For those who are out of the loop, like I was, here is how I'm understanding this...
"CentOS" tracked behind RHEL, and is considered more stable? Regardless, CentOS 7 is the last supported major version, and it's reaching EOL soon and will not be maintained. This sounds like a push to get those who use CentOS (free) to move to RHEL (paid) to stay in the long-cycle ecosystem.
"CentOS Stream" is a flavor that tracks ahead of RHEL, is less stable, and is really meant for those who develop on RHEL.
Since the original CentOS is no longer supported, you had new flavors come up (specifically Rocky Linux and Alma Linux) designed to fill the void to track behind RHEL.
However, it appears they rely on the open-source RHEL for their builds. It sounds like this is going away now, and the only open-source linux RedHat is gonna publish freely is CentOS Stream.
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong or missed something!
Backports are important for long term support. Say, you have some-pkg-1.2.5-83.el9.x86_64, CentOS Stream will have some-pkg-2.10.32-3.el9.x86_64 (with extra features, enhancments, security fixes), while customers want just CVEs to be back ported to some-pkg-1.2.x
This creates problems for long term support, as it requires more resources, who understand the code base for some-pkg in order to apply selective fixes. Right now, if one knows how to build rpms and how to integrate them is enough to become a clone of downstream RHEL.
I think, only Oracle can pull off this feat, as they can put more people to work to solve this problems. 1:1 compatibility becomes hard, as 1000+ packages need to be taken care of.
It has been cited by, among others, Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy, which is probably some of the highest praise I've received in my career to date.
I suggest reading that and then if you have further points or questions I will be happy to try to address them.
> customers [...] are under the terms of a contract, which overrides the GPL license of the code itself
Do you have a source for this claim? Why would the contract be legally stronger than the license?
GPL prohibits further restrictions on rights of the code recipient. Contractual terms are sometimes found unlawful/invalid by courts. I guess this question can really be resolved only by a court.
Neither are building from CentOS Stream - they are building from the same source that is in the final RHEL release, not a rolling release like CentOS Stream.
I thought they were using git.centos.org which used to be the RHEL sources?
Centos stream sources are what will become the next RHEL major or minor release. So if(?) RH is adding further stuff on top of Centos stream after forking those changes would not be available to non-customers?
Management doesn't directly know the pain of an engineer. This business heirarchy is akin to management being the body's "hands" while engineers are the "feet".
This easily accommodates the option of shooting one's self in the foot.
One of the FAANGs has/had exclusive deal with Oracle for Oracle Enterprise Linux, as Oracle charges a way less than Redhat does. Redhat/IBM figured out how many large enterprises use Oracle Linux; now they want to go after those enterprise customers to show more return on investment, as IBM paid $34B to acquire Redhat.
Another irritating move from Red Hat, likely driven by their unhappiness with the popularity of Alma/Rocky instead of a mass migration to RHEL they had probably hoped for.
As the source is still available, but not publicly, could it be that these alternate flavours enter in to a license agreement with Red Hat that's community funded?
It works out ok. The GPL only requires Red Hat to provide the source code to its users, not the whole world. A license requiring publication on the internet would be considered non-free by the GNU project. It would also be rejected by Debian because it would fail the Desert Island test [1].
What a massive hole in the GPL, and its wild it would be considered "non-free" when most people would actually consider it free. Another reason I do not like that license.
They can't, but they could do something like GRSecurity, saying that they would end their contract with / stop giving anybody who distributes it further updates.
All customers of Redhat should start daily sync of all source RPMs. That way, Redhat can't find out who is sharing source RPMs with Alma and Rocky. Right now, customers just sync binary RPMs.
"CentOS" tracked behind RHEL, and is considered more stable? Regardless, CentOS 7 is the last supported major version, and it's reaching EOL soon and will not be maintained. This sounds like a push to get those who use CentOS (free) to move to RHEL (paid) to stay in the long-cycle ecosystem.
"CentOS Stream" is a flavor that tracks ahead of RHEL, is less stable, and is really meant for those who develop on RHEL.
Since the original CentOS is no longer supported, you had new flavors come up (specifically Rocky Linux and Alma Linux) designed to fill the void to track behind RHEL.
However, it appears they rely on the open-source RHEL for their builds. It sounds like this is going away now, and the only open-source linux RedHat is gonna publish freely is CentOS Stream.
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong or missed something!