Nobody panic.

https://queer.party/@Lyude/111089178374415532

Correct, SUSE, the corporation is no longer providing a traditional linux distribution, after the SLE-15 EOL.

openSUSE, which is a community project, and not controlled by SUSE, is currently debating as to whether we have the contributors interested in doing so, and in sufficient numbers, to continue to provide a traditional point release distribution.

Tumbleweed (the rolling release) is not going anywhere. The community has not yet decided if the interest and manpower is there to use the ALP sources provided by SUSE to create A) A traditional linux distribution, akin to what Leap currently is, B) a “Slowroll” version of Tumbleweed, that has a slower release cycle, or C) Nothing at all, because there isn’t the community there to support the development of it.

SUSE != openSUSE

That is indeed the big question, if there’s nobody willing to put in the work, then there’s nothing to release.

Maintaining something like Leap, with the contributor base that has historically existed, isn’t sustainable, long term, especially when the upstream is going in a different direction.

I don’t care about beeper one way or another, but that bloody image with the post, it needs to die in a fire.

No, this doesn’t affect Fedora in any meaningful way. Fedora is upstream of RHEL.

RedHat creates a product called RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) that is a paid support product, mostly targeted at businesses (and things like Academia/Laboratories/etc).

At one point, there was a Wholly seperate product, created outside the RedHat umbrella, called CentOS, that quite literally took the sources of RHEL, removed the RHEL branding, and rebuilt it, allowing folks to “mostly” be able to use RHEL, without paying RedHat for a support contract.

In 2014, the CentOS Project/Product was “purchased” by RedHat, and then in 2020, RedHat decided that CentOS would no longer just be a “rebuilt” RHEL, but instead would become the development space for RHEL, called CentOS Stream. This made many people very unhappy, and they decided to start the Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux projects to provide roughly the same product that prior versions of CentOS had provided.

Additionally (I don’t actually know exactly when), at some point, Oracle started doing basically the same thing that CentOS had been doing, and rebuilding the RHEL sources, and selling it, as “Oracle Linux”

So net effect of what this means, is that RHEL sources will no longer be publicly available at git.centos.org, and will only be available to RedHat customers (i.e. you must have signed up for an account/license with RedHat for RHEL). This may make things more difficult for Rocky, Alma, and Oracle, to provide the same “Bug for Bug” compatible product to RHEL.

Most of what people are upset about, is because they’re willfully misreading the GPL (GNU Public License) which covers an awful lot of the RHEL sources.

The GPL requires that if you distribute software, licensed under the GPL, that you also must provide the folks that you distribute that software to, with the sources you used. It doesn’t specify how you have to provide them, you could make them available for download, you could mail folks a DVD with all the sources on it, (honestly, I think you might be able to just print them all out and send them on dead trees, and still be compliant).

What most of the folks are upset about, is there is a clause within the GPL, that says something about providing the sources “without restriction on redistribution” or some such. And they view that RedHat can choose to terminate your license to RHEL, if you redistribute RHEL sources/software as violating the GPL. But the GPL cannot dictate business relationships. Redhat cannot stop one of their customers from distributing sources that they are licensed to have. But they are well within their legal rights to terminate that license, and provide no further access, if you distribute them. (i.e. you have an RHEL license, and version 1.0 of a library is covered under that license, you redistribute that source, and RedHat must allow that, but they’re under no obligation to continue that business relationship, and provide you continuing access to version 1.1)

That’s a rough rundown on the history. What does this mean for the average linux user? Nothing, really. Unless you happen to use Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, or Oracle Linux. It doesn’t affect Debian, or Ubuntu, or openSUSE, or Arch, or anybody else. RedHat will continue to contribute back upstream to projects like the linux kernel, or GNOME, or what have you, they will continue to sponsor and hire developers, they just will no longer be providing free and open access to the RHEL Sources.

It’s not a question of legality really, but more one of an ethical nature. It sort of depends on you, as to whether or not you’re bothered by RedHat doing this or not.