What they’re doing still isn’t “wrong” though and doesn’t make it “closed source” like some clickbaiters have been claiming. They don’t have to give it out like they did before. Sucks for downstreams using it but 🤷‍♂️

@gamingonlinux
There is a massive difference to building on others (ergo adding value/ideas) and just rebuilding verbatim. I believe that is what they are trying to convey.

@gamingonlinux I'm rather reading it as simply building our sources = freeloading = not okay, vs building upon upstream = improving and contributing back = okay. Certainly could have phrased that better and avoided the overload of the term 'building' there, but their argument makes sense to me.

@gamingonlinux they don't contradict to me if taken in the context of the whole blog post.

The first is referring to simply repackaging and rebranding a project then presenting it as your own. In other words what all this fuss is about.

The second refers to the relationship between RedHat and Fedora, or Ubuntu and Debian. Building on, improving and contributing back.

@gamingonlinux that's a funny way to admit that their support contracts provide no inherent value

@gamingonlinux
I always thought Red Hat's selling point was the support you get when you buy the RHEL license. Getting prospectice customers used to the ecosystem by publishing CentOS for free, and then selling them support with RHEL seemed like a sensible approach to me. But I guess IBM does not see it that way.

@gamingonlinux I think the blog is fair. I'd rather Red-Hat continues to work upstream than there be more RHEL clones.

@gamingonlinux I swear that's the whole point of open source, to be able to fork and build upon something to make it better, and to collaborate.

@gamingonlinux

Turning Free Software into a walled garden in the name of the Almighty Profit should be grounds from shunning them from fucking everywhere, they're no longer to be trusted with it

@gamingonlinux *shrug* I don't have any particular objection to what RedHat is choosing to do here. Frankly I'm surprised it's taken this long.

@gamingonlinux We paid for RHEL simply because we needed something we could _buy_. The corporation I worked for couldn't agree to any terms unless they bought something. The repos were not the key feature.

@gamingonlinux all I hear is “We’re happy to take your efforts & roll them into our project. Oh you want our changes too? We can’t have that & our paying customers don’t want it either because the question eventually becomes why are we paying for this?”.

When you know quality of the software is so good that it’s difficult to build a billable support business model on top of it. They aren’t afraid of hobbyists, they afraid of professionals that aren’t them.

@gamingonlinux I assume this is some enshittification by IBM geniuses, and that it’s going to spill over into Fedora, which I was going to try on my next system.

Going to try OpenSUSE instead I guess.

@gamingonlinux I knew this was going to happen when IBM bought RedHat. IBM has a terrible track record in trying to monopolize the computing industry, even attempting to strangle it. The thing that bothers me the most is the notion RedHat is going to build itself off FOSS & advocating the exchange of ideas to putting up a fence and acting like Steve Ballmer circa 2004. What IBM has done (b/c that’s the corporate cause of this) has taken one of the sterling names in FOSS & gutted it. Sad day.

@gamingonlinux
Furthermore, RedHat has made themselves the arbiter of what constitutes 'value.' That's not how it works. Clearly the community sees plenty of value in RHEL clones. How many of them will now 'fall in line' and become paying RHEL users?