Oh, sorry guys, I think I have a tension headache. And it might be due to the fact that Red Hat is causing a lot of tension in the Linux community. We have a lot to talk about. (upbeat music) Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to Learn Linux TV. In today's video, we're going to talk about the recent news from Red Hat. I'll let you know what it means and why the Linux community is quite upset about it. And I can't say I blame them. But more importantly, we're going to talk about how this recent Red Hat thing is a symptom of a much bigger problem in my opinion. And that problem is that company run distributions are becoming very untrustworthy. In fact, I think it's time to consider community run distributions instead, and I'll tell you why in this video. Now I have a lot to talk about here. So what I'm going to do is add some time codes in the description down below so that way you could get right to the section that most interests you. In the next section, I'm going to give you a bit of history between IBM and Red Hat and some of the things that have happened before. And then in the section after that, I'll tell you what's happening now. And then after that, I'll give you my thoughts. But not only that, recently I mentioned that I was switching to Debian. In fact, I filmed an entire video that tells you why I decided to make that change. But you're not going to see that video. It's never going to come out. This video right here is going to replace it because I'm going to give you my thoughts on that in this video as well. Now this particular video is not sponsored. I don't have an ad read or anything like that to give you guys. So let's just dive right into the main topic starting with what the heck has been happening with Red Hat. So let's talk about the ongoing saga of IBM and Red Hat that started back in 2014. And it's the gift that keeps on giving even now in 2023. We're going to talk about the history and what has come before because understanding what has happened before is well required to fully understand what's happening now. I'm going to keep this section brief though because I've already covered this in other videos. So I'm just going to give you a simplified summary in this section. Now I doubt I have to tell too many of you guys what Red Hat is. It's a Linux distribution and it's a Linux distro that's existed for a very long time. In fact, my career started with Red Hat. I started with Red Hat 7.2 a long time ago. And you might be thinking that was fairly recent but this was before Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This was just Red Hat. It eventually rebranded later and became Red Hat Enterprise Linux which is what we know of it as today. But when I started with Red Hat, it was quite a different thing. So Red Hat has had a big impact on me but it's had a bigger impact on the Linux community. Red Hat does quite a bit of development in the Linux kernel. They have their hand in a lot of things. And to be fair, there's a lot that we wouldn't have today if it wasn't for Red Hat. So even though I'm going to give Red Hat some constructive criticism to put it lightly, I do have to acknowledge that, well, I'm very fortunate for Red Hat existing because it helped me get my start. But today Red Hat isn't quite what they were. Now at the center of this is CentOS. CentOS is a rebranding or repackaging of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They're able to do this because the source code for Red Hat is publicly available or at least it was, we'll get to that. But basically CentOS was, you know, downloading the source code, taking away or not including the Red Hat branding and just including CentOS branding. So it was a repackaged downstream of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And it's become a very important distribution since then because Red Hat is something that requires a support agreement and with CentOS, you could just download it and test your solutions against Red Hat Enterprise Linux without having to purchase it. Now for some companies, even those that did actually pay for Red Hat licenses, they'd still use CentOS. It was just so easy to spin up a CentOS virtual machine and test your application against it before moving it to a production Red Hat server. So CentOS has become a very important part of the Red Hat ecosystem. But things get a little bit more interesting later on because, well, Red Hat acquired CentOS. And at first nothing has changed. I mean, it just kept going as CentOS. We thought something would change because usually any kind of acquisition or partnership as they were calling it is going to result in changes. But at first no changes came. CentOS continued to be CentOS even under Red Hat's leadership. Red Hat Enterprise Linux continued to be Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And the two actually, well, started to exist in synergy with each other and it was a great thing. Now later on, IBM purchased Red Hat. And that was an interesting time to say the least. And just like we thought in 2014, when Red Hat acquired CentOS, so to speak, we kind of thought CentOS was going to go away now that IBM owned Red Hat. I mean, IBM is buying a company. They need a return on that investment. And with CentOS being free, there was kind of an opinion that maybe it might go away. No facts or anything like that made us believe that back then. It was just, well, that's how these things normally go. But at first, CentOS continued to be CentOS and eventually people just stopped thinking about it. Now fast forward to 2019. 