I know reading is hard, but the Rocky Linux project and SUSE have not teamed up. That is an entirely CIQ endeavor. The project's blog post from some time ago also explains the two avenues they're going down for their clone.
P.S. for other commenters. A fork is NOT a distro. If someone forks a project (as the shape of a fork implies), they go their own way. So if Oracle and SUSE fork RHEL, good luck on standardizing "enterprise" Linux.
I think you misread the post. He's clearly saying that he doesn't understand how the conclusion was drawn that there was anything shady going on. Willing to bet that the RESF builds rocky linux and CIQ does all the "shady" business dealings, which is out of their control.
He does not develop it whatsoever. Really all he does is talk, so basically zero development value. He certainly likes to take credit though for all the work all of rocky's volunteers do.
Yes, Gregory Kurtzer personally helped in development (primarily the packaging / tools during 8.3 and then 8.4). I know, I was there lol. For example, see the commit log to the early set of Rocky Linux devtools:
"All he does is talk" is unfairly dismissive. We all have our roles, and Greg's is not release engineering.
The "taking credit" bit is an unfortunate misconception, media likes to attribute the entire project to gmk since he's a notable personality, but he himself does not.
>For example, see the commit log to the early set of Rocky Linux devtools
And that's literally it. After that... Nothing. Not surprising.
>"All he does is talk" is unfairly dismissive.
Funny because he's the only one ever mentioned or talked to in any article. It'd be nice to hear from the actual developers and not a figure head. Notice how it's only him? His role is to talk. His other company is also there to take credit, thanks to him and the media. We can blame the media all we want, but the reality is he basks in the spotlight. If that's his actual role he's doing it well.
I certainly hope your upcoming board didn't drink his koolaid and keeps him out.
I do try to ensure that others are always getting credit, I'm not even mentioned in the release notes of who did the work.
And the board doesn't keep people out. If you read the bylaws and charter, you would know that it is all contributing members of the projects that will vote for the board members, and the board will elect the officers of the organization.
You are obviously not an RESF Member and I trust the Members of the projects to make the best decision for the RESF and Projects. If I am among them, cool, I will always do my best job there. If not, I will support the decision and enjoy knowing that the structure that I helped to create, is working, and will keep the project open, free, and in the community for decades to come.
Last point, it isn't cool to discredit non-technical contributions, every role in an open source project is important.
>And the board doesn't keep people out. If you read the bylaws and charter, you would know that it is all contributing members of the projects that will vote for the board members
Good to know, I forgot how voting works. I hope they do right by the community and not vote you anywhere near the officers of the org. In your words, that means the structure will be working. But that requires faith that there are members who didn't drink your koolaid.
>Last point, it isn't cool to discredit non-technical contributions, every role in an open source project is important.
You're right, advertising your company CIQ using Rocky Linux is definitely up there in important open source contributions. I forgot about that small point.
It's just like with any distribution, each have their own philosophies and how they want to tackle something. Oracle Linux is still around for example, but we don't talk about them too often.
Rocky seems to have mostly volunteers. Alma has people who are likely paid because they come from or likely still work for CloudLinux. Either way, you're getting a RHEL clone if you go with either. And that is keeping in mind that devs are a finite resource and always will be, regardless of how you look at it.
The thing to keep in mind is that more choices are better than just having one. Think about it, let's say Scientific Linux actually made an 8. CentOS users would've likely gone over to them instead at the EOL date. Since SL didn't keep going, there was only CentOS (and Oracle Linux, but again no one really wants to talk about that - and there are folks who will avoid oracle like the plague; I don't blame them). You take away the one distribution a large amount of folks used and where are they going to go? Stream? Fermilab/CERN were going to stream and... not anymore. Perhaps the bugs and instability were a bit too much.
The long story short of it is, you don't want another situation like CentOS. More options, the better. All EL derivatives/clones should all operate and work the same.
> The thing to keep in mind is that more choices are better than just having one.
I disagree that this is universally true. If (as it seems) Rocky and Alma have similar philosophies then significant dev resources are being duplicated, at the expense of other functionality.
> Fermilab/CERN were going to stream and... not anymore. Perhaps the bugs and instability were a bit too much.
Not exactly. CentOS Stream is still a standard offering for them, and they've told me they are pretty happy with the stability and getting faster bug fixes. The problem is that too many third party vendors are refusing to keep their software compatible with CentOS Stream, so the environments that depend on those vendor's software must stay pinned to RHEL or a RHEL clone. It's unfortunate because if those vendors also targeted CentOS Stream they would be compatible with new RHEL minor releases on day 1, rather than forcing their users to pin to older minor versions while they play catch up.
Rocky made it clear they have a new build system which lead to their delay. I think it's called peridot. I would imagine that it's not easy to start fresh in two places at once. Alma has an advantage with a process from CloudLinux already in place and now they've rebranded that build system as Alma and so on. Credit to Alma for keeping up and doing their thing; hopefully they'll be fully decoupled from CL in the future.
CentOS had historically fell behind in release times, but we all of a sudden want to paint others in a bad light for being behind. Did everyone forget about CentOS 7 having average of 30 days delay behind each point release? 7.4 being the most at 43 days. What about CentOS 6.0, with 242 days?
As for their behavior, it takes two to tango. I usually like to thank carlwshill and "conan_kudo" (who should pick a better name since he thinks he's from the anime his picture is from) for being true stars in the open source community and really bringing out not only the best in others, but the best in themselves day in and day out. I'm not sure how anyone can put up with them, regardless of which community you're in (CentOS/Fedora EPEL/others), but who am I to judge, I'm just a user.
There's a difference between a community backed effort vs a CEO of a small company that wants to throw $1M at something. Considering a community would do it for free, I'm under the impression that the CEO just wants to make money.
I view the risk differently: A community is self-supporting and contributors are equal.
If one entity throws 1M/yr onto it, they could suddenly stop and the contributors go away and no other contributors can take over as they never were equals ...
(And yes, it's more complicated, first case can also lose key contributors who have keys etc.)
