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Comment by gigatexal | Hacker News Reader

Lol no. This is a wholly disingeneous move.

"[SuSe] ... announced it is forking publicly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and will develop and maintain a RHEL-compatible distribution available to all without restrictions."

How will they confirm that their fork is compatible? Probably using RedHat supplied UBI docker/container images. So they're just becoming another add-no-value clone. Wow, give whoever came up with this idea a nobel peace prize.

Instead they could focus on their own offerings which add value/different value propositions than just being a clone of RHEL. I can't believe folks would be okay with companies coming in and undercutting your validation work -- even if you see RHEL as anachronistic and obsolete in teh world of containers and such it still has value for some folks for its RHEL-ness -- and then coming in and selling clones undercutting support and other licensing/revenue streams to pay for the QA/R&D/devel, etc.

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> How will they confirm that they're fork is compatible?

The only thing they need to ensure right now is that their stable release remains compatible to existing RHEL. Everything needed for that is around.

Going forward, maybe "RHEL v+1 compatible" doesn't even matter anymore (to quote that press release: "CIQ is thrilled to collaborate with SUSE on advancing an open enterprise Linux standard.") RHEL became the defacto "Enterprise Linux" because everybody willingly handed them the control over the direction Enterprise Linux takes (including, but not limited to, by merely repackaging their work).

As long as that new community system (Rocky intends to work with SUSE according to that article) remains RHEL9.2 compatible, they might be able to force IBM to adopt the community's idea of an Enterprise Linux for future RHEL releases. Keeping some "RHEL9.2 mode" around indefinitely (next to a further developed platform for contemporary workloads) is relatively simple with containers and the like.

IBM might have just killed the one thing that kept RedHat dominant in that space: the goodwill of nearly everybody else to let RedHat lead and not rock the boat too much themselves.

I’m not saying it’s the best business model just saying that all these companies are undercutting RedHat out of spite/business. Oh well.

RedHat should take this opportunity to pivot and do something else. Holding on to licensing is dying especially in the world of clones.

pivot to what?

i may be completely wrong on this (and i hope i am wrong) but i have the impression that licensing is the only thing really profitable in the corporate world. i believe support only works if it is combined with licensing because the margins are much lower otherwise. red hat could not pay for all the engineers they have now on support contracts alone.

Could be. It very well could be that the whole RH model dies with the success of clones. I was more-or-less just spitballing. But what are they to do? I guess double down? And try to increase their value add but then if it comes from software quality or their QA/validation that goes into making RHEL the clones will get it for free too

i don't think the clones themselves are the problem, but the commercial support available for clones is taking away business from red hat, and that is where the conflict lies.

in a way it is actually a similar problem with amazon and the like offering commercial support for databases.

that is an inherent problem in the FOSS model. on one hand it is great that anyone can offer support for any FOSS software, but when big companies offer that support without giving back to the projects themselves they are undermining the sustainability of the projects.

but i don't have a clue how to solve that, other than everyone just being more considerate and not take advantage of the developers.

Same i've no clue how to solve FOSS funding

> "i don't think the clones themselves are the problem, but the commercial support available for clones is taking away business from red hat, and that is where the conflict lies."

exactly what i mean when I say 0-value-added-clones because they then turn around and sell support on the clones which seems seemingly unethical to me somehow -- though i am still working through that thought process.

I would not want to be RedHat here actually. It's a tough situation.

0-value-added-clones

most of the clones themselves are not selling support, at least not at the scale that would be a problem for redhat. clones do add value because they allow small companies to use a version of RHEL without having to pay for license/support they can't afford. when these companies grow they then can become red hat customers.

at least that was my understanding of the goals behind centos and also why redhat took it on and made it part of their products.

the problem is not all third-party support, but only companies that compete for large corporate contracts like oracle.

when a company hires me to install centos or some other clone for them, and then calls me when there are issues with their servers, then technically i am selling support on clones. but i very much doubt that in that case i am taking away business from redhat. heck, most likely i would have been the one who recommended centos to them, when i could have recommended debian as well. these companies come to me because they trust me, not because i am selling them a big brand on the cheap.

I can see that as a valuable pre-sale sort of approach... hmm I think my hard-and-fast stance is changing.

>all these companies are undercutting RedHat out of spite/business

Undercutting a competitor for your "business" [interests] is business 101.

And RH deserves all the spite it can get too.

RedHat also built their business on the backs of other peoples work, sure they make contributions back but I’m sure they’re minuscule when compared to profit. They read, understood and accepted licences for the products they on-sell and are now throwing their toys out of the pram when the free market does what it was always inevitably going to do with their in-house tech.

> but I’m sure they’re minuscule when compared to profit.

how can you be so sure? Do you have insights on Red Hat finance we don't know about?

They were publically traded till 2019 so thier finances were known. Having said that RH have and do contribute huge amounts.

Well, nobody's stopping IBM from retaliating by offering a SUSE clone :)

Funny but how does that help the community or businesses adopt Linux really?

Is that a trick question? Multiple suppliers of binary compatible releases; no fragmentation whatsoever, just more supply. How could that not help?

Totally agree, that was my first impression after reading. If anything, it seems antagonistic and petty. I mean, why would you not just focus on your own product rather than put resources towards this strange 'Look we're helping! Red Hat Bad!' stance that offers no value to anyone.

SUSE has customers with mixed-distro deployments that were supported by SUSE Liberty Linux. Those customers might have had questions about what happens now. This seems to be one part of the answer.

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