Red Hat Stops Shipping Kernel Changes as Patches

mvar writes to point out a report from h-online about the Red Hat kernel source controversy. From the article: "Red Hat has changed the way it ships the source code for the Linux kernel. Previously, it was released as a standard kernel with a collection of patches which could be applied to create the source code of the kernel Red Hat used. Now though, the company ships a tarball of the source code with the patches already applied. This change, noted by Maxillian Attems and LWN.net, appears to be aimed at Oracle, who like others, repackage Red Hat's source as the basis for its Unbreakable Linux. Although targeted at Oracle, the changes will make work harder for distributions such as CentOS."

Comments

I don't see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they stop shipping diff too?

Re:I don't see the problem

[Josh Triplett]

You can obviously find out the overall difference, but now Red Hat no longer provides either a git tree or split-out patches for each change, which makes it harder to figure out what individual changes they've made to the kernel.

Re:I don't see the problem

[Tubal-Cain]

Meh, you're probably right. I think someone here posted something from CentOS saying it wasn't a big deal for them.

Re:I don't see the problem

[Improv]

Redhat repackages projects from all over the community to make its OS, adding in their own contributions and doing QA. It's not entirely theirs. They know that lone geeks and smaller shops are not their revenue source; they'll get most of their funds from larger businesses that in another world would be Solaris or HP-UX users.

It's not a "cheap knockoff" or "hacked" when all that's changed is to swap out some logos and stuff. Redhat's efforts only work because they coexist with the community that writes the software. If this is "slowly killing the company", it's been dying from its birth. It has survived so far in this environment, in symbiosis with everyone else. Sure, it's different than how things work in other parts of the industry, but that doesn't make it broken.

Linux companies are not a baseball team, and they're not individually meant to grow into huge empires. They're based, in the end, on broad efforts of the community. When they can make a moderate profit and push Linux, great! However, it's in our interest that should they ever misbehave, they can be shunned and will feel pain or die. They should be wearing our leash, not the other way around. If you like wearing the leash of some commercial software company, go for it.

Re:I don't see the problem

[internettoughguy]

30% of all webservers? Sheesh, and folks wonder why Linux never gets anywhere. I mean here you have a company that sinks serious money into R&D and improvements to the ENTIRE Linux ecosystem, yet because there are so many Linux users that are "free as in beer!" you'd rather run your network on a hacked copy and risk getting screwed, like when CentOS nearly went tits up, than to actually spend a buck and help pay for your own OSes improvements by supporting the company making those improvements.

I'm sure I'll be modded down for daring to point out this sad little bit of reality, but you want to know why Linux is a blip on the map? Here you go. Companies rightfully see there is no money in Linux because FOSSies will go to great lengths not to pay even when it ultimately hurts themselves. Think RH did this change for fun? Nope, it is because you and so many others are slowly killing the company by refusing to buy the product but you want the fruits of their labor anyway.

Say what you want but THIS, this right here, is why the proprietary model wins out over the FOSS model. It is because companies that make good popular products actually get increased capital they can use to grow and expand, whereas with FOSS three minutes after it comes out someone is copying the code to make a cheap knockoff just to get out of paying. Kinda sad actually.

What a pointless, and trollish diatribe, the whole point of the Red Hat business model is that you don't really buy RHEL, you buy a RHEL support contract. People using CentOS are no different from people using debian, or any other "free as in beer" distro.

Whether Red Hat's business model is sustainable is up for debate, but at least they don't depend on statist copyright policies and software patents.

Incorrect news is incorrect.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Although targeted at Oracle, the changes will make work harder for distributions such as CentOS."

That's not what CENTOS says.

"This description is accurate. However, as pointed out multiple times by now, it does not affect rebuilding of the kernel itself. The CentOS kernel is just a rebuild, so there is no problem there. In the case of the centosplus kernel, because it may add patches, some extra steps might be needed. But again, that is not a major issue."

https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=29147&start=280

Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw those asshats at oracle who have the nerve to package up rhel and call it their own. Even worse their idiot sales reps go around promoting it as the only thing that will run their db. All they contribute to open source is FUD.

