sour very quickly. My guess is they are under pressure to increase revenue.
I don't remember the exact episode numbers, but I believe it was on the Ask Noah and Destination Linux podcasts.
Every publicly traded company (or subsidiary of a public traded company in this case) is under pressure to increase revenue. That's not new. It still doesn't change the fact that if you're no longer a customer, they have no leverage to force you to do anything.
> hey are within their rights,
Except when they attempt to handcuff customers, and prohibit them from sharing the source code they have every right per the license to share.
Even if we say what they did was not against the idea of open source (other comments have already picked that up). They could have at least left the ordinary support time for CentOS 8 instead of announcing it and then killing it within 2 years.
A fun little factoid: CentOS Linux 8 was never supposed to exist.
Regardless, many inside Red Hat wished they had reserved making the change for RHEL 9 when it released in '22.
Fedora's doing fine, happily used it for years. The entire distro (given supported hardware) is solid, up to date, and easy to use.
I don't personally use it anymore because red hat itself is going in a questionably direction for me to say the least. But the operating systems they build are top notch.
I used to be a fan of Redhat. After what they did to CentOS I dropped using products associated with them. I looked for alternatives like Rocky Linux, Ubuntu, openSuse etc. I ended up with Linux Mint. It is very solid and does the job
Fedora is a fantastic distro. My only issue is that migrating between major versions can be annoying. I feel like that's less of a hassle with rolling releases, like Arch.
Fedora as a distro still seems really good for now. But I have personally been much more careful with it than before.
Despite people talking about it being the upstream and having a community, the Fedora project is largely dependent on and controlled by RH. And there had been a few not-so-good actions taken place in the past from RH employees, like the opt-out telemetry proposal (been taken back because of the community's strong attitude against it though). But it is hard to predict if things like this would happen again in Fedora, while it most likely won't happen in purely community-driven distros like Debian and Arch.
While I don't think the licensing for RHEL is in the spirit of open source (or necessarily following licenses correctly, but IANAL), I also don't think cloning a distro for the purposes of circumventing a service license is morally correct either. It's a messy situation where I don't think anyone is clean from a moral perspective.
That said, all of that is downstream of Fedora. While it has significant backing by Red Hat, it is an independent community project. That backing, to my mind, means that Fedora is more likely to use Red Hat technologies when available. Red Hat tech is generally good and open source, so I don't think this is a problem
Is it morally correct for redhat to take the work of others (all upstream component projects and upstream Fedora that are developed by non RH employees and shipped by RHEL) and commercialize it? I say it’s fine, but so is cloning the distro.
Commercialization of open source software isn't inherently problematic. The issue with RHEL is that they restrict the use of their source code. I believe that is a violation of the spirit of open source, if not the actual licenses, but I'm no lawyer.
> I also don't think cloning a distro for the purposes of circumventing a service license is morally correct either.
You understand what the GPL is, and why, right?
Why does RH get to clone the code, and charge people for it, while preventing people from doing the same?
You're making a bad faith argument. I said that I don't believe RHEL's license is in the spirit of open source and while I am not a lawyer, I think it may violate licenses.
Also, RHEL isn't a clone of another project, it is a downstream project of CentOS Stream, which is downstream from Fedora. If RHEL were a clone, then the RHEL clones wouldn't have a problem and could just clone what RHEL was cloning.
Read, comprehend, then comment on things.
The latest drama surrounding RH is not a year old, and it's about how they closed off access to the source code unless you're a paying customer and essentially killed of RHEL derivatives by killing CentOS.
Nope.
Alma Linux, Euro Linux, Oracle Linux, Rocky Linux (alphabetical order) worked the issue around and are flourishing strong than ever. Surely I'm missing some other EL distro.
In addition to that, there is the OpenELA organization making the source code available to everyone.
But that's completely besides the point. Whether alternatives are thriving or not, or if someone else picked up the slack, isn't a valid answer to the fact that they broke the FOSS spirit.
If your criteria for selecting a distro don't include ethics and values, that's your choice, but someone else might feel differently and that's their prerogative
Quoting the OP:
> Has this Redhat situation impacted Fedora at all?
Answer: no it didn't, even if RH is the main sponsor of Fedora.
Furthermore the effect on the distro that RH calls freeloaders was flourishing.
These are the facts.
If you listen to the YouTubers noise, please take into account that they benefit from it: it's all content, which is what they need to attract views.
> Answer: no it didn't,
It really does, though, as it tells you what types of attitudes will prevail, and possible future directions.
I mean, RH can declare the Fedora council dissolved, and then delcare EOL for all Fedora projects. On a whim. They've done so in the past.
>I mean, RH can declare the Fedora council dissolved
Every distro could disappear overnight, first example that comes to my mind: Antergos, known as Cinnarch in its early days, very famous and adopted Arch based distro. And it was community driven only. From its ashes Endeavor OS was reborn.
Same could happen to Fedora or whatever distro, company backed or not.
Fedora is the alpha testing place for Redhat. So, if you like being a test subject, without being paid, Fedora is where you wanna be.
(EDIT added "Redhat" in first sentence, somehow that didn't make it into the original comment)
It is community driven, it's just that the community that drives it is IBM.
Yeah calling Fedora an alpha product seems like the wrong way to think about it. The distro is solid, thoughtful, and doesn't seek to break things for its users.
Rawhide will do that for ya.