2019 saw the release of CentOS 8. It was a fantastic distribution. I even created some videos that taught you guys how to use it. I thought it was really good and a lot of other people did too. In fact, a lot of people switched to CentOS 8. And CentOS 8 was quite appealing. It promised 10 years of support. So that means it was going to be supported until 2029. And when it comes to enterprises, a 10 year support window, well, that looks pretty enticing. Now at the same time that CentOS 8 was released, a brand new distribution was introduced, CentOS Stream. This brand new distribution was to exist alongside CentOS, not to replace it. And it was supposed to give engineers and developers a way to preview technologies that were going to be introduced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And that seemed like a great thing. However, things became even more interesting when in 2020, it was revealed that CentOS Stream would be the only CentOS. CentOS 8 was going to become end of life. So it was very clear from the announcement and this is literally what they told us that CentOS Stream was the way forward. Now the thing is though, CentOS 8 was to have 10 years of support. That's what companies were promised, but that's not what they got. Instead of getting 10 years of support, well, it was barely over one year. They just pulled the plug on it after enterprises moved to that particular version. In fact, when CentOS came out, Red Hat urged people to move to the new release as companies often do. But when companies moved to that release, they didn't know that it wasn't going to last as long as they thought. But you know what? The Linux community came to the rescue. Amalynix OS and Rocky Linux was born from that particular decision. They decided to keep the CentOS spirit alive by becoming what CentOS was before it became CentOS Stream giving you a drop in replacement for Red Hat, which is what we had with CentOS. But thanks to Amalynix OS and Rocky Linux and others as well, we now have the ability to continue along with something that's just like CentOS. Now that was an overly simplified explanation of what has happened between 2014 and now. I mean, this is a story that's been developing for quite some time. And there's a lot more detail than that. But again, I've covered it on this channel already and I didn't want long time subscribers to have to sit through another explanation of the same. But that summary of events is exactly what happened. And it brings us to where we are today with Red Hat's news. News dropped on Thursday, June 22nd of 2023 that Red Hat was going to stop making the source code for Red Hat publicly available. So let's get this straight. A Linux distribution provider has decided to withhold source code and put it behind a paywall. What's the worst that can happen? I mean, the Linux community is going to be, you know, totally accepting of this, right? Well, of course not. I think anybody who has been following Linux for more than a week knows that that news couldn't possibly go over well. I mean, there's literally a nearly 0% chance that that news was going to be, you know, seen with a claim or praise, but they just decided to go ahead and do that anyway. And they dropped this news not even that long after announcing layoffs. So, you know, layoffs are sad enough, but you're going to make a decision like this to get even more negative press around the same time. Red Hat, are you even thinking? Oh my God. So let's just understand what this means and why people are so upset about this. First, Red Hat source code has always been available. That's the whole point of open source, isn't it? At least I thought so. And the new downstream distributions such as the ones that I just mentioned were able to exist because just like CentOS did in the past, they were able to download the source code, rebrand it as Rocky Linux or Alma Linux OS, and then provide that to you, a Linux user engineer or stakeholder at a company, you had something to download again that was a drop-in replacement for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which was awesome. Now fast forward to our current day and age right now and the situation for Alma Linux and Rocky Linux is a little worrying. Now, both of these distributions are saying that they're going to continue and I have full faith that they're going to do everything in their power to find a way around this. But the issue is without the source code being publicly available, then how do they get that source code to repackage it and continue developing their distributions? Well, as of the time I'm recording this video, they've both made statements that they're going to get this figured out. And again, I think they will. However, it's a developing story and we don't know exactly which direction they're going to go as of yet. I figure by the time I get this video edited to you guys, the situation has probably changed since then. This is a developing story, so that's one thing I wanted to get out of the way. And yes, things could change between recording and editing time. Okay, now that we've caught up with everything that's happened before, and we also know what's happening now, how does this tie in with my opinion about being able to trust company-run Linux distributions or in my case, feeling like we can't trust these distributions anymore? Well, let's get into that. Now, the first thing I want to get out of the way real quick though is, can they do this? Is this okay? Can Red Hat get away with this? Well, unfortunately, the truth that we all have to accept is that if a company owns something, they could do with it whatever they please. Anyone or any organization that owns a trademark can do with it as they please. So yes, they can do this, and they are doing this. Now, the other question is, can they do this from a legal perspective? So far, it seems like they can, but there are some opponents of this that are challenging this. And again, it's a developing story, but the general consensus is that it looks like they can do this. But again, we have to let the lawyers and the license experts get into this and dig out those details. If I decided to create a video about licensing in general about this decision, it would probably be an hour long video just about that alone. So the short answers to these questions, can they do this? Yes. Should they do this? No. Can they do this from a legal perspective? Most likely, but I'll put an asterisk right here because, you know, developing story. Anyway, now that we've covered, you