Re:Good for them

[Lumpy]

And it makes it easier to put in code that detects if it's an oracle repackage and spew out "ORACLE SUCKS" on the text console and in the logs.

Re:Good for them

[rubycodez]

but Oracle implies their products run *well* only on Oracle Linux. (from oracle.com) Oracle Linux combined with Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel brings the latest Linux innovations to market, delivering extreme performance, advanced scalability, and reliability for enterprise applications. The combination is: * Fast—Delivers more than 75 percent performance gain in OLTP performance tests over a Red Hat 5 Compatible Kernel; 200 percent speedup of Infiniband messaging; 137 percent faster solid state disk access * Modern—Optimized for large servers; improved power management and energy efficiency; fine grained CPU and memory resource control; derived from the stable 2.6.32 mainline Linux kernel * Reliable—Supports the Data Integrity Extensions and T10 Protection Information Model, improves application uptime * Optimized for Oracle—Built and tested to run Oracle hardware, databases, and middleware. Recommended for all enterprise applications

CentOS Impact?

[burnin1965]

Since CentOS is basically removing trademarks and recompiling how exactly does this make their work more difficult? Does CentOS not ship the same kernel as Red Hat by using Red Hat source? Wont CentOS simply compile the pre-patched source from the tarball and be good to go?

Re:CentOS Impact?

[thatseattleguy]

Mod parent up - it's correct.

The article is completely wrong in relation to CentOS (which aims for 100% binary compatibility to RH). AFAIK, they don't care which patches were applied by RH because they're duplicating the kernel down to the last byte. As you say, they'll just compile the tarball and off she goes.

The article is correct as far as an entity like Oracle is concerned, which aims to put in its own additions and "improvements".

I'm of two minds about whether RH is evil or prudent to do this, but on balance I've got no lost love for Larry Ellison, so I give RH the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Re:CentOS Impact?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Wont CentOS simply compile the pre-patched source from the tarball and be good to go?

Yes, CentOS will be fine. There's been some interesting discussion on the CentOS-devel list lately about how CentOS is positioning itself w/r/t Redhat. They're reluctant to share an automated build process with the community (so the process can be independently verified) because that would help Redhat's competition (seemingly Oracle). The trouble is, it also slows progress (no CentOS 6 builds yet) and makes forks difficult (something that ought to be encouraged, if needed, in the Open Source ethos).

The CentOS team does awesome work, but it's a tricky situation they're in.

Re:CentOS Impact?

[nettdata]

The Oracle improvements, for the most part, are actually kernel level modules and services that provide the required functionality to facilitate their database clusters. They basically provide the inter-node communication and shared block access management services among other things.

I'm a long-time Oracle DBA, and could care less about this little war. I just know that it pays the bills.

Re:CentOS Impact?

[burnin1965]

The CentOS team does awesome work, but it's a tricky situation they're in.

Agreed, and I hope my comment did not make it sound like the CentOS team has an easy job. I am not in a position right now to pay for a full blown Red Hat Network license for home use so I've been using Fedora and CentOS since Red Hat dropped the $60 / year RHN subscriptions. I am very appreciative of the work the CentOS team does.

But I also think it is a big mis-representation to put what Oracle is doing into the same realm as what CentOS does. Ellison has publicly stated that he believes the value of the open source community is to be plundered but you don't put your own good work in the open source arena because your competitors will get it. CentOS on the other hand is part of the open source community.

I think it is also important to point out the tricky position that Red Hat is in. CentOS and other rely on Red Hat and Red Hat is a business that needs to profit from their operations to remain viable. I know for a fact, in speaking with sysadmins I know, that there are many companies who utilize Red Hat's software but do not pay the required Red Hat Network licensing but at the same time spend millions on Microsoft and Oracle licensing. I like to think that Red Hat can remain as open and giving as possible and people will reward them with honest business, unfortunately that is not the case and the intentions of companies like Oracle have been stated bluntly by their CEO.