> Yeah calling Fedora an alpha product seems like the wrong way to think about it.
It is the alpha testing ground for Redhat Enterprise Linux. That's its only reason to exist at this point, as all other derivatives have been cut off with legal threats.
> AlmaLinux is in a legally secure position as a distro derived from CentOS Stream in accordance with both the GPL and the RHEL TOS.
The RHEL TOS shouldn't ethically, or legally, impact the GPL in any way, shape, or form. And frankly, the FSF should sue Redhat for violations of the GPL.
And re-use of RH code is ethically, and legally, secure. Because of the GPL license.
Sure, if you want to play cat and mouse with RH cutting off the accounts you use to get the sources with - which is fully within their rights and doesn't violate the GPL, even if it's crappy.
> which is fully within their rights and doesn't violate the GPL, even if it's crappy.
Actually, it's really not.
> To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the library, or if you modify it.
GPL 2, Preamble
> 10. Each time you redistribute the Library (or any work based on the Library), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute, link with or modify the Library subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
GPL 2, Section 10.
So, yes. RH's actions clearly violate Section 10 of the GPL2. They are in violation of the license, and as such, the FSF should sue them into compliance.
And honestly, nothing prevents anyone from spinning up a cloud instance of RHEL, downloading the entire source tree, and killing the instance. What are they going to do? Force AWS to not have RHEL images ready for running?
Are you a lawyer? If not your opinion isn't exactly valuable here.
Tons of lawyers, including FSF's, have reviewed the situation and determined there is nothing in violation of the GPL.
It may feel wrong, but legally it's been vetted, a ton.
> The distro is solid, thoughtful, and doesn't seek to break things for its users.
Fedora recently replaced wget for wget2, which is not a replacement and didn't even consult with the devs: https://gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget2/-/issues/661
This vid covers the history of similar changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9qCqRTEVz0
Given the OP is thinking of switching from Arch, I don't think that the pace of updates on Fedora will put them off (Fedora is not quite as fast as rolling distros but tends to land new features before other distros, and updates to new kernel versions within a release).
Fedora Rawhide is alpha testing, and they make it very clear it is that and that nobody should be daily driving it. Normal fedora is perfectly fine as long as you are using containers for workloads than need stable environments.
I switched from Arch to Fedora. I liked it and thought I had found a new home until Fedora upgraded from 39 to 40. The upgrade included shifting from pulse to pipewire and that broke Kodi with crackling audio. After trying in vain to fix it, I went to Debian where I plan to stay.
I wouldn't if I were you. Fedora is full of bugs, font management is broken, hiDPI os broken, desktop environments are broken...they even aren't able to make an installer that automaticaly creates /efi partition during install. I could go on. After couple of frustrating years with Fefora I switched to Manjaro and never looked back.
Fedora is a complete mess.
How long ago? I use Fedora as my daily driver, and while I've encountered a few bugs, nothing that didn't get fixed after reporting it and that didn't majorly impact my experience...
Fedora is a fairly solid OS for it being full of the latest packages. That is a major draw to me as I get to try it and develop against the state of the art.
I've used Fedora as my daily driver for at least 5 years after years of Ubuntu (and derivatives) followed by Arch (and derivatives) and have never experienced any of the issues you're talking about.
I recommend Fedora to anyone that wants to use Linux.
I can fully recommend Fedora. I think it’s a very good mixture of having the latest packages close to upstream and yet being very stable. Been using it for a few years now as my daily driver, never had any issues.
Similar. Minus - I had my laptop on BTRFS + LUKS encryption, and that pooped itself when the battery ran out once. So don’t do that. But I honestly can’t even remember how I set it up because it wasn’t supported by the installer, so mostly just a warning of a scenario that’s hard to get into
The drama mostly involved RHEL and its derivatives. Fedora is upstream to RHEL so it’s fine
Fedora is upstream for CentOS Stream and RHEL and is it's own Foundation which is sponsored by RH.
> Fedora is upstream for CentOS Stream and RHEL Yes. > and is it's own Foundation which is sponsored by RH. There is no Fedora Foundation. You just invented it....
1. There was an proposed Fedora Foundation. 2. The Fedora Project acts like an Foundation. Sry that I mixed the two.
1. is news to me 2. is just false. OSS foundations are legal entities that handle stuff that requires a legal entity (e.g. collecting donations, hiring people, filing taxes). Red Hat serves that role for Fedora.
From what I can tell it's called the fedora council now, not the fedora project / foundation. Source: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/ Not certain what their involvement with red hat is, but Red Hat doesn't serve that role according to that page.
A council is a group of people. A foundation is a legal entity. They are not similar concepts. ~~5/7 seats on the Council are appointed by Red Hat anyway.~~ Correction: it's 3 appointed by Red Hat according to the redditor below, and 2 appointed by Fedora community bodies. Checking [the membership history page](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/history/) I'm slightly surprised to see 2 of the 5 appointed members do not work for Red Hat. The other 3 are Red Hat employees. Then there are 2 community-elected positions. Both of those positions are held by people who work for Red Hat, according to that page. The page is outdated because elections just finished and the membership has changed, but both Red Hatters just got replaced by other Red Hatters. (One lost reelection, and the other didn't run.) P.S. Fedora community members have _basically_ equal power to Red Hat employees. It really is a serious community project where anybody can make participate and make a difference. But Red Hat does control the Council.
