Should we be wary of Red Hat? : linux

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago

I do not use any Red Hat distributions (not RHEL, not CentOS, not Fedora).

Red Hat is one of the largest contributors to glibc, gcc, GNU utils, systemd, ext4, Btrfs, SELinux, RPM, and GNOME. I generally try to avoid all those. However, I acknowledge that I am a heavy user of Red Hat software.

Red Hat is one of the largest contributors to Xorg, Wayland, Mesa, KVM, libvirt, dbus, podman, Pipewire, Cockpit, NetworkManager, and Flatpak. I use all of those a lot. Oh, and Red Hat has been one of the top 4 contributors to the Linux kernel for something like 20 years now. I use the Linux kernel.

If you want to avoid Red Hat software (something I see people claiming they do from time to time), you have to stay away from all the software listed on this page: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source-program-office/contributions

I am ok if people dislike Red Hat and want to avoid them. I am not a user. I am not a shareholder. However, I find it hard to ignore when people claim that they DO avoid Red Hat when I know that they are knee deep in software written by Red Hat. It also bugs me when people I doubt are contributing any code rant that Red Hat are freeloaders. I do not agree with all of Red Hat's vision for Linux and do not love or all the ways the influence the Linux world. I do acknowledge their contributions and am thankful for the software that I use.

[–] sudo_halt@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Absolutely, we should talk about this more. Red Hat and IBM can swing their dick around and make literally any change they want to Linux. They control a lot of things, like FreeDesktopOrg (how free is that free?)

I am wary of their bullshit. We need to make sure to keep alternatives to big corporate software in case they decide to fuck us over.

Use GPL software, above all else, and remember, if GPL wasn't effective in cutting the corpo hand they wouldn't spread propaganda against it.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Absolutely, we should talk about this more. Red Hat and IBM can swing their dick around and make literally any change they want to Linux. They control a lot of things, like FreeDesktopOrg (how free is that free?)

Well, I guess Freedesktop.org is free because it is free both monetarily and in terms of the "4 freedoms" of the FSF. You are correct though that Red Hat yields an enormous amount of influence. Freedesktop is a great example. Not only is it the basis for Flatpak but with Wayland relying on all the "portals", it is becoming essential and unavoidable for the Linux desktop in general. I think the IBM boogeyman is overplayed. Red Hat is extremely successful financially and I believe IBM knows that messing with Red Hat could kill the golden goose that is laying the golden eggs. To my eyes, IBM seems quite hands off. Red Hat is the way it is as a result of its own corporate agenda. Of course, that all could change at any time.

I am wary of their bullshit. We need to make sure to keep alternatives to big corporate software in case they decide to fuck us over.

In my view, Open Source is perfect defense against the "in case they decide" timeline. For me, the bigger concern is the level of influence and the fact that, like in most areas of humanity, money talks. The vision that Red Hat has for Linux is the journey that we are all on. I think they are generally decent stewards but I do not agree entirely with their vision. I think Systemd, not just the init supervisor but the "manage everything else too" aspect, is a great example. The "our extensions are the platform" nature of glibc and friends is another. My concern about Red Hat is totally different from many of the other complaints about them in that I am worried that they will continue to "collaborate" really well and, in doing so, totally dominate the evolution of the Linux ecosystem.

Use GPL software, above all else, and remember, if GPL wasn’t effective in cutting the corpo hand they wouldn’t spread propaganda against it.

Are you saying that Red Hat "spread propaganda" against the GPL? We live in different worlds. Red Hat is not only one of the biggest GPL supporters but also one of the biggest authors of GPL software. All the software they write is released GPL including tools they originated like systemd, flatpak, libvirt, and cockpit. More importantly, they are not just one of the largest contributors to other important GPL projects (like Linux itself) but often by far the largest contributor. They often employ the project lead or have directors in the "foundation" behind a project. They have tremendous influence over the projects many GPL fans hold dear including GNOME, GCC, Glibc, and the GNU Utils.

Ironically "Use GPL software, above all else" often means being wholly within the core sphere of Red Hat control.

I use Chimera Linux which does not use GNU Utils, GCC, Glibc, or Systemd. I do not use GNOME. I am a bit less directly impacted by the army of people Red Hat has involved in Fedora and GNOME. But a lot of the alternatives to the software listed earlier in this paragraph are Apache, BSD, or MIT licensed. Ironically (or at least I think so) a lot of the people that rail against the evils of Red Hat would also caution against choosing the software I run with the view that their permissive licenses leave me open to "corporate rug pulls" and "commercial control". This has always struck me as quite ironic given the massive corporate dominance of the core "GNU" projects.

