Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

Posted Jun 23, 2023 8:19 UTC (Fri) by AdamW (subscriber, #48457)
In reply to: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability by gtirloni
Parent article: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

I totally understand being angry at this, but - if you don't mind, and this is a genuine question - as a valuable community member, do you actually need an attempted bit-for-bit rebuild of RHEL for something? Is there anything for which CentOS Stream and/or Fedora are not doing the job?

Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

Posted Jun 25, 2023 2:48 UTC (Sun) by richarson (subscriber, #74226) [Link] (7 responses)

Speaking for myself: stability over a long period of time (10 years) is the most important thing, bit-fot-bit compatibility is actually not high in my priorities list.

Neither Stream (5 years) nor Fedora (13 months?) provide that.

Stream is similar to Debian and Ubuntu LTS in terms of support years but Stream is also more of a moving target than the other 2.

So at this point, migrating to another distro is starting to sound less and less like an annoyance.

Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

Posted Jun 25, 2023 12:31 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (6 responses)

> Speaking for myself: stability over a long period of time (10 years) is the most important thing, bit-fot-bit compatibility is actually not high in my priorities list.

...Yet neither is important enough to actually pay for. Isn't that the whole point of this entire discussion?

> So at this point, migrating to another distro is starting to sound less and less like an annoyance.

Sure, but keep in mind that you'll be trading one set of pain points for another. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

Posted Jun 25, 2023 18:54 UTC (Sun) by richarson (subscriber, #74226) [Link] (5 responses)

> > Speaking for myself: stability over a long period of time (10 years) is the most important thing, bit-fot-bit compatibility is actually not high in my priorities list.
> ...Yet neither is important enough to actually pay for. Isn't that the whole point of this entire discussion?

If I (or actually, my bosses) had to pay for every system we have, we'd be bankrupt. And I know we're not the only ones in that boat.
I only stated (or maybe tried and failed to state) that our choice of CentOS/Alma/Rocky was mostly based on the longer support time of those distros.
And 99.999% of the time, we don't really need RH's support (we have in-house experts) so I can't justify paying all money for licenses.

> > So at this point, migrating to another distro is starting to sound less and less like an annoyance.
> Sure, but keep in mind that you'll be trading one set of pain points for another. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.
Oh, I'm aware, but we already use Debian and Ubuntu for some systems and since we have expertise, adapting should not be a huge problem.

Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

Posted Jun 25, 2023 19:33 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> If I (or actually, my bosses) had to pay for every system we have, we'd be bankrupt. And I know we're not the only ones in that boat.

So.. who do you expect to pay to keep maintaining the software you depend on?

....If you're being honest, the answer is "As long as it's someone else, I don't care."

(Personally, I don't mind folks making money off of my code. But I have a problem with folks expecting me to support them, on their schedule, for free)

Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

Posted Jun 26, 2023 20:36 UTC (Mon) by richarson (subscriber, #74226) [Link]

I donate money to open source projects, a lot of peaople and companies do the same.

And I don't expect support from them, stop trying to put words in my mouth please.

Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

Posted Jun 26, 2023 22:06 UTC (Mon) by apple4ever (guest, #164280) [Link]

> So.. who do you expect to pay to keep maintaining the software you depend on?

Someone who has reasonable prices. See jccleaver below who already described the problem.

Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

Posted Jun 25, 2023 20:12 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

> If I (or actually, my bosses) had to pay for every system we have, we'd be bankrupt.

What is the value of your systems being inaccessible for a week? Is it more than the cost of licenses for your machines? RedHat also supports popular public clouds with pay-as-you-go model.

So basically, either you pay for support, which is not cheap, but neither is it too expensive; or you accept the risk and go with one of the countless free alternatives (Debian, Ubuntu, Amazon Linux, Fedora, Gentoo, ...)

Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

Posted Jun 26, 2023 20:44 UTC (Mon) by richarson (subscriber, #74226) [Link]

As I said on another post, we have sufficient in-house expertise as to no need supoort most of the time, so we knowingly accept the risks, or better try to mitigate them (e.g. with HA) as much as possible.

The problem is, the main free alternatives that we're using (CentOS/Alma/Rocky) now are at the real risk that RH decides to cut them off.
I don't really think that's what RH wants to do but I'm afraid that it will eventually happend.

I like RHEL-based systems, I'd like to keep using them, but it *is* too expensive for us if we have to pay for all of our servers.