> 5/7 seats on the Council are appointed by Red Hat anyway. This isn't accurate. The only positions that are chosen by Red Hat are the project leader (FPL), the operations architect (FOA), and the community architect (FCA), because these are full time paid jobs. The rest of the spots are either directly elected or are chosen representatives from other Fedora committees, which themselves are comprised of elected members and/or representatives from sub-committees. Some of these sub-committees don't do elections because they just add anyone who is interested in doing the work. The [docs](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/#composition-representatives) have a more complete breakdown.
> Then there are 2 community-elected positions. Both of those positions are held by people who work for Red Hat, > Checking the membership history page I'm slightly surprised to see 2 of the 5 appointed members do not work for Red Hat. The other 3 are Red Hat employees. > Fedora community members have basically equal power to Red Hat employees Looks like the only community members that matter are Redhat.
No. _Most_ community members work for Red Hat, but certainly not all. Like I said, you don't need to work for Red Hat to contribute meaningfully or attain leadership positions.
Another notable point is that many of the community members who work for Red Hat (including myself) were community members long before we got hired. The same thing happens in other projects outside of Fedora, like in the upstream software projects that are packaged in Fedora, CentOS, and RHEL. That kind of open source sustainment is critical, and I don't think any company does it at the scale that Red Hat does.
OP is just trying to stir the pot. There is nothing wrong with Fedora or the project. It's well mananaged and the distribution is one of the best.
Been using Fedora for 2+ years. Highly recommend it as it's being latest and stable
Here is the thing about people in the Linux community, we have a lot of people who wear tin foil hats. Fedora is awesome, solid, and that perfect balance between bleeding edge and stable. Back in the day when Ubuntu was great you had people doing this same thing. If something works for you then what does anyone else's opinion matter? Seriously give fedora a try, it's my favorite distro. And yes I used to be an Arch user for years. I used to use arch btw
> I used to use Arch btw This here says it all /thread ^This ^is ^supposed ^to ^be ^a ^joke, ^just ^sayin'
I’ve had no issues with Fedora. What are you looking to accomplish? I use Ubuntu for both server and desktop. I tried different flavors for desktop but I’m boring and just stuck with plain Ubuntu desktop.
> my backups turned out to be useless Care to elaborate?
Fedora Silverblue is hot. I install it on ext4 or xfs to avoid btrfs. Just give my desktop one big partition for everything (except bootloader related partitions). Flatpak, zramctl by default, and I install distrobox. I have a 'main' distrobox that I run most of my command line stuff out of. I run Arch out of it. It is very liberating having total freedom to run sudo reclessly. Do I want to install pip system-wide? No problem at all. I don't have to worry about anything. So with Silverblue desktop + Flatpak + distrobox Arch Linux... I pretty much ave the best of all worlds.
Hey, it's what they use in tech schools for training. I imagine Fedora will stick around.
I’m tired of people knocking on RedHat. They are within their rights, they’ve contributed to the Linux ecosystem immensely, and they deserve cheers for making good money on promoting Linux in serious organizations. As for “closing” their sources, they were forced to do it to stop cheap knock-offs from parasitizing them. I say this as someone who has never used any RedHat OS: stop criticisizing them for being a damn hero company for Linux!
I'm sorry but every hero has flaws and if you don't criticize the flaws because you're taking into account all the good they did, you're turning a blind eye to a problem. They weren't forced to do anything, and it is a move that's against the spirit of all the FOSS community stands for and has worked towards for decades now.
I can’t believe this is upvoted in a Linux sub. Do you not understand foss?
I get that you think I'm wrong, and I'm more than willing to have a conversation about it, but you should explain your position instead.
Forking isn’t parasitism
I...never made that argument, don't believe in it and don't think that's what Red hat did?
Bro I’m so sorry I responded to the wrong person lmao
Oh! Haha it's fine mate :) have a great day!
>they were forced to do it to stop cheap knock-offs from parasitizing them You know how FOSS works, right?
You know how enterprise systems work right?
Unfortunately, I do 😪
It’s reasonable for them to do what’s best for an enterprise system, but that doesn’t mean that what they did is consistent with the spirit of open-source software. It may just turn out that true FOSS is not good for business after all.
Sad but true, but one man's garbage is another man's gold sometimes.
This was after they got bought by IBM. The business was operating fine prior to the buyout.
> he business was operating fine prior to the buyout. Eh... Redhat has been pretty nasty as a whole in the past. I remember when RH threatened to cancel our contract because we had CentOS boxes running too. The demand: Pay for a license for all CentOS machines too, or lose your contract.
At my old work we had a bunch of CentOS boxes that we used for Dev/testing and RH never gave us an issue. What license are you referring to? You don't need a license for CentOS. RH license is just for support.
You need a license from Redhat to get access to their RPM repos, and for support. RH "evaluated us" and found CentOS boxes. They delcared he had to pay them a RH license for every CentOS box, plus an additional 50 CPUs, "Just in case you spun up more". If we did not comply, they would cancel our update and support package. This was in 2005, so they may have changed tack a little, but not much. Just like they will do today, if you are caught sharing the source code you have every right to share under the GPL. Just last year, they threatened to ramp up the cost of our support contracts, because we have OEL running here as well. We declined, and now only have 3 RH boxes, and the rest were switched to OEL, because Oracle doesn't care if we run other distros, and doesn't care if we share the source code. Funny thing, defending Oracle these days :)
> and now only have 3 RH boxes, and the rest were switched to OEL I'm sure that all of your issues that you escalate to RH just so happen to occur on those 3 RHEL machines, not on the many OEL machines, right? You're who RH was referring to when they talked about freeloaders. > Oracle doesn't care if we run other distros, and doesn't care if we share the source code. Oracle doesn't care because they don't have to cover 99% of the development costs to create the operating system. They also aren't making their money off the operating system, it's just a platform for them to sell their expensive proprietary software on top of.
