"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 3, 2023 19:13 UTC (Fri) by aklaver (guest, #62352)
In reply to: "technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own by pizza
Parent article: OpenELA's first code drop

https://openela.org/about/

Our Mission:

To establish and make accessible the sources, tooling, and assets to all members, collaborators, and the open source Enterprise Linux distribution developers to create and maintain 1:1 downstream derivatives of EL
To allow and encourage contributions and enhancements from the upstream community in the form of “extras”
To always act in the best interests of the open source community and all downstream derivatives
To create an inclusive community of organizations and individuals to ensure the longevity, stability, and management of this project

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 3, 2023 19:26 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (10 responses)

That mission statement is all fine and dandy, but the only aspect that a "technical steering committee" could have any influence over is the tooling, and even that will be 99% identical to CentOS's tooling. [1]

Sure, they _could_ scrap all of the existing CentOS tooling, but... why? It would be a ton of work, and all they would accomplish along the way would be to (greatly) increase the risk of divergence from upstream 1:1 binary+bug compatibility, which... again, is the entire point of OpenELA.

Again, there are no "technical steering" decisions to be made in a project whose sole mission is to be a (zero-cost) 1:1 downstream derivative of someone else's technical/engineering decisions.

[1] Essentially perform a 1:1 clone of the completely-open CentOS tooling, replace dist-git with their own, s/CentOS/OpenELA/g, hit rebuild.

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 3, 2023 19:49 UTC (Fri) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link] (7 responses)

I thought they were OK with diverging from RHEL if necessary, creating their own Enterprise Linux standard? Seems like that is the way things will have to be with RH being increasingly closed with their sources.

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 3, 2023 20:07 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (6 responses)

> Seems like that is the way things will have to be with RH being increasingly closed with their sources.

Red Hat is currently just as open with their sources as SuSE and Canonical, and all fully comply with the letter and spirit of the GPL. Why the selective outrage?

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 3, 2023 20:24 UTC (Fri) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (5 responses)

Do Canonical or SUSE use blackmail to work around the GPL ? Is it in the spirit of the licence ?

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 3, 2023 22:06 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (4 responses)

SuSE's current turms and conditions, section 5.4:

"... You may not: (a) use any Subscription Offering or SUSE Product for the benefit, directly or indirectly, of any third party, which includes making the Subscription Offering or SUSE Product available as part of any product or service that is sold, leased, rented or otherwise made available by You; (b) allow a third party to use or access, directly or indirectly, or otherwise benefit from, any of Your Subscription Offerings or SUSE Products; or (c) assign or transfer the Subscription Offering to any third party."

This is materially identical to the language in RHEL's agreement.

Canonical's agreements are a bit more tangled, but their "ubuntu pro personal agreement" section 3, includes this text:

"You must not use the software made available through the Service for more than the entitled number of physical or virtual Ubuntu systems except as otherwise agreed, nor resell or attempt to resell the Services"

The non-personal Pro terms include similar language to the above in section 5.1, but adds a lot more, incluidng section 12.3 -- "There are no intended third party beneficiaries to this Agreement. " and references a UK law that I can't be bothered to look up.

So there's arguably a bit of wiggle room such that you can technically give it all away gratis to third parties, but it appears to be the same sort of "you can only use the services on the number of systems licensed, and don't let third parties get the benefit of the subscription" spirit as SuSE and RHEL."

Meanwhile, neither Canonical or SuSE provide source code for their extended releases (ie >5yr after initial release) to non-subscribers (ie just like Red Hat) and all three reserve the right to terminate the agreement at any time, for any reason.

So, yeah. Why does everyone else get a free pass for essentially the same behavior, especially when they've been doing it for much longer?

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 4, 2023 12:35 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (3 responses)

Ah so you meant "Red Hat is currently just as closed with their sources as SuSE and Canonical".
Thanks for clearing that up.

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 4, 2023 13:29 UTC (Sat) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link] (2 responses)

I can't see how you insist on conflating *source code access* with a *support contact*.

The two are - and rightly so - completely independent of each other.

And the GPL *expressly" separates them.

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 4, 2023 15:47 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (1 responses)

We did already had this discussion, no need for a repeat here.

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 4, 2023 17:29 UTC (Sat) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link]

And you still don't see the obvious difference?

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 3, 2023 21:07 UTC (Fri) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

I didn't see a kernel package there. Did I miss anything?

Neither the original one, nor any Oracle "Unbreakable" kernel one.

"technical steering committee" for a project that does no engineering of their own

Posted Nov 4, 2023 16:40 UTC (Sat) by zuki (subscriber, #41808) [Link]

Also no "systemd".