Should we be wary of Red Hat? (lemmy.cafe)

submitted 1 day ago by propitiouspanda@lemmy.cafe to c/linux@programming.dev

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They were bought by IBM a few years back, but even aside from that they’re a corporation and they care about making money above all else.

It looks like Red Hat is doing its damnedest to consolidate as much power for themselves within the Linux ecosystem.

I don’t think the incessant Fedora shilling is unrelated.

It seems like there isn’t much criticism of the company or their tactics, and I’m curious if any of you think that should change.

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[-] gopher@programming.dev 16 points 10 hours ago

Red Hat probably contributes to Open Source and Linux more than any other company around. Are they perfect? Of course not, and it's fair and good to discuss and criticise them when warranted. But overall they seem to contribute positively much more than negatively.

How are they "doing its damnedest to consolidate as much power for themselves within the Linux ecosystem." exactly ?

[-] Gobbel2000@programming.dev 17 points 21 hours ago

Remember that in 2023 RedHat restricted access to the source code of RHEL packages, which had a big impact to lots of server distros. This article explains really well why that's problematic:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 28 points 1 day ago

Not really

It isn't a black and white thing. Redhat simply exists like anything else. I don't like everything they do but they also fund a ton of research and development. If Fedora ever becomes problematic people will just move. Ubuntu desktop used to be good but after it turned to shit many people moved.

[-] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 25 points 1 day ago

IBM sucks. They have bought up a bunch of small data centers and made them worse.

I'm still pissed about CentOS as well. Long live Rocky.

[-] LeFantome@programming.dev 27 points 1 day ago

Alma is actually a real community distro. They deserve so much more support than Rocky does.

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 7 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

TIL; though I moved my servers to Debian ... having the ability to sanely upgrade without a reinstall is a major plus.

[-] nanook@friendica.eskimo.com 2 points 7 hours ago

@Dark_Arc @LeFantome I've had mixed luck with debian in this regard. Bullseye to Bookworm was a smooth upgrade but some of the others have not gone so well.

[-] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I'm pretty sure Alma had a way to upgrade major releases. I know RHEL has Leapp, but it is always recommended to do a greenfield reinstall. Although with image mode and ostree that is changing.

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 1 points 4 hours ago

Interesting ... yeah it looks like Leapp can do some upgrades for Alma and possibly others as well (TIL). I'm not sure how well that upgrade process would compare / be supported vs Debian though.

What's the image mode and ostree stuff? Is that required for RHEL and/or Alma going forward?

[-] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago

Fuck Rocky. They are a leech on open source. They break user agreements to get at Red Hat source and don't contribute upstream. Use Alma, they actually work with the community and contribute upstream.

[-] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 7 points 21 hours ago

Ok, but why is there even an agreement required to access to source to something, uh, open source?

[-] LeFantome@programming.dev 4 points 8 hours ago

The GPL says you can get the source to software that people distribute to you. Red Hat does not distribute to Rocky.

[-] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 2 points 6 hours ago

Seems like they use that to circumvent other parts of the gpl, in spirit and possibly in the letter of the law. Others have more and better things to say about it than I:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/dear-red-hat-are-you-dumb

[-] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 5 points 20 hours ago

Because CIQ, the company that bankrolls Rocky, was poaching Red Hat customers. They were hiring Red Hat sales people, then using their contacts to swoop in and drastically undercut Red Hat because they don't do any engineering. It is an effort to stop leeches like CIQ/Rocky.

[-] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

They were hiring Red Hat sales people, then using their contacts to swoop in and drastically undercut Red Hat because they don't do any engineering.

There's an easy solution to that. RedHat could just pay their salespeople what they are worth and keep them at RedHat.

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[-] sudo@programming.dev 15 points 1 day ago

Yeah but its pretty easy to avoid them. They survive on government contracts not community support. There's lots of better alternatives than Fedora.

[-] not3ottersinacoat@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm wary of them and I refuse to use Fedora (because it's basically their testing bed) due to their support of the US military, in addition to the reasons you've mentioned. Also, I'm trying my damnedest to #BoycottUSA

I prefer LMDE. It doesn't check all my wants, but it finds a great balance and I don't feel like an unpaid tester.

[-] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 1 points 9 hours ago

due to their support of the US military

What?

[-] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

They make you sign into their support portal to view most of their documentation and download most of their software. That right there is a deal breaker for me because it violates the spirit of open source.

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 19 points 1 day ago

I'm all for Linux distributions run and owned by the community. With those we don't have to be afreaid of weird business decisions. Debian is a good example, and very democratic. But I believe several other distros are maintained by a community as well, including Arch, NixOS...

[-] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Fedora is also community operated. Although there's a bit of an informal understanding between RedHat and Fedora to work together.

[-] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It definitely makes me suspicious, considering they're a standard 'money above all else' company (though they're better at playing the long game than some other companies) operating in a fascist state. They don't seem to abuse their power much, yet, but that can change rather quickly.

I do think there are quite a few linux users and developers who are suspicious of Red Hat, they are a small-ish but pretty vocal minority. Suspicion of Red Hat was a major reason why systemd was so controversial.

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