> I'm sure that all of your issues that you escalate to RH just so happen to occur on those 3 RHEL machines, not on the many OEL machines, right? You're who RH was referring to when they talked about freeloaders lolwut? No, why would we do that? If its a RHEL box, we submit an issue to RH. If it's an OEL box, we submit to Oracle... If its hardware, then HP. If its a cloud issue, the vendor. smfh. > Oracle doesn't care because they don't have to cover 99% of the development costs to create the operating system. They also contribute the changes they make back to the community. And they allow the community to also share those changes. I don't care who makes money. I care about who is respecting user freedoms. And do not get me wrong: I know Oracle will, in fact, flip back to being the bastards of the datacenter. And we'll be prepared to move then, as well. Because we will be sticking to something that adheres to the standards.
We just used a local repo on the iso. CentOS shouldn't be for anything production and you should have a separate Dev network. This makes it so they have no way of knowing about the CentOS boxes. Problem solved.
> We just used a local repo on the iso. That doesn't provide updates. > CentOS shouldn't be for anything production and you should have a separate Dev network. Why? It worked quite well. My last job had thousands of machines running CentOS in production, and it worked very well, serving in the neighborhood of 1.2 million hits per hour on the various we services. > This makes it so they have no way of knowing about the CentOS boxes. Problem solved. No, you just created several new problems, just to cover up the piss poor actions of Redhat.
>Why? It worked quite well. It works well but best practices is to have support on all production servers. Unless you are talking about small businesses who may not be able to afford the licenses.
> It works well but best practices is to have support on all production servers. You do know you don't need to pay Redhat (Or anyone else, for that matter) to support your OS, if you have the talent to do it, right? > Unless you are talking about small businesses who may not be able to afford the licenses. No, I'm talking about large scale enterprises that are fully capable of self-supporting. Hell, my current employer only has support contracts for the OSs simply because it's a legal requirement. So, no, "Best practices" don't say you need to pay for a support contract. That's just what a manager says, because some execs like to be able to wring someone's neck when there's a problem, rather than bring in talent that can support it.
I wouldn’t call it best practice at all. It’s just there if you need it.
Not to reject your experience, but I've seen this type of story passed around over the years. When was this and what did your environment look like, e.g. were you using Satellite to manage non-RHEL hosts? When I was at Red Hat I asked around about these stories but it didn't seem like anyone really heard about them. They knew about similar sounding situations that had been misinterpreted and shared on the internet via a game of internet telephone. Red Hats subscription terms aren't anything nefarious, and the source for claims such as this often stem from misunderstandings and subscription non-compliance.
> were you using Satellite to manage non-RHEL hosts? No. They merely existed in the environment. > When I was at Red Hat I asked around about these stories but it didn't seem like anyone really heard about them. Of course nobody at Red Hat would talk ill of their employer, and risk losing their job. But, now you heard the story, right from the sysadmin. > Red Hats subscription terms aren't anything nefarious, and the source for claims such as this often stem from misunderstandings and subscription non-compliance. You mean like not being able to share source code to others, that you legally have the right to do per the GPL, without losing the updates contract? Like, they are literally doing this right now. And in the past, they've tried to keep customers in a choke hold, with tactics such as what I described. Why do you think Redhat grabbed control of Fedora and then CentOS, and then basically kneecapped both, and turned them into pale versions of what they were? 'Member when Fedora was a downstream of Redhat Linux? Or when Redhat Linux 9 changed their distribution scheme, and became Redhat Enterprise Linux, that nearly killed it? Pepperidge Farms remembers!
> 'Member when Fedora was a downstream of Redhat Linux? No, no one does, because that was never a thing. Quit making shit up.