So yes, tricky situations for Red Hat and CentOS and a lot of outstanding work by both that is valuable to many individuals, corporate organizations, and governments.

diff(1)

[LizardKing]

$ tar xzvf linux-2.6.nn.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf linux-redhat-2.6.nn-02.tar.gz
$ diff -Naur linux-2.6.nn linux-2.6.nn-02 > redhat-02.patch
$ diff -U redhat-01.patch redhat-02.patch | more

Re:diff(1)

[Kjella]

That'll give you one giant patch of everything Red Hat has done. Now, what changes in what files go together and implement a patch? The point would be to look at the patches one by one to see they've been applied, and now if you want to do this you must break it down yourself.

Re:diff(1)

[idontgno]

All the changes go together and implement one big patch. What "patch identifiers" RH used in their own patching process are is irrelevant as it gets.

Since the objective is a kernel identical to RH's, there's no need to obsessively worry about which of RH's patches were applied or not, because the correct answer is "all of them".

This approach has absolutely no downside as long as RH continues to honor their GPL obligations and actually releases all code changes, whether by diff or full source.

Re:diff(1)

[GooberToo]

You wouldn't have a patch down to the individual features but you'd have a patch set thats alot smaller and enumerable.

Smaller yes - but not really enumerable. Five changed lines may represent eight different bugs and fixes. And as the patch holder, now all you now is that one or more bugs have been addressed by those five changes. You have no idea those fives changes actually address eight different bugs because all you have is the aggregate of all those changes.

You're trivializing the issue by a lot. The issue is manageable but without a doubt, granularity has been lost. The exact effect on all other consumers of Red Hat's work likely isn't completely understood at this point.

Re:diff(1)

[ePhil_One]

Selective patching for reasons other than "you don't necessarily want to consume all of those fixes" I could understand, if I were to stipulate the hypothetical that some of the "fixes" aren't really "bug fixes" but optional enhancements. But really, in RH's kernel history, I can't remember very many of those (actually, I can't remember any).

Sometimes things aren't as simple as broken/not broken. Sometimes its fixed for some edge cases at a cost of slowdowns on all systems. Sometimes its removed functionality to prevent a security issue that may be irrelevant to me. You need to be very careful extending the particular "I've never had a problem" to the universal "No one has ever had a problem"

I long ago forgot the original issue, but I definitely recall having to build a custom kernel RPM package every time we decided to adopt the latest kernel fixes for our server farm to undo some "fix" Red Hat had installed that worked great in the majority of cases but broke badly in our environment; it was also obvious from the Bugzilla reports that we weren't the only ones and that Red Hat knew of the issue and were choosing not to undo it because they felt their fix helped more people than it hurt

Re:CentOS

[del_diablo]

Considering that RedHat sells premium support, I don't see the problem.

Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

It also makes life much harder for us downstream engineers who actually have to troubleshoot problems in the Redhat kernel. More often than not, it's a vendor-applied patch responsible for creating the problem in the first place. Now I guess it's up to Redhat Support to come up with a solution, which often reads "in 3 major versions time, if ever"

Re:CentOS

[Linker3000]

I have put on my 'not sure if serious' face as I am not sure if you are trolling or just ignorant of the situation, but rather than give my perspective, have a read from an earlier Slashdot thread on the subject titled "Is CentOS hurting Red Hat?":

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/11/04/1331247/Is-CentOS-Hurting-Red-Hat

""I'm pretty sure RedHat hate CentOS."

1. No, we don't. At least, not most of us -- because most of us actually *understand* the business we're in. That's why we're making all this nice money. If we did hate CentOS, we could make it awfully difficult for them in any number of ways -- delaying updates, hiding marks and making them play "where's Waldo" every release, that sort of thing.

2. The "coy mumbo jumbo" about the upstream vendor has to do with trademark protection, not hate. We don't want "Red Hat" to turn into "Kleenex".

3. Here's a question: why is there no CentOS equivalent based on SuSE products? Think about it.

4. A lot of the significant people in the CentOS community are actually important and respected members of the Fedora community as well. That way, Red Hat benefits from the work of the more savvy CentOS users. That's how open source works, you see.
"

Karma

[mounthood]

Oracle wants to obey the GPL license for Java, but not the spirit of the GPL. As you sow, so shall you reap.