People seem to imagine that GPL software is "written by tens of thousands of volunteers". I saw this sentence so many times in Red Hat threads last year. But take glibc as an example. Almost all the glibc project leads have been Red Hat employees. Red Hat has been responsible for well over 50% of the commits (sometimes much higher). It is essentially a Red Hat project. Compare that to musl which is MIT licensed but where no single entity dominates development.

You could say the same for GCC. Red Hat may only have contributed 30% of the commits but the percentage on x86-64 is closer to 70% and the maintainers are Red Hat employees.

If you hate "corporate" software then Clang is your worst nightmare. It is permissively licensed (Apache) and the biggest contributors are Google, Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Intel. I mean, other than Oracle or Meta, how much more evil could we get? But even the largest contributor, Google, is less than a third of the commits. And it is clear that Google is mostly contributing to create a compiler for their own in-house use. They are not trying to "control" the user base or monetize the compiler and it would take a massive shift in strategy by them for this to be a concern.

Anyway, this is not meant to be an argument really. Please think and choose as you wish. However, sometimes I wonder if people have looked at the facts or if we are just projecting things we imagine must be true due to idealogy.

I do think we should be wary of Red Hat. They have a massive amount of control over the Linux ecoysystem. However, I also recognize how much benefit I get from their contributions. And personally, I do not see how the GPL stops them from taking Linux in the wrong direction (my concern). Circling the wagons around glibc and GCC especially looks and feels to me like embracing "big corporate software", not the opposite. Red Hat has made many tens of billions of dollars off GPL software which is why they have always released all their own software as GPL. I really doubt that Red Hat themselves would agree that the GPL is "effective in cutting the corpo hand". But that is not the argument I want to have. It is a point of view that confuses me but that is ok.

Red Hat wants to create a Linux "platform" which does not always look like traditional UNIX and which is a mono-culture in terms of the core software it requires. This is a smart move product wise so I cannot fault them. And I do want the platform to evolve (modernize). However, I would also like the Linux ecosystem to remain more distributed, more modular, and more robust. More free. I do not like technology monocultures. I "try" to avoid chromium, I resist software like systemd (again not even so much the init system part but its expansion into everything else), and I think allowing GNU and Red Hat to "embrace and extend" the POSIX world with incompatible extensions such that gnome only works with systemd which only works with glibc and software only builds with GCC and such are bad things. My "wariness" of Red Hat makes musl and Clang more attractive to me. Of course, I understand, not everybody agrees.

[–] sudo_halt@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think Systemd, not just the init supervisor but the “manage everything else too” aspect, is a great example. The “our extensions are the platform” nature of glibc and friends is another. My concern about Red Hat is totally different from many of the other complaints about them in that I am worried that they will continue to “collaborate” really well and, in doing so, totally dominate the evolution of the Linux ecosystem.

I think so too, thankfully we still have stellar projects like Shepherd, S6, dinit and the venerable OpenRC to rely on. Overall, we still have the necessary competition (and we should support them, even if their license is not ideal).

Are you saying that Red Hat “spread propaganda” against the GPL? We live in different worlds. Red Hat is not only one of the biggest GPL supporters but also one of the biggest authors of GPL software. All the software they write is released GPL including tools they originated like systemd, flatpak, libvirt, and cockpit. More importantly, they are not just one of the largest contributors to other important GPL projects (like Linux itself) but often by far the largest contributor. They often employ the project lead or have directors in the “foundation” behind a project. They have tremendous influence over the projects many GPL fans hold dear including GNOME, GCC, Glibc, and the GNU Utils.

No, this was two different things. As a matter of fact, pretty much the only safeguard we have [against RH] right now is GPL, and IBM started fucking with that the moment they took over (RedHat can apparently decide that releasing sources for packages they make from FOSS software that is literally 100% benefit to them is OK and people who were using their sources are "freeloaders" and they are somehow not???)

Software released under lesser licenses is a rug waiting to be pulled from under the developers or the users. Atleast with GPL, even if we have to deal with the politics of it's authors (hey, nobody said just because something is GPL, it is automatically good) the software itself is safe. With other licenses, even if you agree with the politics of the author, the license itself opens it to different threat aspects.

[All of this is nerd shit anyway. I advice you to use FOSS you agree with even if it's not GPL. I merely say we -must- strive to keep GPL alive and popular to prevent a different type of corporate takeover. Threats are formed in a thousand ways, by motivated and capable actors]

People seem to imagine that GPL software is “written by tens of thousands of volunteers”. I saw this sentence so many times in Red Hat threads last year. But take glibc as an example. Almost all the glibc project leads have been Red Hat employees. Red Hat has been responsible for well over 50% of the commits (sometimes much higher). It is essentially a Red Hat project. Compare that to musl which is MIT licensed but where no single entity dominates development.

