Comment by bloopernova

7 years ago

I share the sentiment.

Gawd. Freaking. Dammit.

I've been using RHEL-derived systems for like almost 20 years. This actually feels like a betrayal of the Open Source community.

Any bets on whether Fedora and CentOS will exist in November 2019?

47 comments

bloopernova

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cmurf  7 years ago

The boilerplate and vague statement of Red Hat remaining a distinct unit doesn't really tell us anything. More relevant is what the CentOS and Fedora communities think of this acquisition, because no matter what they are community driven projects.

There are two coins to toss: whether IBM reaches into Red Hat in a way that kills off either project; and whether enough of the community steps out.

I'm curious what openSUSE folks think of SUSE having been acquired by Novel, then Attachmate, and then the Micro Focus merger. They've been through a lot, and openSUSE is still here.

  • int_19h  7 years ago

    Conversely, I wonder what this does to the Linux ecosystem. It looks like at this point, Debian and Arch are the only major self-sufficient distros (i.e. not built on top of another distro) that are still community-owned and community-driven; and of the two, Debian is clearly more broadly popular. So, will this result in Debian becoming the de facto standard of "open Linux"? This could make things interesting when it comes to packaging etc.

    • rickycook  7 years ago

      well, that’s basically already happened. with its strict adherence to GNU, and with the truly phenomenal number of distros based on debian (especially if you include ubuntu derived distros, but ubuntu is so different these days that idk if it’s really the same any more?)

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  • cyphar  7 years ago

    Regarding openSUSE (I work for SUSE so obviously don't speak for the wider openSUSE community, just my 2¢ as a contributor):

    While people do have a reasonable level of hostility over the Novell acquisition (which has left some deep cultural scar tissue within SUSE), they did give us openSUSE.

    Overall there is often worry when we have an acquisition (since a very large portion of openSUSE maintainers are employed by SUSE). With EQT quite a few folks were worried about how separated the finances were between openSUSE and SUSE and I believe Richard Brown commented on how exactly he's pushing for better financial and trademark separation (the only two things that they really share anymore).

    So while people do get worried every one in a while, I get the impression that overall things are going okay despite the series of acquisitions in recent years.

    However, Fedora/RedHat have a different structure and relationship and I wouldn't use the openSUSE/SUSE model to predict how things will work out.

  • indigodaddy  7 years ago

    I wonder if the Fedora community could immediately fork off their own and essentially "leave" IBM/RH hanging? Not even sure if that is legally possible now, as the terms of the sale could have potentially included looming/upcoming license changes that might prevent that. I'd say they'd have to act quick and with their general feeling on whether they'd want to go that route (the Fedora community), and I'm sure their would still be legal challenges from IBM in any case if they attempted something like that.

    • slrz  7 years ago

      There are no legal challenges and there is no hurry. You wouldn't be able to call the fork Fedora but other than that it's absolutely impossible for any shady backroom deal to affect your future ability of forking Fedora. The licensing of the collection as well as the individual components grants you that right and there is no way to take it back retroactively.

      With the current state of things, forking Fedora seems unlikely to be a wise decision. RedHat is the major contributor, paying the salaries of many Fedora developers. So far, nothing has changed here with that acquisition.

    • wyoh  7 years ago

      All the buildings tools, backends, many devs are provided by Redhat. Without them I don't know how we would operate.

  • rodgerd  7 years ago

    > I'm curious what openSUSE folks think of SUSE having been acquired by Novel, then Attachmate, and then the Micro Focus merger. They've been through a lot, and openSUSE is still here.

    OpenSuSE has been more like Fedora over their years; they historically never had a CentOS equivalent (although the newer OpenSuSE is moving there).

ianai  7 years ago

Where’s the history of IBM buying and sun setting companies? I don’t have the same prejudice towards IBM that I do for Oracle. But I’m not in a position to know.

I’m thinking RHEL’s support contracts will keep IBM from shuttering RHEL. An IBM branded RHEL would represent plenty of income.

bubblethink  7 years ago

>Any bets on whether Fedora and CentOS will exist in November 2019?

I would say that Fedora and CentOS aren't going away anywhere. Not because of this anyway. There were similar concerns around RH's acquisition (if that's what you call it) of CentOS a couple of years ago, but things have largely been the same. And it's mostly for selfish reasons. The overall dev mindshare of RH based systems has shrunk compared to Ubuntu. So anything that moves people away from Ubuntu to the RH ecosystem is net win because eventually some corp will write a check when they need support. It's the same idea as MS not going after pirates just to increase MS's overall market share.

  • TheRealDunkirk  7 years ago

    > I would say that Fedora and CentOS aren't going away anywhere.

    That was the sentiment regarding OpenSolaris when Oracle bought Sun... (And I can't believe no one's mentioned this in 800+ comments so far.)

    • bubblethink  7 years ago

      OpenSolaris came after regular Solaris. It was a retroactive opening of code, and wasn't as essential to regular Solaris. In contrast, Fedora is quite instrumental to RHEL's existence. CentOS is not that instrumental, but it's not a major cost sink either. It used to be community driven earlier and can become so again. i.e., Unless they go out of their way to do something malicious, which would have little payoff anyway.

      2 replies →

pnutjam  7 years ago

Not a huge fan of Redhat, but I am a big user. I'm willing to wait and see.

Maybe we'll see more community offerings?

7ewis  7 years ago

What is the relationship between RHEL and CentOS?

Never actually used RHEL, but I've heard that they're basically the same - one comes with the support, the other obviously doesn't.

Is CentOS supported by Red Hat, so IBM in theory could shut them down?

  • geggam  7 years ago

    CentOS is the main competition to RHEL licenses. I have been in many meetings where the "use CentOS so if we have to buy RHEL its an easy conversion " was made

    I assumed Redhat was going to capture lost revenue by somehow making CentOS less viable.

    IBMs business nature makes me think its even more likely now.

    • slavik81  7 years ago

      From my perspective, it always seemed that RHEL's big problem was that CentOS was easier to use. Whenever I set up a machine, I always reached for CentOS because to me it was the same thing, except I didn't have to ask for a license, I didn't have to securely store the license, I didn't have to enter the license, and I didn't have to document my strategies for handling those things.

      1 reply →

  • snowwrestler  7 years ago

    I can't find the reference, but Red Hat recently hugged CentOS after sort of passively ignoring it for a while. Now, as I understand it, Red Hat has committed to actively supporting CentOS.

    They're different products for different customers. Folks who want to work cheap and hack their own stuff together will use CentOS and would never have bought a RHEL license anyway.

    Meanwhile, folks who need a "we've got support" answer for every question will use RHEL and wouldn't be tempted by CentOS anyway; the cost savings is not worth the risk.

emmelaich  7 years ago

Fedora and CentOS will both survive -- but maybe under a different name.

This is possible because everything in Redhat/Fedora/Centos is open source.

I'd be willing to bet numerous people are working on a non IBM/Redhat version of Centos.

  • mcv  7 years ago

    That's the thing with an acquisition like this: what did IBM buy exactly? The code is open source, the people can leave and form a new company. The thing IBM really owns are Red Hat's contracts. But when those expire, the other party could sign their new contract with a company of former Red Hatters, if they want.

    Buying an open source company only makes sense if you give the employees of that company exactly what they want. They are the real value.