Re:CentOS

[bsDaemon]

But Fedora isn't a free version of RHEL. It's a test bed for things which may or may not feed into RHEL at a later date. I miss the days of the RedHat box sets. Those were pretty quality. Fedora always seems broken in some way to me.

Re:diff

[FunkyELF]

Yeah.... a lot

You could use diff and get a single patch.... no way to then divide it into the many patches that make up the whole

The problematic issues arise if...

[gwolf]

Precisely CENTOS is not going to be bit by this. The problems arise if you try to take RedHat's patches and apply them in other distributions (Attems is in the Debian kernel team, so he is among the most affected people), or if you are among the breed of people still patching and rolling their own kernels.

So far, off-the-mainlain Linux kernel development has been a collaborative effort with people from different backgrounds joining in. Of course, RedHat –as a business– has to keep a competitive advantage. And that advantage can stem from saying here is a megapatch with all of our improvements, with no distinction between feature lines, with no documentation on what does what besides the code itself".

I understand their point, but am deeply saddened by it. And yes, it is legal and sound, although goes against _collective_ Linux state-of-the-art advancement, beyond each company's interests.

Re:Smart move by Red Hat

[Desler]

Red Hat is doing more heavy lifting than anyone else, but organizations like Oracle and CentOS are leeching off of Red Hat's hard work.

Boohoo? If you don't want people to leech your work then why would you release it under a license that specifically allows that?

They are absolutely meeting the requirements of the GPL.

And so are the people you claim are "leeching" off of Red Hat.

If these other organizations like Oracle and CentOS were saying "we're going to fork what Red Hat has done and come up with something different because we think we can do it better," like Mandrake did, that would be one thing. But Oracle and CentOS both pretty much have the same message: "we're going to take all the hard work that Red Hat has paid for, claim that ours is just like theirs, but make sure that Red Hat doesn't get paid for it."

But if they aren't violating the GPL, so what? You've basically constructed a double standard where it's okay for one party to use GPLed code however they want within the bounds of the license but yet you come back and whine about others who are doing the exact same thing. Once again, if you don't want people to use your code this way, why would you release it under a license that was specifically worded in order to allow this?

Re:Orachole is run by idiots

[judeancodersfront]

So it's ok to not honor the spirit on the basis that one of your competitors is doing the same thing? I think following the GPL is the important part and all this spirit talk is just bitterness at Oracle.

Re:diff

[robthebloke]

Nope, you summarised the problem very succinctly. You can't get patches from a diff, you can only get a patch....

Re:diff

[repetty]

Maybe they could use a computer to speed that process up.

Re:diff

[zill]

Question 6.

A + B + C + D = F

You are given the values of A and F. Find B, C, and D.

Re:CentOS

[ePhil_One]

RedHat exercises the GNU freedom by selling for money a distribution consisting mostly of free programs made by others.

For the record, RedHat is selling support for a distribution they have engineered. They aren't selling the distribution, except possibly a "media charge", year 1 to obtain the support and year 2 to maintain the support are the same price.

CentOS does not offer any support beyond the standard Open Source model of chat boards, bugzilla, etc. As a general rule, when I introduce Linux to a company with a small unsupported project, I bring in CentOS, not Fedora, because I know if it takes off we'll be bringing in RHEL 9 times out of 10 when the company decides they want/need support. That way, there is pretty much zero retraining of the staff that needs to happen.

So what?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Red Hat's job isn't to make things easier for CentOS, or Oracle for that matter - how is that even relevant? Red Hat isn't doing anything that's disallowed by the GPL. They're not even doing anything that could be reasonably interpreted as "contrary to the spirit of the GPL".

They're still releasing the source. They're still paying their coders to do substantial work on the kernel. How big of a twit do you have to be to complain about how they release their kernel updates?

Re:CentOS

[Improv]

Haven't made serious inroads against Apple and Microsoft? We're kicking their tukkas. With any luck, in the long run we're going to make mainstream commercial software a thing of the past.

Redhat's developers are skilled, fine people, but Redhat gets most of the code it ships from the opensource community, not their own people. Linux (and the BSDs) is a community, and the relationship between the vendors, the developers, and the users is not as simple as you'd think.