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

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

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.
"

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: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.