know, the fact that they technically can do this, at least from a perspective where they own the product, what I'm going to do is talk about why they shouldn't do this and why it was a very stupid idea. The first thing that I want to double down on here is that when it comes to business, trust is very important. If you lose trust, you lose the very foundation of your ability to do business. How do I know that? Well, Learn Linux TV is a business. It actually is a business. I went full time, some time ago, and now Learn Linux TV is my only job. As far as why I'm pointing out that Learn Linux TV is a business, well, I'll mention that shortly. But the thing is, when it comes to doing business, trust is very important. When you harm that, it's very hard to recover. So when Red Hat made the decision to do away with CentoS as we knew it, it was their decision to make. They are allowed to make that decision. It's okay that they made that decision, but it did harm trust. You know, the thing is, they promised 10 years of support. They barely gave us one. So that is a harm on trust. And when it comes to organizations who need to trust their servers, it makes it really hard for them to trust Red Hat when they're doing one thing or saying they're going to do something and then they do something else. But the story didn't stop there, did it? Because they are also taking away the source code, like I mentioned, or at least they're putting it behind a paywall. But here's the thing, they said they wouldn't do that. When the CentoS stream distribution became the only distribution, they basically said that they didn't want to create a rebranding or their own downstream of Red Hat, but they also said they're going to keep the source code available to allow other distributions to come up and carry on CentoS as we knew it. But here we have another claim by Red Hat that ended up being a lie. They said they would keep giving you source code so these down streams can exist and people could download the source code and they took that away. So we have the second claim in the video so far that Red Hat is made that they went back on. What's next? But here's the thing though, it's not just about Red Hat. Sure, they're the biggest thing in the news right now when it comes to Linux, but Red Hat is a symptom of a much bigger problem. And that problem is company run Linux distributions in general and why we can't trust them. Now Canonical is another symptom of this. I mean, they've also had a history of saying one thing and doing another. So here we have a company that is owning a Linux distribution steering a Linux distribution and they're making decisions that divide their community. So again, Red Hat is a symptom of the problem. They're not the only problem. So let's switch gears and talk about Canonical for a minute and I'll let you know what some of my concerns are when it comes to that as well. But also keep in mind, I mentioned a while back that I'm switching to Debian and I have done that. I mentioned that in my Debian review and I had an entire video filmed that explained why I made that decision and a big part of that decision was Canonical. A long time ago, Ubuntu famously switched away from the GNOME desktop and went its own direction. But then later on, Canonical switched back to GNOME and this is a decision that the Linux community in general was in favor of. As part of that announcement when it was revealed that Ubuntu would be going back to the GNOME desktop environment, Mark Shuttleworth was quoted as saying this, "What the Unity 8 team has delivered so far is beautiful, usable and solid, but I respect that markets, community, ultimately decide which products grow and which disappear." That's a great point and I agree with Mark on that. When it comes to the Linux community, it's important to understand that technologies that serve a purpose, have value and have excitement and fit the needs of the community itself are going to be the technologies that survive, that exceed expectations and see adoption. So yeah, I absolutely agree with Mark on that because that's absolutely true. However, keep that quote in mind because we're going to be coming back to it. Also around that same time, Mark Shuttleworth had more to say about this change. And here's another quote, "While I am passionate about the design ideas in Unity and hope that GNOME may be more open to them now, I think we should respect the GNOME design leadership by delivering GNOME the way GNOME wants it delivered." And yeah, I totally agree with that. I think Mark has a great point. Now, what I'm going to do is put both quotes up on the screen right now. Why? Well, because both quotes were untrue. They were completely misleading. For example, it was said that it was important that GNOME's design leadership be respected and GNOME be delivered the way that developers intended it to be delivered, but what we got was this. Now, to be honest, I think Ubuntu looks beautiful. It's very modern. It has a great design. I'm not trying to claim that it's a bad design. I think it's a great design. But my issue is not the design of Ubuntu. It's the fact that we were told we were going to get one thing and we got something else. But what about that second quote? So here we have a company that is basically telling you guys that it's important for technology to thrive on the merits of its design rather than be forced to be successful. And they're trying to force Snap packages to be successful even though the majority of the Linux community really doesn't care for Snap packages. So here we have Canonical going against their own claim. They're trying to force something to be successful and they're trying to force Snap packages to gain adoption over Flatpak. Flatpak has had much more engagement within the Linux community. And sure, some people don't like any of these universal package types, but Flatpak's have seen a greater adoption. And what do we see in response to that? Canonical pushing even harder to force Snap packages to be dominant. Even going as far as to