IIRC, RedHat hired the developers, so they're RH employees now. I must say, under capitalism we live and under capitalism may we struggle; this was a good move because otherwise GCC would've been fucked into the ground in the old days. I still disagree with making 1 company god, but GCC is definitely much less corpoware than LLVM which is literally a corporate EEE takeover project designed as a weapon against GCC (because GPL didn't let the corpos do their proprietary shit with GCC)

I do think we should be wary of Red Hat. They have a massive amount of control over the Linux ecoysystem. However, I also recognize how much benefit I get from their contributions. And personally, I do not see how the GPL stops them from taking Linux in the wrong direction (my concern). Circling the wagons around glibc and GCC especially looks and feels to me like embracing “big corporate software”, not the opposite. Red Hat has made many tens of billions of dollars off GPL software which is why they have always released all their own software as GPL. I really doubt that Red Hat themselves would agree that the GPL is “effective in cutting the corpo hand”. But that is not the argument I want to have. It is a point of view that confuses me but that is ok.

GPL makes their contributions able to be used as we see fit, and binds them to release their code. Other licenses don't even provide this. We live under capitalism and we must adapt, and GPL is a pretty good tool to even the battlefield.

If tomorrow should Google decide to change the license of their MIT software and fuck off into the sunset, there is little we can do

On that note: NEVER sign a CLA. GPL has shared property for a damn reason.

Red Hat wants to create a Linux “platform” which does not always look like traditional UNIX and which is a mono-culture in terms of the core software it requires. This is a smart move product wise so I cannot fault them. And I do want the platform to evolve (modernize). However, I would also like the Linux ecosystem to remain more distributed, more modular, and more robust. More free. I do not like technology monocultures. I “try” to avoid chromium, I resist software like systemd (again not even so much the init system part but its expansion into everything else), and I think allowing GNU and Red Hat to “embrace and extend” the POSIX world with incompatible extensions such that gnome only works with systemd which only works with glibc and software only builds with GCC and such are bad things. My “wariness” of Red Hat makes musl and Clang more attractive to me. Of course, I understand, not everybody agrees.

I very much agree. I strongly HATE The centralized, anti-unix method of software development (hey, as a developer, I can be opinionated). I also hate how going from one corposphere to the other merely changes the aspects of the threat.

I conclude that we need a new current in GPL software ecosystem. We need to individually put in more work in GPL software so that they may survive. I have plans of my own (I have no less than 4 GPL software in the oven right now); but in the end we need more outreach to motivate people to continue.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 2 points 21 hours ago

First off, while we may disagree on some stuff, let me just say how awesome it is to have a reasonable conversation on the Internet. Thank you for that (and your thoughts).

I look forward to leaning more about the software you are working on. Keep us posted.

[–] gopher@programming.dev 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Red Hat probably contributes to Open Source and Linux more than any other company around. Are they perfect? Of course not, and it's fair and good to discuss and criticise them when warranted. But overall they seem to contribute positively much more than negatively.

How are they "doing its damnedest to consolidate as much power for themselves within the Linux ecosystem." exactly ?

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Amount of contributions doesn't equal quality, mind that. RedHat also does work to sink projects which don't fit their strategy for Linux development, and I want to ask by what right they even have such a strategy and try to impose it upon others.

[–] gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

RedHat also does work to sink projects which don’t fit their strategy for Linux development

I'm interested in any examples you can provide of this

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The way they promoted PulseAudio, SystemD, Gnome 3, now Wayland. All that.

Say, they do almost no development of Xorg, but they don't surrender the control of the project to someone who'd want to. They don't accept PR's, sometimes with responses that the project itself is deprecated or something.

They intentionally keep control, to avoid someone picking it up.

[–] gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The way they promoted PulseAudio, SystemD, Gnome 3, now Wayland. All that.

I agree Gnome 3+ is bad, but we do need modern components and honestly when the next biggest player in these things in Canonical with there NIH / throw it over the fence and like it attitude, I know which I'd prefer. Especially when these components truly are upstream projects, and they do indeed take community contributions.

almost no development of Xorg, but they don’t surrender the control of the project to someone who’d want to.

Yeah the xorg thing is shit for those that feel they still need it, but no one else really had the resources to maintain it. Its critical infrstructure, they can't just hand it off until they're done with it (RH10). Xlibre is happening by one of the biggest community contributors, but honestly it'll end up like KwinFT.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

but no one else really had the resources to maintain it

That's what I'm saying to not be true. Right now the project is controlled by RH, and they are not interested, but also don't leave it. Maybe if this weren't so, we'd see changes.

Its critical infrstructure, they can’t just hand it off until they’re done with it (RH10).

Yes they can, the same way they ship kernels full of backported stuff and patches.

Xlibre is happening by one of the biggest community contributors, but honestly it’ll end up like KwinFT.

