Iranian computer network engineering MsC. He/Him. FOSS developer, strong believer in GPL. ProleWiki editor (Maintainer of the Persian instance).

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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: April 8th, 2024
  • sudo_halt@lemmygrad.mltoLinux@programming.dev•Should we be wary of Red Hat?
    1·
    11 days ago

    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.