go against another one of their claims. Here's a screenshot from Canonical's own webpage where they are quoted as saying this. Ubuntu Flavors offer a unique way to experience Ubuntu each with their own choice of default applications and settings. Ubuntu Flavors are owned and developed by members of our global community and backed by the full Ubuntu archive for packages and updates. So basically what that's referring to when it comes to Flavors is the spinoffs of Ubuntu. You know, like Zubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Mate, there's a number of these. And these exist to give you guys a different software selection. For example, a different desktop environment, maybe a different default text editor, you get the idea. These Flavors exist to give you a different Linux experience on top of the same base. But the most important takeaway about that quote is that it literally says that leads for these Flavors are free to choose whatever software applications they want to. But even though that's right there on their website, Canonical went against that as well. They got all the flavor leads together and told them they are not allowed to ship Flatpak. Now specifically Flatpak. Here we have Canonical saying one thing and something else is the case. I just mentioned three occasions of this off the top of my head. So even though Canonical isn't really doing, you know, as much damage, they're still dividing the community. They're still working against the community and they're still making misleading and untrue claims just like Red Hat is doing right now. And coming all the way full circle back to my decision to abandon Ubuntu, well, that was the reason. And that decision was made before the Red Hat news. Like I said, I had a whole video that was filmed and everything that you guys won't be seeing because of this, but that is the case. I switched away from Ubuntu because of the uncertainty around Canonical. I'm a business owner and to use a distribution run by a company where at any time you might have to change something just because of an impulsive decision. That's just not something that I personally have time for. And when you ruin trust, when you can't trust a company's word, there's no reason to use their product anymore. Another thing is, Devian is not the only community project out there, like I mentioned, but it is the direction that I'm going to go. And the reason why I decided that was because, well, Devian has very little drama. Now, of course, I'll never be free of drama because it's my job to educate you guys and that includes the drama. This video right here is going to create drama, but it's drama all the same. And it's just not something that I want on my own systems, but I will continue to cover Ubuntu on this channel. So I don't want you guys to think that my coverage of Ubuntu ends. It's just not going to be used on my servers anymore. As far as desktops and laptops are concerned, I'm kind of having a wait and see approach to this. I really love PopOS, but I'm also testing Devian with the Sway window manager because that's going to be where I go if for any reason PopOS has trouble existing. I have no reason to feel like PopOS isn't a good distribution, so I'll stay on it for right now. But again, I'm also testing Devian with Sway and that could be the way I go when it comes to desktops and laptops. But again, I just wanted to be transparent. I'm using PopOS for now, but my bigger concern is the servers here and that's what I decided to focus on for now and I switched over most of my servers to Devian, like I mentioned, and others will follow for the remainder of the year. Now, for those of you that have purchased my Ubuntu book, I'm still going to support that. Again, I'm still covering Ubuntu. I'm not going to stop just because I don't use it as my daily driver. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop reporting and teaching on it. I still will. So the coverage doesn't stop. The book doesn't stop. You know, I'm still supporting that. I still might do another version of the book. Again, I don't know. I still might, but the one thing that probably will be a sacrifice when it comes to this decision is the Flatpak remix of Ubuntu that I recently came out with because with all these company politics, I really don't like developing it anymore. It's just really hard for me to get back into it, to even get into that ecosystem, to give you guys another release of that distribution. And unfortunately, it just has to go. It didn't last long and I honestly thought it was something that I was going to maintain forever unless canonical, you know, ditched Snap packages and went to Flatpak themselves, in which case there'd be no reason for the Flatpak remix to exist. But honestly, my heart's not in it because I am just tired of the drama. There's just too much of it. So that's why I made the decision that I made. Now again, I don't think anything is going to change as far as content on this channel. You're still going to get the same content for me that you've always had before. This is just an internal backend decision, it's not a coverage decision because even though I don't like something or I don't use something, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to cover it. If it exists in the Linux community, it is my job to cover it and that's what I'm going to do. So I just wanted to give you guys my thoughts on everything. The takeaway here is if you trust a company run Linux distribution, I highly recommend that you consider your alternatives. You might thank me because I really don't feel like this news from Red Hat is the end. In fact, this is only the beginning. Anyway, let me know what you guys thought about this video in the comments down below. And now that I have this video out, I'm going to get back to my usual content, tutorials and reviews and things like that, the stuff that you've come to love about my channel. Anyway, thank you guys so much for watching this video. I really appreciate it and I'll see you again next time. (upbeat music)