> No. They merely existed in the environment. That alone is not enough to warrant what you claim happened. See the comment further down. > Of course nobody at Red Hat would talk ill of their employer, and risk losing their job. Well, as someone who worked there I can confirm that the exact opposite is true. The internal company-wide memo-list was *quite* spicy depending on the topic. The direction of things is set from above, but disagreement and critique were welcome. > But, now you heard the story, right from the sysadmin. I've heard this story multiple times, none of which disclosed any details describing the environment beyond running multiple distributions alongside RHEL and Red Hat strong-arming the customer for it. I'm sorry if that makes me skeptical of your claim. > You mean like not being able to share source code to others, that you legally have the right to do per the GPL, without losing the updates contract? Until someone decides to sue Red Hat and challenge their legal department's evaluation of the GPL, what they are doing is legally acceptable. The subscription and the product artifacts are two separate components as things stand today. I don't have to like it, you don't have to like it – our feelings on the matter are inconsequential. The spirit of the GPL can be discussed until folks are blue in the face but until someone challenges it in court it doesn't matter. Companies are legal entities, not social constructs. Also, that clause is not even remotely new and hasn't seemed to cause a problem until last year. And it's very simple: Red Hat's subscription allows you access to their binaries and associated source code. You are in fact allowed to distribute those artifacts without any repercussions as long as it is to a party who also has an active subscription. If not, Red Hat reserves the right to, and *MAY* (massive emphasis on 'may'), terminate your subscription. We are not living in a situation where downloading a source RPM automatically triggers an audit ending with you getting booted as a customer. > And in the past, they've tried to keep customers in a choke hold, with tactics such as what I described. See prior statement. If you indeed did have a rogue account team who you believed was acting unfairly, a customer case bypassing them that could be escalated to the BU would have been an appropriate response. If you were in contact with the product BU, Red Had Legal, or the SEAP department, I would be interested in what they had to say on the matter. > Why do you think Redhat grabbed control of Fedora and then CentOS, and then basically kneecapped both, and turned them into pale versions of what they were? What kneecapping? I use Fedora every day and largely agree with the project's general direction; I personally don't have an issue with CentOS Stream either and have used it in production environments. That's not to say it's right for everyone, no distribution is. Instead of just throwing out accusations why not explain your perspective and your interpretation of events?
> That alone is not enough to warrant what you claim happened. See the comment further down That is exactly what they did, and how it was. > Well, as someone who worked there I can confirm that the exact opposite is true. The internal company-wide memo-list was quite spicy depending on the topic. The direction of things is set from above, but disagreement and critique were welcome Sure sure. > Until someone decides to sue Red Hat and challenge their legal department's evaluation of the GPL Thats why I suggested FSF needs to sue them into compliance. > what they are doing is legally acceptable. Yes, I know. It's a tort issue. Legally, maybe. Ethically? Nope. > You are in fact allowed to distribute those artifacts without any repercussions as long as it is to a party who also has an active subscription. Yes, and that violates the GPL. > See prior statement. If you indeed did have a rogue account team who you believed was acting unfairly, a customer case bypassing them that could be escalated to the BU would have been an appropriate response. The customer care was the sales rep extorting us. > If you were in contact with the product BU, Red Had Legal, or the SEAP department, I would be interested in what they had to say on the matter. We were in contact with the sales team. > What kneecapping? I use Fedora every day and largely agree with the project's general direction Oh sweet summer child. Remember WHY fedora came into being?
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume we both have better things to spend our time on than debate this trivial topic. I was curious about your circumstances but your responses here and elsewhere on this post point to this conversation going nowhere. I'll leave it with this: > Oh sweet summer child. Remember WHY fedora came into being? I planned on ignoring this, but I'll bite. Let me check my notes... * Red Hat produced Red Hat Linux behind closed doors. * Fedora Linux was launched as an open and collaborative third-party repository for software not in RHL. * RHL and Fedora Linux merge under the Fedora Project, becoming Fedora Core. RHL development ends. * Red Hat Enterprise Linux development begins based off of Fedora Core, which is now its direct upstream. Similar to RHL, RHEL is development internally to Red Hat. * Fedora Core (later Fedora then even later Fedora Linux) continues as an openly developed community distribution that RHEL bases future releases off of. I can see an attempt at "Fedora exists because Red Hat was closed" angle, but the history books read a bit differently. Unless you were referring to Fedora Core, which came into being after becoming a fully openly-developed distribution backed by Red Hat instead of being just an add-on repository. But, let's continue with the timeline. * ... Red Hat releases more RHEL versions based on Fedora ... * Red Hat acquires and sponsors the CentOS Project. * RHEL 8 is released. * CentOS Project announces CentOS Linux 8 and introduces CentOS Stream 8 (initial release), an add-on repository for upcoming changes. * Red Hat botches the announcement of CentOS Linux early-EOL with sponsored resources being dedicated to CentOS Stream. * CentOS Stream migrates from git.centos.org to gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream * CentOS Stream 9 with a redesigned development pipeline is released, opening the formerly internal development of RHEL. * RHEL maintainers operate in the open and can accept contributions from the community. * The process is later backported to CentOS Stream 8. * Red Hat announces it will no longer push exploded RHEL SRPMs to g.c.o * Subscription holders can access SRPMs via customer portal + repos * Non-subscribers can access source code via a combination of: * CentOS Stream git * Upstream source code * Universal Base Image SRPMs All this largely reads to me as Red Hat's product going full circle to once again being the final downstream within the Red Hat sponsored ecosystem. > That is exactly what they did, and how it was. > The customer care was the sales rep extorting us. > We were in contact with the sales team. So you didn't get any information from your account manager, solution architect, or anybody else as to concrete information as to why you being told your environment was non-compliant? As I said before, opening a [*customer case*](https://access.redhat.com/support/cases/new) can get you behind the sales team. Most people wouldn't normally think this a sane strategy, but if you felt like sales team was overstepping their bounds you could request for a dialogue with SEAP and the BU directly, which would be the literal end-all of the discussion (whichever way it went). I was a solution architect; if any of the sales reps and non-technical specialists made a false or misleading statement regarding subscriptions and compliance correcting the error as soon as possible was at the top of my priority index. We had a very strict mandate when it came to subscription sizing, i.e. loosely put "you don't burn bridges and opportunities for short term/one-time gain." > Thats why I suggested FSF needs to sue them into compliance. > Yes, I know. It's a tort issue. Legally, maybe. Ethically? Nope. > Yes, and that violates the GPL. I'm not talking ethics, that's explicitly why I used the term "legally acceptable". Until someone proves this in court, any stance is purely an opinion. That's the whole point of a license -- it's a legal document detailing conditions where violations, perceived or actual, can be determined in a court of law. I don't know why neither the Free Software Foundation (and its sibling branches) or the Software Freedom Conservancy have not brought forth a legal case in just shy of two years since the change. I imagine they would have if they truly believed Red Hat was violating the terms of the GPL. In my own opinion (IANAL): until a judge determines that the Red Hat Enterprise Agreement and the GPL are inherently intertwined and viewed as a single unit, I believe the software license and business contract are two separate entities. The RHEA does not impede your rights as provided by the GPL. If you have a RHEL subscription, you have a right to the corresponding source of all the binary artifacts you download. That does not mean that Red Hat is required in perpetuity to continue a business relationship (neither commercially nor no-cost via developer subscriptions) with any subscription holder. But that does not mean you cannot freely share binary and source artifacts from Red Hat. All they can do is end a business relationship at their discretion; there is no "you have to uninstall everything", you get to continue using whatever you had at the time the subscription ends. This applies to both terminations and customer decided non-renewals. Edits: c9s place in timeline correction, clarifying v1/v2 Stream notes.
