We actually do have SAP and SAPHANA repositories that should closely resemble that of RHEL in Rocky Linux 9. If there is something missing from them, we can try to address it.
Thank you Naz (hope you don’t mind if I call you Naz)… Even if we had to build, or manually import some additional packages to match the RHEL SAP RPMs that is not as much of an issue. The real challenge is if Rocky Linux isn’t completely aligned to RHEL. That is because SAP’s entire support system (notes, fixes, patches, etc.) is aligned to HANA (S4/Netweaver) running on RHEL or SUSE. Because of its architecture it could probably run on other distros, but, not only are they not supported it would distract from focusing on the SAP application itself as any issues arise. It also might create OS and DB level monitoring problems because of the integration that is already built into S4 and HANA.
My post is only to raise a concern about creating still another Linux fork as some have mentioned here. At the same time, I understand IBM’s perspective around recovering the investment they have made. I don’t know what the right answer is and while we can still get RHEL Developer access, if Rocky is an indication of the direction then Developer access will likely end up behind a paywall as well at some point in time.
1 Like
I have been using Linux for over two decades. I remember the days of early struggles and yet we used it, and deployed it. RH has created this sense of “stability” fear in the market, but in reality, the majority of popular distros have a pretty decent level of stability (yes, including centos stream 9). 5 years support cycles are also fine, and very nice actually. You should also be implementing practices like testing your patches received from main repos before sending them to your servers with local mirrors.
Another interesting post: In favor of CentOS Stream. Amid much discussion of Red Hat’s… | by Gordon Messmer | Jun, 2023 | Medium
I’m personally affected by this as well. I developed and deployed in production like a dozen instances with RockyLinux running several applications, cis level 2 hardened, and all the whistles in place. I promoted RockyLinux in my company, and I was excited about the FIPS compliance work being done. This is a bummer. However, with all honesty, I think RedHat’s move is fair, even though disappointing in the “how” it was done.
I also think CentOS stream is a healthy direction for the community. It is a Fedora moment (quoting others); which is a community that it is strong and well balanced. I had also deployed like another dozen instances with CentOS Stream 9 for CI use cases, and other support tools like monitoring. So far no issues.
I’m not jumping off of the Rocky Linux wagon yet, but considering it.
For the record, the renowned german IT magazine Heise just published an article about Red Hat’s latest move. The title says it all: Red Hat’s idiotischer Murks. Translates like “Red Hat’s idiotic mess”.
Yet SUSE, a german company, does the same…
They do it differently. They decided to kill the (perfectly working) Leap distribution, only to replace it by ALP, a containerized abomination in pre-alpha state. 
1 Like
Only structural related - Open Source has a feedback loop problem IMO:
https://groups.google.com/g/libjpeg-turbo-announce/c/YZ2wRgB0zIE
1 Like
I think the best way to support libraries or small tools projects like that is to donate it to a foundation like Apache and such, or get a full time software engineering job and talk to your manager to allow you to donate some hours every so often to contribute to your project, hoping other developers would join. Or you just try to find some value to the project for your career, and put time outside your job hours into it for self training and practicing (e.g. a little bit every morning). Libs like that do need an array of contributors, which in most cases, do their contribution during business hours as their companies see value in it and allow it to a certain extent. Those small libs/tools are not complex enough to make selling support a viable business.
Companies contribute to opensource mainly through allowing their employees getting involved, or by becoming sponsors, but it is mainly the former.
One thing that I’ve not seen mentioned here yet:
Not all components in RHEL are GPL-licensed. Several pretty-darn-important bits and pieces are BSD or MIT licensed or even public domain, and in those cases Red Hat could legally not provide their source code at all regardless of whether you are a subscriber or not.
The Register covers the loopholes used to get sources:
The comments are similar to those in this thread. One stood out to me: RH might not be targeting Rocky and Alma but is instead targeting Oracle, hoping to get a chunk of its revenue.
@sparesimian ,
The podcast from this previous comment, it is an interview with Mike McGrath. In the interview, it is pretty clear what the sentiment motivating this was.
Apparently, the sentiment against rebuilds has been around for a while within RH. The point is the lack of value they perceive it brings to OpenSource and Red Hat in particular. The benchmark they use is Fedora. He, and according to him, a good amount of engineers and leardership within RH, sees Fedora as a healthy community, with a good ratio of users to contributors, driving a good amount of innovation, benefiting OSS. They let it be independent, and they provide infrastructure, finances, and engineering hours, and in exchange, they use it to build their Enterprise product. They see it as a mutual benefit. He says an example of Fedora community independence from RedHat is the default file system being btrfs, vs RHEL which is xfs because they do not agree with that decision.
He says that he prefers RH rebuilds were forks from CentOS stream source code and not clones, and that improve significantly upon its development, and with a good ratio of users to contributors. He says CentOS as it was before, was just an overwhelming amount of users benefiting from RH promises and very little contribution back to OSS and the EL ecosystem in general. Again, he is comparing with the Fedora community. He doesn’t believe that CentOS as it was before, statistically speaking, contributed significantly to the adoption of RH or the formation of RH professional as many are saying. Basically, that it is myth and their observations of the numbers indicate something else. He acknowledges the great contributions of specific individuals from the CentOS community.
It is a very interesting podcast, and kinds of shows the deeper issue here.
Does this podcast have episodes with talks with Alma’s and Rocky’s leadership about the same issue?
There is not, no. A couple of us are open to going on the podcast, though.
If not already posted:
2 Likes
I hope they will give the opportunity.
Note that this is mostly CIQ specific and does not include the perspective of volunteers (such as myself) at the RESF.
Interesting discussion on r/SysAdmin:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/14sr3bp/red_hat_sysadmins_are_the_new_licensing_changes/
My final thoughts on this issue:
I cut my teeth on Red Hat/Centos/RHEL. I currently support a scant few RHEL servers, where having support is critical for continuity of business - I use Rocky for testing/wringing out pre-production configurations and (‘non-critical’, if you will) implementations.
IMHO, there’s no question that Red Hat has given sense of stability, security and relative affordability to the open source enterprise community over the past decade. And, in no small part, played a role in the eventual demise of the costly and proprietary AIX, Sun and SCO Unixes.
The irony is not lost on me, that as good as their products are, and to the extent they’ve contributed to the community over the years. Red Hat is becoming that which to they originally offered an alternative: just another greedy, proprietary tech company…
As I’ve said in an earlier post: Going forward, I have full faith in Rocky Linux and the open source enterprise community…
6 Likes