Red Hat’s New Testament: Open Source Betrayal?

It all started with a simple blog post, “Advancing the development of the CentOS stream,” by Mike McGrath, red hatVice President of Core Platform. For the non-haters among you, the division in charge of the core platform is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), McGrath wrote in the post,centos stream Now the public will be the only repository for RHEL-related source code releases. For Red Hat customers and partners, the source code will be available through Red Hat Customer Portal,

Then came all the turmoil in RHEL clone distro circles and among Linux and open-source developers.

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The problem is now being faced by RHEL clone distributors — like almalinux, Rocky LinuxAnd Oracle Unbreakable Linux – is that they can’t easily make RHEL-compatible operating systems anymore.

This is because the CentOS stream, as a RHEL upstream distro, is not compatible with the shipping RHEL. Rather, CentOS Stream is the upcoming version of RHEL. Thus, this RHEL beta is neither fully compatible with the shipping RHEL nor as stable.

Once upon a time, Community Enterprise Operating System (CentOS) – founded by Gregory Kurtzer – was the most successful of the RHEL downstream clones. CentOS was more popular than RHEL In important markets such as web servers.

Red Hat was not amused. In 2011, Red Hat began to incorporate its patches directly into its kernel tree. All the code was still there, but, as one person said at the time, “It’s like asking someone for the recipe for the family’s chocolate chip cookies and getting cookie batter instead.”

Nevertheless, the RHEL clone distributive developers thrived. In 2014, Red Hat incorporated CentOS. Use of CentOS remained free, while Red Hat hoped that this might encourage CentOS users to become RHEL customers. does not make sense. Most RHEL-family users continued to use the free CentOS.

Since this did not work, in late 2020 Red Hat changed CentOS from a stable RHEL clone to a rolling Linux release distro, CentOS Stream. Furthermore, the plan was that while Red Hat would continue to support the older CentOS 7 release until at least June 30, 2024, the new CentOS 8 version, instead of being supported until 2029, would go out of support in late 2021. ,

It went like a lead balloon with hundreds of thousands of CentOS users.

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As one user pointed out, “The The use case for CentOS is completely different from CentOS Stream, Many people use CentOS for production enterprise workloads, not development. CentOS stream may be fine for development/testing, but it’s unlikely that people will adopt CentOS stream for production.”

That is exactly what happened. CloudLinux founder and CEO Igor Seletsky with CentOS founder and CIQ CEO Gregory Kurtzer responded by creating new RHEL clones – AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, respectively. In short, they both decided that the old CentOS model needed to be reverted.

Both distros have proven to be successful, so Red Hat has taken this step. In a later post, McGrath clarified this: “I think most of the anger with our recent decisions about downstream sources comes either from people who don’t want to pay for the time, effort, and resources that RHEL takes are or Those who want to repackage it for their own benefit. This demand for RHEL code is fraudulent.”

Needless to say, Almalinux and Rocky Linux are not happy either.

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Benny Vasquez, board chairman of the Almalinx Foundation, fears that Almalinx will have to comply with Red Hat’s licensing and agreements in addition to complying with the software source code license. It would also mean, as Almalinux understands it, that “Red Hat’s User Interface Agreements indicate that republish sources Getting through the Customer Portal would be a violation of those agreements.” This, in turn, would put them in breach of GPLv2.

This is a no win situation. Therefore, Almalinux” will work with other members of the RHEL ecosystem to ensure that we continue to deliver security updates with the speed and consistency that we are known for. And, in the long term, we look forward to helping those We will work with like-minded partners and our community to identify the best path forward for AlmaLinux as part of the enterprise Linux ecosystem.”

Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation taking a more aggressive approach. In a post dated June 29, the company said:

Red Hat’s Terms of Service (TOS) and End User License Agreement (EULA) impose conditions that attempt to prevent legitimate customers from exercising their rights guaranteed by the GPL. While the community debates whether this violates the GPL, we strongly believe that such agreements violate the spirit and purpose of open source. As a result, we refuse to agree to them, which means we must obtain SRPMs (source rpm files) through channels that adhere to our principles and uphold our rights.

Rocky believes that RHEL’s “sources consist primarily of upstream open-source project packages that are not owned by Red Hat.”

I believe they are correct.

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So, since Rocky can’t get code from the Red Hat Customer Portal and the CentOS stream code isn’t good enough, Rocky will use two different methods to get pure RHEL code.

One option is via RHEL Universal Base Image (UBI) Container images which are available from many online sources such as Docker Hub. “Using the UBI image, it’s easily possible to get Red Hat sources reliable and weightless. We’ve validated this with OCI (Open Container Initiative) containers, and it works.”