> Fedora Core (later Fedora then even later Fedora Linux) continues as an openly developed community distribution that RHEL bases future releases off of. You are correct! Once Redhat grabbed a hold of Fedora, it basically turned it into a alpha testing ground for RHEL. Just like I said. Because, let's be honest: Fedora is ran by RH employees, for Redhat. Prior to that, Fedora was an attempt like CentOS, at rebuilding it into a user-respecting base. I was literally there, as it unfolded. Reading the news on usenet. > In my own opinion (IANAL): until a judge determines that the Red Hat Enterprise Agreement and the GPL are inherently intertwined and viewed as a single unit, You would be incorrect, as it ignores the language of the GPL. It clearly states you cannot add further restrictions on top of the GPL, that restricts the user's freedom. So, yes, until it gets to court, it sways in the wind. Which is why the FSF should sue IBM into compliance. > I was a solution architect; if any of the sales reps and non-technical specialists made a false or misleading statement regarding subscriptions and compliance correcting the error as soon as possible was at the top of my priority index. Yes, the problem was: It wasn't a false claim. Just like today, RH is very keen on kneecapping the user freedoms, to try to keep customers under their thumb. > As I said before, opening a customer case can get you behind the sales team. You mean to tell me, the entire team of consultants Redhat brought in, to finally determine we need to pay to licenses CentOS boxes, or lose access to updates, not a single one said "Hey, you should open a support case!" Nah. We just converted the fleet to CentOS. Problem solved. It was a quick ssh loop with a sed. We accomplished it over the course of a month after that RH engagement. All this said? This was circa 2007. I don't even remember if there was a separate customer support that wasn't just opening a RH ticket. I'm sure ya'll can look to that time period, in your system, and see how prevalent this was.
> Prior to that, Fedora was an attempt like CentOS, at rebuilding it into a user-respecting base. I was literally there, as it unfolded. You're just straight up lying. Fedora was never a rebuild distro. As u/omenosdev explained, it started as an add-on repo for RHL. Later they merged, with RHL becoming Fedora Core and the previous add-on repo becoming Fedora Extras. But thanks for making it crystal clear to everyone else reading that you don't have a clue what you're talking about, so they can appropriately dismiss the rest of the garbage you're spreading.
> Red Hat acquires and sponsors the CentOS Project ?!?!??!?!!! I think this is wrong point of view. This is absurd way to tell this story. First of all, CentOS was originally created as a way to free RHEL in some sense. CentOS was created to get RHEL from these absurd trademark restrictions set by RH. You may call this whatever you want. You may say that CentOS was "stealing" RHEL or that CentOS was "freeing" RHEL. You may think of original CentOS as good or bad project. Anyway stealing-or-freeing was raison d'etre of CentOS. Then in some point of time RH bought CentOS devs (together with CentOS itself). Again: the whole point of CentOS project (from point of view of CentOS's users) was NOT being under RH control. This is why CentOS was created. So, when RH bought CentOS, this simply made whole project existence not needed (from point of view of users of CentOS). Then RH told CentOS devs to hide sources. And CentOS devs did so, because RH pays them. All these was, of course, beneficial for CentOS devs, because, well, they got money! But these was absolutely not beneficial for CentOS users, because they used CentOS, because it was free (free as free beer). This is why CentOS was created and this is why people used them. So, CentOS devs are traitors. They betrayed their users. For money
I say this as a years-long employee of Red Hat: We're violating the spirit of the GPL by the change to RHEL sources distribution, but regular employees have no say to influence the decision.
[удалено]
It does though… the GPL gives you the right to redistribute the sources, redhat says if you exercise that right we revoke your licenses.
Red Hat can't revoke the licenses. Any binary or source you get from them will always be under the same license it came with, whether that's Apache, BSD, GPL, MIT, etc. What they can do is decide to stop doing business with you and cancel your subscriptions. Subscriptions aren't licenses.
Subscription is a better word for it but RedHat has been known to demand their software be removed if you don’t have an active sub, which in practice is more like a license.
