Let me try to respond to some of this; keeping in mind that I know nothing of the business decisions here, and am speaking for myself, not IBM.
1. As far as I’m aware, IBM is still very separate from RedHat. Maybe things are different at the board level, but at my level, there is an incredibly large distance between IBM and RedHat. This was not an IBM decision, as far as I know. RedHat has been upset about bug-for-bug clones of RHEL since before IBM bought them. 2. RedHat is not moving to closed source. RedHat couldn’t make RHEL closed source if they wanted to. RedHat doesn’t own the copyright to something like 90% of RHEL, and whatever copyright they do own, they’ve assigned to the Linux Foundation and the like. I guess in theory, RedHat could create a closed-source fork of Linux and rewrite the 90% of the code they never owned, and not contribute future code to the open source world, but that seems like a huge amount of work for not a lot of reward. 3. RedHat is still contributing all of its code to the open source world, as far as I know. What they’re changing is this: in the past, it was very easy to figure out what, say, RedHat 9.11 FP2 or something was equivalent to, in terms of the specific branches of code across all the components of RHEL, along with the specific diff files that were added on top. That’s what’s changing. They’re still going to submit their code to the linux kernel, or apache, or whatever, they just aren’t going to be announcing to the world that this specific set of patches on top of these specific branches is what equal this specific level of RHEL. Backing up a couple of steps, the problem that RedHat has is this: they do a huge amount of work to support RHEL. Remember, they support their releases for at least 10 years. So if you go to them with a problem, they (usually) don’t tell you to upgrade to the latest release, they will fix your problem, and only your problem. Doing this is a huge amount of really hard work. They invest a huge amount of time and money into each RHEL. They recoup that money via support contracts. And then third parties come along and undercut them, which is potentially easy to do because they don’t bear the substantial costs of fixing the problems. Some companies have a couple of RHEL systems somewhere, and then a huge number of RHEL clone systems, but still go to RedHat if they hit problems on type of system, in the knowledge that they’ll get a fix. Back in 2007, the FSF said that doing what RedHat is doing, which is providing the exact source code of RHEL only to their clients they have contracts with, and not renewing contracts with clients who share said source code with third parties, fit the definition of free software. People have been telling open source companies for years that the way to make money is to offer support contracts. That’s exactly what RedHat is doing. A lot of open source projects just aren’t sustainable; look at HeartBleed, and Shellshock, and on and on. The money to support them has to come from somewhere. As far as I know, that’s what’s driving this decision. RedHat has said multiple times that they’re happy for companies like SuSe and Ubuntu to exist and take their code and use it. What they’re upset about is the bug-for-bug clones. That’s all this decision is about. I’d be surprised if they thought about z/OS or IBM Z at all when making this decision. -- Kevin McKenzie External Phone: 845-435-8282, Tie-line: 8-295-8282 z/OS Test Services - Test Architect, Provisioning z/OS Hardware/Software Interlock From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Jon Perryman <[email protected]> Date: Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 8:47 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Will z/OS be obsolete in 5 years? IBM RHEL announced it's move to closed source (IBM RedHat Enterprise Linux). With some changes, DB2, RACF and other z/OS products could run in Linux on z16 in one sysplexed Linux image. We know it's possible because IBM moved Unix and TCP into z/OS. IBM RHEL said closed source would force non-paying customers to buy RHEL licenses but this makes no sense. Something else must be in play. I created a survey at https://forms.gle/ZTPXsDJo8Z4H93sv7 to gain insights into IBM's decision to close source RHEL. You can skip the survey if you don't want to take it and view the survey results through this website. Feel free to pass this along. I think IBM wants to integrate z/OS products to retain their investments and expand their customer base.. Why is the z/OS community ignoring IBM RHEL closed source? Are software vendors preparing their products for Linux? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
