Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Kwpolska 1087 days ago
If you want Debian, just use Debian. The idea behind CentOS and its successors is to have a free distro that is bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL, so that you can support users of your software who are on RHEL, or use software supported only on RHEL for free.
1 comments
brnt 1087 days ago
That's the idea, but Red Hat is making that ever more difficult. And I can understand why. Why would you build your world on such shifting sands, when all those forks could pitch in on Debian long term support instead?

Or just shell out for RHEL?

link
Kwpolska 1086 days ago
> Why would you build your world on such shifting sands, when all those forks could pitch in on Debian long term support instead?

Because RHEL is considered a standard in the enterprise circles, and software may not support distros that aren’t RHEL.

> Or just shell out for RHEL?

Why would you do that for smaller projects? Why would you do that for ephemeral containers? Why would you do that if you don’t care about RHEL support but want RHEL’s stability or are tied to RHEL for some reason?

link
fragmede 1086 days ago
Because it hasn't hurt Apple to have their proprietary garden and Red Hat has learned from that. Once you're big enough, people are going to do the work to support your nonsense (eg Asahi Linux) and build their world on your shifting sand. So why would you, as Red Hat, put in extra effort and not be capricious and hard to work with? It just costs you money that you apparently don't have to spend. Call it the Elon Musk is an Asshole (EMA) era of business.
link
garbagecoder 1086 days ago
The gratuitous anti-Apple remark. Walled gardens are at least as old as video game consoles and I can run whatever I want on macOS even if I can’t on my phone.

Somehow, whenever anyone spots a flaw in the FOSS model, it’s Apple’s fault. This is what people wanted, this is libre. Red Hat can sell for money. Remember, kids, CC violates a freedom!

link
smoldesu 1084 days ago
This is what people wanted. Red Hat wants to be paid for their modifications to GPL code, and they've gotten their wish. They can't override the conditions of the license, but they knew that when they started making contributions. There's no world in which Red Hat has their hands tied by a license they opt-in to using. Red Hat can sell their own OS and block redistribution if they want, just not with GPL code.

You can only characterize it as "a flaw in the FOSS model" if you consider these patches to be Red Hat's property. They can sell it for as much as they want, just never "own" it.

> Walled gardens are at least as old as video game consoles

Walled gardens have existed much longer than that. But, so to speak, shooting someone at the country club doesn't give you the right to deny state police an investigation.

link