OpenELA

boughtonp · 08-12-2023, 11:01 AM

An anti-RedHat collaboration between SUSE, Oracle, CIQ/Rocky - but not AlmaLinux?

Were they invited and turned it down, or were they excluded? (That's a question any competent journalist would ask; it hasn't been done by the two articles I've seen so far.)

Whichever idiot made the three-page website (https://openela.org) decided to require CloudFlare JavaScript before any content displays, because presumably it's essential to have a fade transition with an animated loader between pages because... well, I'm sure they think there's a good reason for it.

Fortunately, the content is actually there - one can use uBlock Origin to block JS and Block Element on the <div id="preloader"> and get a snappier site, (not that there's much there).

Oh, and in-line with their claim to "always act in the best interests of the open source community", their "how to join" section is promoting the proprietary Slack software, instead of the numerous Open Source options.

Oh well, if nothing else it might be interesting to see how Red Hat react to this.

elcore · 08-13-2023, 04:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp

An anti-RedHat collaboration between SUSE, Oracle, CIQ/Rocky - but not AlmaLinux?

Were they invited and turned it down, or were they excluded?

I've read somewhere that AlmaLinux will be using CentOS Stream as a platform, while those other distros will try and make a new enterprise platform.
Since, you know, CentOS 4-5 was extremely stable and CentOS Stream hasn't ever been any more stable than Fedora for example.
I'd personally like to see where this new platform ends up, and who will own the servers..

boughtonp · 08-13-2023, 08:40 AM

I don't think it's as simple as being based off CentOS Stream - I think they are using CentOS Stream repos to get the RHEL sources, but will also fix bugs without waiting for Red Hat, so will be adjacent rather than downstream or upstream.

I dunno though - it's far from clearly stated, and perhaps the AlmaLinux Foundation are still trying to make up their mind themselves.

Either way, if AlmaLinux don't make a statement within the next week, it's not likely to inspire confidence. (If I hadn't already decided to migrate away from systemd, I would be wondering what to do with my CentOS 7 and AlmaLinux 8 servers.)

Who will own the OpenELA servers is another interesting question - currently the answer is Microsoft for the website.
(The screenshotted GitLab instance at git.openela.org doesn't currently resolve, but both SUSE and Oracle already use commercial GitLab, whilst Rocky hosts theirs on AWS.)

boughtonp · 08-15-2023, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp

Were [AlmaLinux] invited and turned it down, or were they excluded? (That's a question any competent journalist would ask; it hasn't been done by the two articles I've seen so far.)

Finally, someone has interviewed Benny Vasquez of AlmaLinux and asked that question...

https://fossforce.com/2023/08/the-almalinux-dilemma-when-upstream-suddenly-disappears

It's a long article (~3k words), so here's the specific question and answer...

Quote:

Originally Posted by https://fossforce.com/2023/08/the-almalinux-dilemma-when-upstream-suddenly-disappears/

"Rocky’s thrown its hat in the ring with SUSE, which is going to spend $10 million to come up with a permanent solution and then sort of build their RHEL clone," I said. "What do you feel about that? And is AlmaLinx going to take part in that?"

I figured she would think I was nuts. If she did, she didn’t show it.

"I will say there are lots of conversations happening," she answered without hesitation. "I don’t want to talk about any specifics yet, but there are certainly a lot of conversations happening, because RHEL has historically been the standard, right? RHEL has historically held the like — ‘standard’ is the only word to put there — for what Enterprise Linux is. I think ultimately, what we’re gonna see come out of this is a bunch of different options for enterprise Linux. We’re gonna redefine what enterprise Linux is."

That quote is not a summary of the whole article - those interested will still want to read the rest.

chrism01 · 08-15-2023, 11:06 PM

Reading the article, it appears we have 2 different approaches :

1. Oracle, SUSE, CIQ/Rocky are going to collaborate to

Quote:

develop a line-by-line clone of RHEL and to create a foundation that will make the code freely available to whomever wants to use it.

This may or may not end up in a fight with IBM (my comment).

2. Alma want to avoid the possibility of fighting IBM by

Quote:

AlamaLinux Foundation decided to go in another direction, and announced in July that going forward its distro will no longer seek to be bug-by-bug compatible with RHEL, but would instead seek ABI compatibility with RHEL — which basically means that it will look, act, walk, and quack exactly like RHEL although some patches and a few lines of code might be slightly different.

On the qn of support by APP / Service vendors (& it's all about what you want to run on the OS at the end of the day, not the OS), Alma said

Quote:

“Here’s the thing,” she said at last. “I would have said we’re going to lose vendor support, but the way that this is playing out and the fracturing that we’re seeing, I think we’re not going to lose vendor support. I think we’re gonna see vendors come along. They’re going to step forward and say, ‘OK, so RHEL, but also RHEL compatible.’ They’re going to start expanding what they support, because it’s going to be worth it to them to continue to be able to support alternative operating systems.”

which would be cool, regardless of both of the above options.