[ale] Maddog’s take on recent Red Hat source distribution changes

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

Niel,

Thank you for your clarification.   In the early days of this bruhaha there
were a lot of statements from a lot of people and companies, and a
clarification of what is now being said is worthwhile.   And the fact that
"three of those clones merged into one" is a good step, but I still insist
that a "clone" is less than a real competitor.   I would just as soon SUSE
be that "better RHEL".   Go for it.

md

On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 6:55 PM Niel Bornstein via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> I feel obliged, as a SUSE employee, to respond to a couple of things
> (though I do not speak for SUSE etc etc).
>
> There is a lot of misunderstanding about what SUSE is doing. SUSE believes
> that it's important for everyone to have access to secure, transparent, and
> reliable Enterprise Linux source that is available to everyone. SUSE has,
> along with Oracle and CIQ (aka Rocky Linux) and other companies and
> individuals who join the Open Enterprise Linux Association, announced its
> intention to create a fork of RHEL's currently available source code. So
> right away that's three of those clones merged into one, and we
> welcome others. Further, it's important to remember OpenELA will provide a
> code base for those clones, not a binary distribution. Each member of
> OpenELA will contribute to the code to help ensure compatibility with RHEL,
> and anyone will be free to compile and build their own distribution based
> on that code. So I hope that meets your hopes, and I would encourage you to
> join OpenELA to help us make it happen (https://openela.org/join/).
>
> Of course SUSE will continue to sell support for SUSE Linux Enterprise,
> and SUSE Liberty Linux (our RHEL-compatible distribution that has existed
> since I believe 2006, called SLES with Expanded Support up until about a
> year ago), and provide bug-for-bug compatibility between SLE and our
> community distribution, openSUSE Leap. We've committed to spend $10 million
> towards OpenELA, but of course you can imagine we spend a lot more than
> that on our own distributions. And SUSE has indeed been around longer than
> Red Hat, 31 years now ;)
>
> Niel
>
> On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 5:21 PM Jon "maddog" Hall via Ale <ale at ale.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Steve,
>>
>> You, like so many other people in this argument, appear to be assuming
>> that everything in "Linux" is GPL V2.x.   Mostly it is only the kernel that
>> is GPL 2.x.   Many other packages in the distribution are other types of
>> licenses, produced by many other entities.   I have not looked at RHEL for
>> a long time, but I am willing to bet there are packages that are solely
>> written by Red Hat, copyrighted by Red Hat and licensed by Red Hat perhaps
>> under the GPL, but perhaps under some other license.  There are other
>> packages that are under some "permissive" license like BSD, and have no
>> requirement to send along the source code to the end user or anyone else.
>> Even if there were only packages in RHEL that GPL, the entire distribution,
>> the set of bits required to install and qualify as RHEL could have a
>> different license.   In the past the only thing that was required was the
>> removal of the Trademark information.
>>
>> If I was "defending" Red Hat, it was only to point out that an
>> "Enterprise Linux" is more than just the bits in the ISO.   It is the QA,
>> the channel partners, the support people, the development of training and
>> certification and many more things.  If all of this was easy to do then
>> certainly some of the other distributions that are looking for the
>> enterprise customers would be alternatives to RHEL  SUSE has been around as
>> long as Red Hat (maybe even longer).   They should be glorifying that Red
>> Hat is changing its licensing.   SUSE should simply say "Buy SUSE, it too
>> is Enterprise Linux".   Instead SUSE wants to clone RHEL.
>>
>> My point in writing the article was to bring back to peoples minds the
>> original reasons for Free Software.   The fact that people would get binary
>> code and not be able to do what they needed with it.  The fact that
>> companies would release binary code and then either force you to have a
>> maintenance contract with them to get the bug fixes or enhancements you
>> need.   The fact that over time the companies would walk away from the
>> release you were counting on and never patch it again.  Can you say
>> "Windows XP", with close to 12,000,000 systems still running it?  The fact
>> that you could never have a third party support organization have as much
>> knowledge about the OS as the closed-source engineers, so you were stuck in
>> buying your support from the supplier?
>>
>> Sure, some of the distributions also make it a point of freely
>> distributing their code to everyone, whether they are a "business partner"
>> or not.   It is one of the reasons I use those distributions.
>>
>> I also wrote the article because people were saying how bad IBM was to
>> Free and Open Source Software.   I wanted to remind people about some of
>> the history of IBM and FOSS compared to some of the companies who are now
>> beating their breasts and saying how good they are.   The same companies
>> that do not release their source code on hundreds of products they ship.
>>
>> As to systemd vs init files, I have no bones in that argument, just as I
>> stay away from vim vs emacs discussions.   However, I do remember the
>> discussion about package managers versus distributions via tar files.
>> Digital's Ultrix had its own "package manager' named setld(8) and our
>> engineers complained about having to put their software into setld(8)
>> packages.   "What was wrong with tar" they would say.
>>
>> I pointed out that tar did not check for dependencies, and there was no
>> facility in tar to remove files and not disturb the dependencies of other
>> programs while you were doing it.
>>
>> "Oh yeah" was the response.
>>
