Red Hat Linux is dead

Red Hat wasn't my first Linux. That was Slackware. I found this new, free OS interesting because it was Unix-like, and pretty friendly. Unlike OS/2, which I was working with professionally at the time, if I had a boot problem, the error messages tended to say things like "Did you mean xyz?" as opposed to IEC000I - ERROPT = ABE OR AN INVALID CODE. Also the /etc directory was a lot tidier than the Windows/OS/2 Registry and was considered authoritative (OS/2 products had a really bad habit of storing config information in random locations).

My first Red Hat was a CD in the back of a book I bought. I liked it overall, so I started buying upgrade releases from Red Hat directly. They ran me about $65 per release. Around that time, Red Hat also has its IPO and I bought some stock in the company.

Over the years, Red Hat helped put the lie to the conceit that people would never pay for software that they could get for free and became quite profitable. My stock value increased proportionally. And I kept buying new OS releases as needed.

Eventually, though, Red Hat created Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). At that point I had to stop paying because no one was paying me enough to cover the higher per-server costs for RHEL. It wasn't much - about $650/machine, but it was more than I could spare at the time. It was, I think a bargain, however. Businesses needing a higher level of support than I did ate it up and my stock continued to increase in value. Those of us too poor or too cheap started working with RHEL clones such as CentOS.

CentOS got a lot of input from Red Hat itself. I think they probably considered it as a "gateway drug" to RHEL in much the same way that Microsoft turns a blind eye to small-scale piracy of Windows. The difference being that since at the time Red Hat had an extreme open-source policy, distros such as CentOS were perfectly legal parallel implementations.

All good things come to an end. IBM bought Red Hat and my stock was liquidated (which frankly, I'm glad happened, since getting shares of IBM in trade isn't something I wanted then or now). My total gain was well over 1000% for about 15 years of ownership. But for a while, nothing material happened to the platform.

The first chill wind was when Red Hat formally adopted CentOS. No longer was it an independent product built from Red Hat sources, now it was a product built by Red Hat from Red Hat sources. No big deal, right?

Next up came CentOS Stream. Up until then, CentOS releases mirrored RHEL releases. CentOS Stream abolished that in favor of what some have called "continuous beta". Instead of being a RHEL clone, it was now more of a RHEL development and preview distro. The CentOS community split between biting the stream bullet and re-constructing the CentOS concept, producing AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. It also meant that folding over from CentOS to RHEL based on a specific release was no longer possible, but I don't think IBM Marketing noticed that.

This week, "Red Hat" announced yet another change to their source policy. Access to the upstream archives for CentOS is being curtailed and licensing is beginning to rear its ugly head.

Some may shrug and say "it's about time that those deadbeats paid for Red Hat's work". But that's foolish. The Linux Kernel is not a commercial product, nor are many of the applications bundled with RHEL and CentOS. In other words, Red Hat are "deadbeats" as well. While IBM often does support open-source projects, that's not the same thing as being obligated to pay by a licence.

So it's time to stop calling it "Red Hat Linux". Say what it is: IBM Linux.

Hot garbage:

https://www.infoworld.com/author/Matt-Asay/

The gist: "Nobody wants to pay for anything. Red Hat has a right to do what they did". Same old fallacious  

Again, the very OS kernel that RHEL is running under doesn't belong to Red Hat. Or any part of IBM. The "freeloading" starts from the very roots. Indeed, it's supported by Linus Torvalds himself, who could have become another Bill Gates and chose not to.

I would pay for a decent Linux distro, and, as I said, I have. I just don't have the budget or support needs for RHEL. So I try to pay by conytributions in kind. And in things like the support I provide gratis on the JavaRanch as an experienced professional to aid other professionals. For free.

I find Red Hat's statement not unreasonable.

There is a fundamental fallacy behind the whole thing.

IBM appears to be claiming that the RHEL clones are "stealing" their work. But when I buy a RHEL license, I'm not buying a temporary, revocable interest in the product like I would be if I "bought" an eBook or a DVD. I'm buying Red Hat support.

If all I wanted was "free Linux", there are an embarrassment of sources. I don't need a clone of RHEL to run a credible Linux environment with enterprise capabilities.

And note that almost all current Linux distros contain some Red Hat code. That's where systemd came from, for example.

Red Hat has gathered code from many open-source channels, just like any other distro, tweaked it for the peculiar characteristics of the Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora family — stuff like use of /etc/sysconfig for custom configuration info, the Red Hat-style networking controls, and so forth. Added Red-Hat developed amenities, which, so far at least, have always been available to other distro creators (again, systemd). And finally, slapped on the branding. It's no trivial task, but every distro does that or inherits it. Indeed, before Red Hat took over CentOS, the original owners of CentOS had to take the source that they'd acquired and replace the Red Hat specifics with their own equivalents (including the ID string in /etc/redhat-release.

Now Red Hat does have limited-access products, and did even before IBM ate them. But Red Hat was very scrupulous. No Red Hat linux distro ever had anything that was constrained in any way, including by Red Hat themselves. Famously, one had to install external decoders if you wanted to play MP3's simply because until the patents ran out, they considered it impermissible to bundle in decoders to any of the Red Hat distros (including Fedora). Even though Fraunhofer Institute had very publicly and explicitly declared that their patented tech could be freely used in environments like that.

Nor has Red Hat ever gimmicked RHEL to demand Red Hat commercial add-ons à la Microsoft. Remember how Microsoft used to have code to detect when you were running Microsoft products or not? How about the "Internet Explorer is an integral part of Microsoft windows"?

What IBM is doing is a pure cash grab in the same vein as what Oracle has attempted with Java and OpenOffice. Remember how well OpenOffice fared? How about all the people who run MariaDB rather than MySQL, even though MariaDB is now more of a fork than a clone of MySQL? How many are running OpenJDK rather than deal with Oracle licensing?

In sum, what IBM is doing probably won't gain them much cash but will garner a lot of ill will. It also cuts off the easy migration from CentOS-for-free to RHEL paying licenses. CentOS Stream doesn't match RHEL point-for-point and thus doesn't migrate as well, and especially if they intend to make it a place for unreleased RHEL tech.

The Red Hat business model was immensely profitable both to the company and to us shareholders. While IBM was slowly losing credibility with the decline of the mainframe market and the loss of personalized support that had made them the powerhouse vendor of the 1960s and 1970s. The last big shop I worked in had no IBM products at all and that was back in the early 2000s. But Red Hat grew and grew even though multiple distros, of which CentOS was only one, "stole" Red Hat work.

But bean counters can destroy anything. So RIP Red Hat. Again,  it's IBM Linux now and those who are wise will find other distros before they warp the OS in proprietary directions in an attempt to wring ever more cash from it. Linux isn't about proprietary. It's a community. And you ignore that at your peril.