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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."
"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
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?
$ 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
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.
"
AT&ROFLMAO
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?
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.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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.