In addition, Rocky Linux will take advantage of pay-per-use RHEL public cloud instances. His post continues:

With this, one can spin up RHEL images in the cloud and thus get the source code for all the packages and errata. It’s easiest for us to scale because we can do it all through CI pipelines, spin up cloud images to get the sources. DNFAnd automatically post to our Git repository.

These methods are possible because of the power of the GPL. No one can stop the redistribution of GPL software. To reiterate, both of these methods enable us to legally obtain RHEL binaries and SRPMs without compromising our commitment to open-source software or agreeing to TOS or EULA limitations that hinder our rights. Our legal advisors have assured us that we have the right to obtain the source of any binaries we receive.

I can guarantee that Red Hat would disagree. This dispute may eventually be settled in the courts.

Not all the anger comes from those whom McGrath appears to be calling freeloaders. Bradley M. Kuhn, The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC). Policy Fellows clarified their position:

For nearly twenty years, Red Hat (now a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM) has experimented with creating a business model for operating system deployment and distribution that looks, feels and functions like proprietary, but still Complies with GPL and other standards copyleft terms. Software rights activists, including the SFC, have spent decades talking to Red Hat and its lawyers about how the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) business model spells disaster and have actively campaigned for community-oriented free and open source software (OSS). FOSS) is not friendly. As far as we can tell, these pleas, discussions, and exhortations have been seriously listened to by prominent members of Red Hat’s legal and OSPO departments, and even by key C-level executives, but ultimately rejected. done and ignored. – sometimes even with a “penalty”, then sue us for GPL infringement.

Prior to the Red Hat acquisition, Kuhn argued, “CentOS provided an excellent balance to the problems of the RHEL business model.” Now, however, in pursuit of profit one who has advanced Red Hat’s first layoffRed Hat has “maximized the difficulty level of those in the community who want to ‘trust but verify’ that RHEL complies with the GPL agreements.”

Does the core of Red Hat Linux violate the Intellectual Property (IP) license? GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), Kuhn would not go that far. But he worries that Red Hat “has moved from publicly distributing[the source code]to everyone and only to customers who already have binaries.” In short, Red Hat’s “obscure business model oversteps the bounds of GPL compliance.”

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He is not alone. Many others believe that Red Hat is violating the GPLv2., Programmers aren’t happy with Red Hat either. Noted open-source developer Graham Leggett tweeted, “Hi, Red Hat. You Doing its job for almost 25 years, and happily consuming it downstream, You never paid me, but I encourage my clients to pay you. Perhaps it is time to discuss how you will compensate us for our work.”

Another lead programmer, Jeff Girling, said, “What I hate Red Hat the most.Their response is that they call anyone who wants CentOS a freeloader, when: 1. There is nothing ethically wrong about being a user of OSS without contributing. 2. Nearly all RH staffers, contributors and (former, now) lawyers I know rely on CentOS.”

However, Red Hat Engineering Manager Alberto Ruiz would like to remind everyone that “All patches make it to CentOS stream Even before RHEL binaries actually existed. We do Publish revision for everyone to see (in CentOS stream), not binary receiver only.”

On the other hand, some Red Hatters see the move as the latest in a series of blunders. Former Red Hat senior engineer Jeff Law commented, “What What Red Hat has done lately is disappointing, but no big surprise to me. Red Hat has repeatedly struggled with how to deal with ‘clones’. The core idea I always came across in those discussions was that the value is not in the bits, but in the stability, the services and the ecosystem that Red Hat enables around bits.”

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But, at some point for Red Hat, open source became a means to an end. This opened the door for Red Hat to move away from the open-source ideal. Law concluded: “What Red Hat has done may technically be legal and probably good for its business. However, to me, it is morally unwarranted.”

Even though there is growing anger all around, it is important to note that these are not bad guy versus good guy issues.

There are other licensing issues as well. GPLv2 is at the core of Linux, but linux system Software includes programs that use a number of different licenses. It’s a mess in which neither Red Hat nor his enemies should really be caught.

We are a long way from the time when Red Hat co-founder Bob Young told me, “I will partner with competitors. It’s an ongoing opportunity. Your competitor is not your enemy. If you can solve a customer’s problem by working together.” If you have a competitor, that’s what you should do.”

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my take? I’ve followed Red Hat since the company started in the sewing sector of Young’s wife. I’ve followed Linux since Linus Torvalds was a graduate student and the first open-source and free software IP license was written. As I see it, Red Hat is not violating the letter of the GPLv2, it is violating its spirit.