Red Hat RHEL derivatives will no longer exist

Red Hat restricting RHEL source code: RHEL derivatives will no longer exist

Red Hat restricting RHEL source code: RHEL derivatives will no longer exist.

On June 21 local time, Red Hat announced that it will stop providing RHEL source code to third parties, and CentOS Stream will become the only repository for public RHEL-related source code releases.

Red Hat customers and partners may obtain the source code for a fee, but do not have the right to redistribute the code.

Red Hat restricting RHEL source code: RHEL derivatives will no longer exist.

“Prior to CentOS Stream, Red Hat pushed RHEL’s public repositories to git.centos.org. When the CentOS project moved to CentOS Stream, we still maintained these repositories even though CentOS Linux was no longer a downstream build of RHEL. The participation in CentOS Stream, the level of engineering invested in, and our new priority to solve problems for our customers and partners make it now inefficient to maintain separate, redundant, repositories,” said Mike McGrath, vice president of core platforms at Red Hat, in the announcement .

This decision by Red Hat affects all rebuilds and forks of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), such as below derivatives, which rely on released source code:

Maintaining 1:1 binary compatibility with existing versions can be challenging without access to the source code used.

At present, users of downstream distributions in various online forums are protesting strongly. When Red Hat announced the cancellation of CentOS Linux a few years ago, the most common words included “breach of faith”, “violation of GPL” and so on.

“What Red Hat does is terrible, but there has always been a bigger battle between Microsoft, IBM, and the companies that operate behind the scenes. It’s an ugly situation, with free software and open source caught in the middle.” Some netizens Said.

For CentOS Stream?

At the end of 2020, after Red Hat announced that it would stop updating CentOS 8, CentOS Stream became a substitute for CentOS.

In the Linux ecosystem, it is generally considered that Fedora is the middle and upper reaches, CentOS Stream is the middle and RHEL is the lower reaches.

RHEL pulls a branch based on a specific version of Fedora, and gradually enhances this version to ensure compatibility between the old and new versions, and to ensure the stability of the final version.

CentOS Stream corresponds to the RHEL version, and its Git submission records are exactly the same.

The two have passed the same construction process and the same test cases. But CentOS Stream will always only correspond to the latest stable version of RHEL.

A new version of CentOS Stream will be released only if all the test cases are passed. These test cases may or may not coincide with RHEL.

Red Hat decided to stop providing RHEL source code to the public.

The difference in this change is that CentOS Stream is the upstream of RHEL and represents the development direction of the next version of RHEL.

From this perspective, Red Hat is equivalent to adjusting the release of RHEL source code to rolling release of RHEL beta version code.

Alma, Rocky, and the previous CentOS Linux are all downstream of RHEL: refactored from the same source code to ensure perfect compatibility.

The original business foundation was to refactor at no cost to Red Hat, use the same drivers and achieve perfect compatibility with RHEL applications.

But simply opening up CentOS Stream obviously won’t do that: it’s just a future preview of RHEL.

If the enterprise wants to develop products or drivers on RHEL, or wants to grasp the follow-up development direction of RHEL in advance, then CentOS Stream is basically enough.

But if you just want to run RHEL for free, there’s arguably little point in opening up CentOS Stream, let alone building your own RHEL variant.

Some media suspect that Red Hat is very clear that users in the RHEL community do not pay attention to Stream, which is exactly the effect this adjustment wants to achieve.

Red Hat RHEL derivatives will no longer exist

Will Fedora Linux be affected?

Fedora users and contributors needn’t worry, but there is serious discontent on the Fedora-Devel mailing list.

Fedora is upstream of RHEL: software developed and tested in Fedora flows into CentOS Stream first and then into RHEL.

In fact, most of the work on Fedora is done by RHEL. If CentOS Stream is the rolling beta version of RHEL, then Fedora is the rolling alpha version of RHEL.

So RHEL technically depends on Fedora, not Fedora depends on RHEL. In principle, Fedora relies on RHEL’s support only on an economic level.

Fedora also offers server editions, which are freely available to Red Hat users who want the free RHEL.

The biggest difference is that Fedora is always based on newer code, so it will never be fully compatible with current RHEL. Also, Fedora does not provide stable long-term support releases.

Downstream Publishers: Optimistic but Worried

So far, official responses from both Alma Linux and Rocky Linux have been cautiously optimistic.

“While this decision does change the automation we use to build Rocky Linux, we have created a short-term mitigation and are working on a long-term strategy. To any unstable Linux users, collaborators, or partners, There will be no interruptions or changes.” Rocky Linux official said.

“I believe open source should always be free and completely stable. It shouldn’t be hidden behind a paywall or controlled by one company,” said Gregory Kurtzer, founder of the Rocky Linux project and chairman of the board of the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation, which hosts the project .

Alma Linux official stated, “In the short term, we will work with other members of the RHEL ecosystem to ensure that we continue to deliver security updates at the speed and stability we are known for.

In the long term, we will work with these partners and our community Collaborate to ensure the best path forward for AlmaLinux as part of the enterprise Linux ecosystem.”

AlmaLinux users can still get security updates for servers with that operating system. In the short term, AlmaLinux plans to discontinue CentOS Stream updates and Oracle Linux updates to ensure continued release of security patches.