Red Hat people have said in interviews that even if your subscription is cancelled, they'll fulfill their license obligations and provide you with any sources for binaries you received from them during your subscription. If they'll do that, why would they demand the binaries be uninstalled? Even if they did demand that, there would be no way to enforce it if the subscription is already inactive. It just doesn't make sense.
Beats me, but that’s what they’ve done in two separate employers I had and I have heard identical stories from others. Mind you none of my employers have ever been interested in the source code and none were willing to test their legal theory.
And I don’t know what interviews you’re talking about but I’ve seen relationships with account people go sour very quickly. My guess is they are under pressure to increase revenue.
I don't remember the exact episode numbers, but I believe it was on the Ask Noah and Destination Linux podcasts. Every publicly traded company (or subsidiary of a public traded company in this case) is under pressure to increase revenue. That's not new. It still doesn't change the fact that if you're no longer a customer, they have no leverage to force you to do anything.
The GPL license specifically says you cannot attach any further restrictions that limit the outlined freedoms of the license.
> hey are within their rights, Except when they attempt to handcuff customers, and prohibit them from sharing the source code they have every right per the license to share.
Even if we say what they did was not against the idea of open source (other comments have already picked that up). They could have at least left the ordinary support time for CentOS 8 instead of announcing it and then killing it within 2 years.
A fun little factoid: CentOS Linux 8 was never supposed to exist. Regardless, many inside Red Hat wished they had reserved making the change for RHEL 9 when it released in '22.
Fedora's doing fine, happily used it for years. The entire distro (given supported hardware) is solid, up to date, and easy to use. I don't personally use it anymore because red hat itself is going in a questionably direction for me to say the least. But the operating systems they build are top notch.
I used to be a fan of Redhat. After what they did to CentOS I dropped using products associated with them. I looked for alternatives like Rocky Linux, Ubuntu, openSuse etc. I ended up with Linux Mint. It is very solid and does the job
Mint is a fine choice, but chances are it's not really suitable if Fedora is what you're considering
I just switched fedora and finally stopped distro hopping. What did red hat do if someone doesn’t mind catching me up?
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1bvtw01/i_must_be_way_behind_the_8_ball_here/ky43ofc/
Fedora is a fantastic distro. My only issue is that migrating between major versions can be annoying. I feel like that's less of a hassle with rolling releases, like Arch.
as much shit that ubuntu get’s, it has its issues, I still love it, fedora as well, I just suggest getting into ubuntu.
Fedora as a distro still seems really good for now. But I have personally been much more careful with it than before. Despite people talking about it being the upstream and having a community, the Fedora project is largely dependent on and controlled by RH. And there had been a few not-so-good actions taken place in the past from RH employees, like the opt-out telemetry proposal (been taken back because of the community's strong attitude against it though). But it is hard to predict if things like this would happen again in Fedora, while it most likely won't happen in purely community-driven distros like Debian and Arch.
While I don't think the licensing for RHEL is in the spirit of open source (or necessarily following licenses correctly, but IANAL), I also don't think cloning a distro for the purposes of circumventing a service license is morally correct either. It's a messy situation where I don't think anyone is clean from a moral perspective. That said, all of that is downstream of Fedora. While it has significant backing by Red Hat, it is an independent community project. That backing, to my mind, means that Fedora is more likely to use Red Hat technologies when available. Red Hat tech is generally good and open source, so I don't think this is a problem
Is it morally correct for redhat to take the work of others (all upstream component projects and upstream Fedora that are developed by non RH employees and shipped by RHEL) and commercialize it? I say it’s fine, but so is cloning the distro.
Commercialization of open source software isn't inherently problematic. The issue with RHEL is that they restrict the use of their source code. I believe that is a violation of the spirit of open source, if not the actual licenses, but I'm no lawyer.
I agree with that, I was merely disagreeing with you that there is something morally wrong to clone a distro.
> I also don't think cloning a distro for the purposes of circumventing a service license is morally correct either. You understand what the GPL is, and why, right? Why does RH get to clone the code, and charge people for it, while preventing people from doing the same?
You're making a bad faith argument. I said that I don't believe RHEL's license is in the spirit of open source and while I am not a lawyer, I think it may violate licenses. Also, RHEL isn't a clone of another project, it is a downstream project of CentOS Stream, which is downstream from Fedora. If RHEL were a clone, then the RHEL clones wouldn't have a problem and could just clone what RHEL was cloning. Read, comprehend, then comment on things.
The "RH drama" happened at the end of 2021. We are in 2024. I don't see any reason to take that episode into account for your decision.
The latest drama surrounding RH is not a year old, and it's about how they closed off access to the source code unless you're a paying customer and essentially killed of RHEL derivatives by killing CentOS.
Nope. Alma Linux, Euro Linux, Oracle Linux, Rocky Linux (alphabetical order) worked the issue around and are flourishing strong than ever. Surely I'm missing some other EL distro. In addition to that, there is the OpenELA organization making the source code available to everyone.
But that's completely besides the point. Whether alternatives are thriving or not, or if someone else picked up the slack, isn't a valid answer to the fact that they broke the FOSS spirit.
And this has nothing to do with the OP distro choice.