The guy is unfortunately accompanying his fork with anti-vaxxer and alt-right statements.

I think Xorg will keep existing. There are a few projects buried many times and still alive, one more.

But RH is intentionally blocking the good things that could have happened without their "leadership" and imposing opinion that it's deprecated and on life support.

[–] gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 1 points 1 day ago

Its not like they're blocking all contributions, if it was more than niche, they wouldnt ignore the needs of other big players. I'm not fully across it, but the BSDs still make more use of xorg and maintain their own trees IIRC.

I really only saw headlines about Xlibre, hadnt followed up on it

[–] Bronstein_Tardigrade@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 day ago

We want our software to be communist, but it is a capitalist world (at present). Navigating in the grey area between the two will always lead to controversy. We're like China, trying to walk a tightrope between the ideal and the practical.

[–] Gobbel2000@programming.dev 23 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Remember that in 2023 RedHat restricted access to the source code of RHEL packages, which had a big impact to lots of server distros. This article explains really well why that's problematic:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

[–] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

unrelated, but I love your profile's display pic haha

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 39 points 3 days ago

Not really

It isn't a black and white thing. Redhat simply exists like anything else. I don't like everything they do but they also fund a ton of research and development. If Fedora ever becomes problematic people will just move. Ubuntu desktop used to be good but after it turned to shit many people moved.

[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 30 points 3 days ago (10 children)

IBM sucks. They have bought up a bunch of small data centers and made them worse.

I'm still pissed about CentOS as well. Long live Rocky.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 33 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Alma is actually a real community distro. They deserve so much more support than Rocky does.

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (8 children)

TIL; though I moved my servers to Debian ... having the ability to sanely upgrade without a reinstall is a major plus.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

Good luck with Debian. Trixie is looking quite nice.

[–] nanook@friendica.eskimo.com 3 points 2 days ago

@Dark_Arc @LeFantome I've had mixed luck with debian in this regard. Bullseye to Bookworm was a smooth upgrade but some of the others have not gone so well.

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Fuck Rocky. They are a leech on open source. They break user agreements to get at Red Hat source and don't contribute upstream. Use Alma, they actually work with the community and contribute upstream.

[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Ok, but why is there even an agreement required to access to source to something, uh, open source?

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The GPL says you can get the source to software that people distribute to you. Red Hat does not distribute to Rocky.

[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 4 points 2 days ago

Seems like they use that to circumvent other parts of the gpl, in spirit and possibly in the letter of the law. Others have more and better things to say about it than I:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/dear-red-hat-are-you-dumb

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (8 children)

Because CIQ, the company that bankrolls Rocky, was poaching Red Hat customers. They were hiring Red Hat sales people, then using their contacts to swoop in and drastically undercut Red Hat because they don't do any engineering. It is an effort to stop leeches like CIQ/Rocky.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

They were hiring Red Hat sales people, then using their contacts to swoop in and drastically undercut Red Hat because they don't do any engineering.

There's an easy solution to that. RedHat could just pay their salespeople what they are worth and keep them at RedHat.

load more comments (7 replies)

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments (8 replies)

[–] sudo@programming.dev 17 points 3 days ago

Yeah but its pretty easy to avoid them. They survive on government contracts not community support. There's lots of better alternatives than Fedora.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm all for Linux distributions run and owned by the community. With those we don't have to be afreaid of weird business decisions. Debian is a good example, and very democratic. But I believe several other distros are maintained by a community as well, including Arch, NixOS...

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Fedora is also community operated. Although there's a bit of an informal understanding between RedHat and Fedora to work together.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I didn't know that. Wikipedia says it's only 35% of contributors who are employed by RedHat. But isn't governance split equally between the community and RedHat? So it's not entirely independent, but more a mix?!

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago

They make you sign into their support portal to view most of their documentation and download most of their software. That right there is a deal breaker for me because it violates the spirit of open source.

[–] not3ottersinacoat@lemmy.ca 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

I'm wary of them and I refuse to use Fedora (because it's basically their testing bed) due to their support of the US military, in addition to the reasons you've mentioned. Also, I'm trying my damnedest to #BoycottUSA

I prefer LMDE. It doesn't check all my wants, but it finds a great balance and I don't feel like an unpaid tester.

[–] gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 0 points 1 day ago

I refuse to use Fedora (because it’s basically their testing bed)

interesting take

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (19 children)

It definitely makes me suspicious, considering they're a standard 'money above all else' company (though they're better at playing the long game than some other companies) operating in a fascist state. They don't seem to abuse their power much, yet, but that can change rather quickly.

I do think there are quite a few linux users and developers who are suspicious of Red Hat, they are a small-ish but pretty vocal minority. Suspicion of Red Hat was a major reason why systemd was so controversial.

load more comments (19 replies)