These updates will be curated to ensure they are 1:1 compatible with RHEL while not violating Red Hat’s license, and will be reviewed and tested like all other releases.

However, AlmaLinux’s forum thread is full of concern: “This is disruptive to the entire Red Hat ecosystem.”

AlmaLinux said that it has established an incredible cooperation with Red Hat throughout the life cycle of the AlmaLinux operating system relationship, and they want it to continue.

“We are not panic, because we use AlmaLinux, and you have taken your product (Cloud Linux) seriously for many years ago. I am not afraid.” A supporter said in a tweet by AlmaLinux to appease the community.

As early as 2011, Red Hat adjusted the distribution method of source code packages, which seems to be “digging holes” for refactoring work.

But the initiative at the time was unsuccessful and actually only led to more and more enterprises embracing CentOS.

Some media asserted when CentOS Stream 9 was released that the biggest mistake Red Hat made was to push CentOS Linux.

This move is equivalent to supporting a free plan that competes with its own paid commercial products, which is a typical behavior of “capitalizing the enemy”.

The plan not only failed to bring much resistance to Oracle, but significantly cut RHEL’s sales.

At that time, downstream publishers also found a way to bypass the restrictions, and the evasion ideas were not complicated. Red Hat may also feel uneasy about the rise of the new generation of refactoring vendors.

While the organizations behind Rocky and Alma Linux are both non-profit organizations (Rocky comes from a public benefit corporation founded and run by Greg Kurtzer), there’s a lot to be said for both of them doing really well.

Just last week, NASA licensed Rocky Linux for internal use; scientific institutions such as CERN and Fermilab chose to use Alma Linux.

Red Hat thinks that these are not big things, and they seem to be contributing to their own Stream market penetration.

But judging from the actual effect, after the cancellation of CentOS Linux, Red Hat did not relax for a moment to launch an attack on the booming refactoring ecology.

Difficult to obtain source code

At present, the door to open source has not been completely closed. Stream is expected to periodically align with RHEL whenever a new major release is coming.

That is to say, when RHEL 11.0 is released, Stream will temporarily keep in sync with it, and the downstream distribution can also obtain a copy of the code at the corresponding point in time, and build a product compatible with the major version of RHEL.

But the biggest challenge facing the downstream ecology at present is that between major versions, they can no longer obtain small-scale iterations and updates at the source code level.

Critics pointed out that users can legally obtain source code by signing up for a free Red Hat developer account.

That’s right, but the problem is that people need to sign and agree to get an account, and the license agreement explicitly prohibits redistribution of software.

Therefore, even if the software source code is still available to downstream distributions, it cannot actually be used.

Although in principle it is possible to make substantive modifications and then share the modified results, the core significance of the existence of RHEL-compatible distributions is to avoid major changes and retain “perfect compatibility”.

Of course, downstream publishers can also choose to “do it even if they are scolded” and bite the bullet and continue to release their own version.

Once Red Hat finds out, at least its subscription rights and accounts will be banned immediately.

This is bound to set off a “cat and mouse game”: downstream publishers continue to open new free developer accounts, while Red Hat fights back by tracking and banning violators’ accounts.

This is obviously not a long-term sustainable development model. At worst, the publisher could even face prosecution and disappear.

All in all, it cannot be said that there are no ways to obtain source code, but most of them are very strictly restricted and controlled.

To curb community development and turn it into corporate profits?

Although the community reacted strongly, from the analysis of the incident itself, Red Hat’s behavior is actually in full compliance with the terms of the GPL.

After all, the terms only require that the source code be provided to the group that uses the built binary file: in other words, to provide the source code to the paying customer group.

The point is that to get these binaries, customers and developers on free accounts must agree to a license agreement and abide by the terms of the contract, which takes precedence over the GPL license under which the code follows.

To some extent, this move can be said to be a continuation of the logical line that Red Hat made CentOS proprietary in 2014.

This measure will narrow the legal space, leaving only one “single seedling” of CentOS Stream, and the rest of the reconstruction projects will basically have no possibility of development.

Of course, except Oracle, which has strong funds to continue to support Oracle Linux, and can also provide cheaper enterprise support contracts, enhanced Btrfs-compatible kernels, etc.

Foreign media commented that Red Hat’s set of combined punches has been quite skilled.

After gradually killing most of the cloned products, they should repeat the same trick and cancel the official free version of their flagship product.

As a match, Red Hat will provide a free beta version and talk about seemingly positive words such as “this is to encourage community participation” in the release announcement. But in fact, what Red Hat really wants to attack is the so-called “cheap” guys.

After all, developers can still use RHEL for free for production deployments, but only up to 16 devices.

If this move eventually leads to the demise of enterprises and communities that have been established for several years in downstream ecological investments such as Alma and Rocky, the corresponding market space may be transformed into IBM’s profits, but it also means that public opinion will be violent against Big Blue.

Since its inception 30 years ago, Red Hat has allowed the downstream ecosystem to clone and refactor its operating system, even in the early days of Red Hat Linux.

For example, Mandrake Linux got its start, introducing the KDE desktop to Red Hat Linux.

At that time, Red Hat wiped out this community force in one fell swoop on the grounds of violating the Qt license. No party other than IBM’s shareholders would have sanctioned such brutality.