>> Finally, at the bottom of my blog article, was the real meat of what I
>> had to say.   In the aftermath of Red Hat's announcement four different
>> groups came forward and said that they were going to create a clone of
>> RHEL.   If these four groups were going to spend the time and money to each
>> create a clone, that means we would have four more "RHEL"s.   I pointed out
>> that this was, at best, three clones too many.   I also pointed out that
>> what we really needed was a competitor to RHEL, a better RHEL, not just a
>> clone.
>>
>> But that is hard work, and from my experience would take much more money
>> than the 10 million dollars that SUSE was putting forth, even if they only
>> managed to copy the RHEL release source code (all of it, GPL or not) and
>> rebuild it.   It is the rest of what is needed that would cost a lot more
>> to bring to the table.   It probably could be done.  I would encourage it
>> to be done.
>>
>> Sorry if I gave you any other idea of what I was saying.
>>
>> maddog
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 2:52 AM Steve Litt via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Scott McBrien via Ale said on Mon, 31 Jul 2023 17:15:00 -0400
>>>
>>> >IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
>>> >lpi.org
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >Maddog, I know you’re sometimes around.  As a long time Red Hatter
>>> >(since 2001), not only did I learn some history from your article, I
>>> >appreciate its opinion and thoroughness.
>>>
>>> I liked the history too, but I'm skeptical about the parts about
>>> Redhat. Below is section 6 of GPLv2:
>>>
>>> =======================
>>> 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
>>> Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
>>> original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program 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.
>>> =======================
>>>
>>> Seems pretty clear to me. If you let somebody have the program, whether
>>> for free, for a million dollars, alone or bundled, if the program was
>>> GPLv2 you have to give them the source, and more importantly, you have
>>> the right to redistribute the source.
>>>
>>> I know, I know, we can argue about first, second, third, fourth and
>>> fifths parties, but section 6 is clear that if you come into possession
>>> of the software you have the right to redistribute it.
>>>
>>> And yes, I know, you can't buy Red Hat without agreeing not to
>>> redistribute the source. Once again, Red Hat requires the breakage of
>>> section 6. They get away with this only because their army of lawyers
>>> provide a chilling effect on a paid-for recipient asserting his or her
>>> rights under section 6.
>>>
>>> Of course, I'm not surprised a bit at Red Hat's Microsoft style action.
>>> Within a few years of the spectacular Bob Young's departure, Red Hat
>>> became an anathema to Linux, culminating in their promotion of systemd
>>> to all distros. They could have kept quiet about systemd, which would
>>> have given them a competitive advantage had systemd been beneficial.
>>> But they knew that with Debian and Ubuntu as competitors, their sales
>>> would suffer, because their distro contained the inferior systemd, if
>>> they didn't promote Debian and Ubuntu to incorporate systemd. The
>>> purpose of systemd was to complexify Linux so they could sell their
>>> services and training.
>>>
>>> Yeah, I can't prove the final two sentences of the previous paragraph,
>>> but here's a smoking gun:
>>>
>>> http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/10/interview-with-red-hat-cto-brian.html
>>>
>>> In the preceding link, search for the word "complexity". The only way
>>> they make money is if software is complex.
>>>
>>> In the article, I resent the word "freeloaders". If Red Hat doesn't
>>> want other distros to redistribute them, they should switch to Linux or
>>> Mac. Once again, I'm pretty darn sure that if there's a deep pockets
>>> lawsuit from a Red Hat customer who chooses to follow section 6 of
>>> GPLv2, Red Hat will lose, although our present disfunctional Supreme
>>> Court might side with them because they're a business. Their license
>>> provisions not to redistribute are just there for chilling effect.
>>> Trouble is, FSF doesn't have the money to fight a legal battle with Red
>>> Hat.
>>>
>>> The article mentions "right to make a profit." Nobody ever suggested
>>> they should give away their training and consulting for free. Just don't
>>> violate GPLv2.
>>>
>>> The article also mentions, and I quote, "if you are not maximizing
>>> your revenue with the resources you have, you are not paying fiscal
>>> responsibility to your stockholders." Not true. You can't murder to
>>> maximize revenue. Not even if you won't get caught. You can't steal to
>>> maximize revenue. And I'm pretty darn sure you can't violate a license
>>> to maximize profit. The rest of this email concerns my personal opinion
>>> of Red Hat...
>>>
>>> I haven't used Red Hat since 2003, and I wouldn't use Red Hat if they
>>> were the last distro on earth. Matter of fact, I wouldn't use any RPM
>>> based distro just to make sure Red Hat doesn't somehow mess me up.
>>>
>>> About systemd: If I and let's say six of my friends were paid half of
>>> what Red Hat paid Poettering and his crew, we could have incorporated
>>> every feature of systemd without creating a massively entangled mess.
>>> If Red Hat didn't enable Poettering, systemd never would have gone
>>> anywhere, and Linux would be better for it. Any systemd features that
>>> were really necessary would have long ago been incorporated outside of
>>> the init system. Systemd was never about improving Linux, it was about
>>> complexifying Linux.
>>>
>>> http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/10/interview-with-red-hat-cto-brian.html
>>>
>>> I very much liked the history, but I just don't buy the article's
>>> defense of Red Hat.
>>>
>>> SteveT
>>>
>>> Steve Litt
>>> Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
>>> http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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