If I wrote Red Hat's source code announcement
Disclaimer: This post is a mix of my own words and what Red Hat said in their two blog posts about the recent move to stop providing RHEL SRPMs to git.centos.org. Here's the initial announcement and the response. Saying this up front because I think working with the formatting to make it clear who is adding what would be tough for the end result I'm aiming for. More details on how and why I put this together at the end of the post.
Words in italics are the ones I added or moved around. Sorry it's not easier to see.
Last note: sorry if this is cringe or naive. This is as much an experiment for me as it is an exercise in communication.
More than two years ago, Red Hat introduced CentOS Stream as the focal point for collaboration around Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). CentOS Stream shortens the feedback window between Red Hat engineers and partners, customers, and communities while at the same time providing even greater visibility into the next innovations in RHEL. We’ve seen great success in the Special Interest Group (SIG) community to help integrate and bring new technologies together faster than ever. The Automotive SIG is an excellent example of this. Hardware partners have also ramped up to use CentOS Stream for more rapid support of new hardware technologies. Because of CentOS Stream, Red Hat Enterprise Linux development is more transparent and open than ever before.
As the CentOS Stream community grows and the enterprise software world tackles new dynamics, we want to sharpen our focus on CentOS Stream as the backbone of enterprise Linux innovation. We are continuing our investment in and increasing our commitment to CentOS Stream. ***We plan on making* CentOS Stream the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases.** For Red Hat customers and partners, source code will remain available via the Red Hat Customer Portal.
To be clear, this change does not signify any changes to the CentOS Project, CentOS Stream, or source availability for CentOS Stream or CentOS SIGs.
Red Hat will stop publishing public sources for RHEL to git.centos.org on June 21, 2024.
What does this mean for RHEL source code availability?
Currently there are three primary ways of obtaining the RHEL source code:
- The repo for CentOS Stream, found at https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream
- The Red Hat Customer Portal for customers and partners
- The SRPMs that are published to git.centos.org
After the change the latest source code will still be available via CentOS Stream. Red Hat customers and partners can access RHEL sources via the customer and partner portals, in accordance with their subscription agreement. If a downstream project wanted to continue, they could do so based on the code in the CentOS Stream repository.
Why make this change?
Before CentOS Stream, Red Hat pushed public sources for RHEL to git.centos.org. When the CentOS Project shifted to center on CentOS Stream, we maintained these repositories even though CentOS Linux was no longer being built downstream of RHEL. The engagement around CentOS Stream, the engineering levels of investment, and the new priorities we’re addressing for customers and partners now make maintaining separate, redundant, repositories inefficient.
We would also like to acknowledge the RHEL rebuilds. We understand that in the past Red Hat found value in the work done by rebuilders like CentOS. We pushed our SRPMs out in a way that was easy to rebuild and even de-branded it for them. More recently, we have determined that there isn’t value in having a downstream rebuilder.
The generally accepted position is that free rebuilds lead to RHEL experts and conversions into sales. That is not the what we see internally. Instead, we’ve found a group of users, many of whom belong to large IT organizations, that want the stability, lifecycle, and hardware ecosystem of RHEL without having to actually support the production of RHEL. These users also have decided not to use one of the many other Linux distributions. That use case runs counter to the goals of Red Hat as a business.
To take a step further, we should acknowledge the differences between Red Hat as a business and Red Hat as an open source advocate and contributor. Red Hat as a business is not interested in losing money to competitors, especially when those competitors are copying our flagship product as verbatim as possible. Red Hat as an open source advocate understands that the nature of free software is for people to be able to copy code and do whatever they want with it. That includes building a rebadged carbon copy. There is no justification needed to take free and open source code and do whatever you want with it.
To that end, it's important to emphasize that the RHEL source code is available through CentOS Stream. That is what RHEL is built from. The rebuilders can continue to build their projects off of CentOS Stream in the same way that Red Hat does. However, we are not obligated to go the extra step of providing a white label version of RHEL that creates competition with our business model. The end of publishing new SRPMs is a consequence of our business. The increased transparency in RHEL development through CentOS Stream, the source code availability through that project, and the timeline provided to transition are commitments to our open source values.
What is the timeline for this change?
As stated before, Red Hat will stop publishing public sources for RHEL to git.centos.org on June 21, 2024 (one year from today). The goal is to provide enough time for downstream projects, users, and the community to see how they will adjust or take advantage of CentOS Stream.
As this change approaches, we are open to questions and comments from the community. Depending on the response we may follow up with an FAQ post to compile all the answers that we can provide. We hope this transition can be smooth for all involved and that stakeholders can understand the balance Red Hat has to strike between running a business and contributing to open source.
My Approach
The post above is a mix of my own approach for announcing the change to RHEL's source code access. I use my own words as well as words lifted directly from Red Hat's two blog posts. Part of the idea behind this exercise is to show how all of this could have been communicated differently while sticking as closely to the source material. Feedback would be appreciated.
This post also does not fully reflect my views on the topic. The constraints I set for myself were to communicate the change that is taking place while:
- Respecting the wider community at every level (from RHEL and EL up to Linux and open source)
- Preserving the Red Hat brand and all the goodwill it has acrued
- Educating users and engineers on things they may not have been aware of
- Acknowledging the reality of Red Hat as a business
- Reinforcing commitment to open source AND showing how the needs of the business meet with the values of open source in Red Hat specifically
Depending on the wording of the first announcement, I don't think that Red Hat would have let the cat out of the bag so publicly about their views on the RHEL rebuilds. This is the timeline we live in and as such I included it in my draft. My approach was to acknowledge that some would make the association between this move and the idea of Red Hat not liking clones, and then clarify the sentiment along the lines of what they officially say later on.
The one policy change I added is the idea of holding off on this change for one year. The idea is that this is a heads up about a future action that will happen and not an update after the fact like what happened. It's important that organizations and users have lead time to make a change to the software they use.
Note: I've heard that not everything that's needed to rebuild RHEL is in CentOS Stream. I don't fully understand it, but I feel it would be dishonest to not express that gap in my knowledge.
All of this of course is written in hindsight. Some of the details I knew just from learning about CentOS Stream and its relationship in between Fedora and RHEL. Other details I learned in the aftermath of the announcement from Red Hatters and Mike McGrath's interview on the Ask Noah Show.
Lasty, I would follow this up with more content through official channels as needed. An FAQ post is one option. A livestream or podcast episode is another. I've seen a lot of Red Hatters trying to explain a decision that should have been handled in more productive spaces by dedicated representatives. I don't think the engineers should have to be debating on Mastodon about a decision a multi-billion dollar company made. If they are, that's something to be grateful for. Red Hat should acknowledge that passion by protecting them with better official communication and resources.