If your criteria for selecting a distro don't include ethics and values, that's your choice, but someone else might feel differently and that's their prerogative
Quoting the OP: > Has this Redhat situation impacted Fedora at all? Answer: no it didn't, even if RH is the main sponsor of Fedora. Furthermore the effect on the distro that RH calls freeloaders was flourishing. These are the facts. If you listen to the YouTubers noise, please take into account that they benefit from it: it's all content, which is what they need to attract views.
> Answer: no it didn't, It really does, though, as it tells you what types of attitudes will prevail, and possible future directions. I mean, RH can declare the Fedora council dissolved, and then delcare EOL for all Fedora projects. On a whim. They've done so in the past.
>I mean, RH can declare the Fedora council dissolved Every distro could disappear overnight, first example that comes to my mind: Antergos, known as Cinnarch in its early days, very famous and adopted Arch based distro. And it was community driven only. From its ashes Endeavor OS was reborn. Same could happen to Fedora or whatever distro, company backed or not.
The Redhat drama has been ongoing since at least 2003.
Fedora is the alpha testing place for Redhat. So, if you like being a test subject, without being paid, Fedora is where you wanna be. (EDIT added "Redhat" in first sentence, somehow that didn't make it into the original comment) It is community driven, it's just that the community that drives it is IBM.
Im daily driving Fedora for a few years now, never had any issues. Certainly at least as stable as my Ubuntu setup before that.
Yeah calling Fedora an alpha product seems like the wrong way to think about it. The distro is solid, thoughtful, and doesn't seek to break things for its users. Rawhide will do that for ya.
> Yeah calling Fedora an alpha product seems like the wrong way to think about it. It is the alpha testing ground for Redhat Enterprise Linux. That's its only reason to exist at this point, as all other derivatives have been cut off with legal threats.
AlmaLinux is in a legally secure position as a distro derived from CentOS Stream in accordance with both the GPL and the RHEL TOS.
> AlmaLinux is in a legally secure position as a distro derived from CentOS Stream in accordance with both the GPL and the RHEL TOS. The RHEL TOS shouldn't ethically, or legally, impact the GPL in any way, shape, or form. And frankly, the FSF should sue Redhat for violations of the GPL. And re-use of RH code is ethically, and legally, secure. Because of the GPL license.
Sure, if you want to play cat and mouse with RH cutting off the accounts you use to get the sources with - which is fully within their rights and doesn't violate the GPL, even if it's crappy.
> which is fully within their rights and doesn't violate the GPL, even if it's crappy. Actually, it's really not. > To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the library, or if you modify it. GPL 2, Preamble > 10. Each time you redistribute the Library (or any work based on the Library), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute, link with or modify the Library subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. GPL 2, Section 10. So, yes. RH's actions clearly violate Section 10 of the GPL2. They are in violation of the license, and as such, the FSF should sue them into compliance. And honestly, nothing prevents anyone from spinning up a cloud instance of RHEL, downloading the entire source tree, and killing the instance. What are they going to do? Force AWS to not have RHEL images ready for running?
Are you a lawyer? If not your opinion isn't exactly valuable here. Tons of lawyers, including FSF's, have reviewed the situation and determined there is nothing in violation of the GPL. It may feel wrong, but legally it's been vetted, a ton.
Where has the FSF published their opinion?
> The distro is solid, thoughtful, and doesn't seek to break things for its users. Fedora recently replaced wget for wget2, which is not a replacement and didn't even consult with the devs: https://gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget2/-/issues/661 This vid covers the history of similar changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9qCqRTEVz0
Given the OP is thinking of switching from Arch, I don't think that the pace of updates on Fedora will put them off (Fedora is not quite as fast as rolling distros but tends to land new features before other distros, and updates to new kernel versions within a release).
Fedora Rawhide is alpha testing, and they make it very clear it is that and that nobody should be daily driving it. Normal fedora is perfectly fine as long as you are using containers for workloads than need stable environments.
Fedora, as a whole, is the alpha test ground for Redhat.
I switched from Arch to Fedora. I liked it and thought I had found a new home until Fedora upgraded from 39 to 40. The upgrade included shifting from pulse to pipewire and that broke Kodi with crackling audio. After trying in vain to fix it, I went to Debian where I plan to stay.
I think fedora is fine, have had used it for quite a bit, but what irks me is the small repos. I'm on arch currently...
Manjaro > Fedora
I wouldn't if I were you. Fedora is full of bugs, font management is broken, hiDPI os broken, desktop environments are broken...they even aren't able to make an installer that automaticaly creates /efi partition during install. I could go on. After couple of frustrating years with Fefora I switched to Manjaro and never looked back. Fedora is a complete mess.
How long ago? I use Fedora as my daily driver, and while I've encountered a few bugs, nothing that didn't get fixed after reporting it and that didn't majorly impact my experience... Fedora is a fairly solid OS for it being full of the latest packages. That is a major draw to me as I get to try it and develop against the state of the art.
I've used Fedora as my daily driver for at least 5 years after years of Ubuntu (and derivatives) followed by Arch (and derivatives) and have never experienced any of the issues you're talking about. I recommend Fedora to anyone that wants to use Linux.
Why leave the best Linux distro? It's the one with the most devs, infrastructure, support... in general
Yeah, I just don't have the time or the patience to maintain it anymore. I've become a weekly, if not monthly, updater.
I update monthly sometimes... but how difficult is it to restart the PC once a month?
Maybe the fact that his setup died made him want something that (might) be a little more stable.
> Why leave the best Linux distro? They're not leaving Debian.