Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model [LWN.net]

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 24, 2023 15:49 UTC (Sat) by mcatanzaro (subscriber, #93033)
In reply to: Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model by geofft
Parent article: Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

I work for Red Hat. No, there are in fact private branches. RHEL is not released from CentOS Stream. Think of CentOS Stream as like Fedora rawhide, but for RHEL. Stable Fedoras branch from rawhide just like stable RHELs branch from CentOS Stream.

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Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 24, 2023 16:19 UTC (Sat) by spmfox (subscriber, #125241) [Link] (2 responses)

In your opinion, is stream "stable" for production-like environments? Or, because it's similar to rawhide, is it possible for some serious bugs to make it in - even if they are short lived?

An example would be the recent XFS corruption bug. Is it possible something like this could make it into stream even for a few days?

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 25, 2023 7:29 UTC (Sun) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link] (1 responses)

It's pretty good, I would have no problem using it for a small server. The kernel backports lag about 3 months and that usually gives enough time to find bugs and fix them. There's comprehensive CI and manual testing done before every commit (that was a multi-year effort prior to the announcement of CentOS Stream, and a requirement to make it viable). Especially rebases aren't done lightheartedly, even though they don't require all the red tape that was needed in the RHEL5/6 days.

The main issue of Stream is that it tells you what will be in RHEL, not what is on your *current* production machines that hypothetically run RHEL. That ironically makes it a better OS for production environments than for testing environments, in my opinion.

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 25, 2023 12:27 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> The main issue of Stream is that it tells you what will be in RHEL, not what is on your *current* production machines that hypothetically run RHEL. That ironically makes it a better OS for production environments than for testing environments, in my opinion.

Exactly. Despite all of the bits spilled about this, Stream is genuinely a better production environment for every use case [1] that doesn't *explicitly* require a specific RHEL point release. Those that have such strict requirements are brittle to the point where you won't/can't update beyond said point release without vendor approval, which makes even the old CentOS model (and what the current "free rebuilds" are still doing) a non-starter as once version N.M is released, updates for N.M-1 ceased.

(If you genuinely need bug-for-bug compatibility with a specific RHEL point release, the incremental cost for that license is going to be a rounding error on your other SW licensing/support costs. Please, prove me wrong.)

[1] Anectdotally, this applied to every environment I've deployed a CentOS installation, going back well over a decade.