I see many people saying Red Hat uses lots of code created by others in their end product. This point is true. But I think many of the same people also then jump to "and therefore Red Hat should allow someone to clone their product 100% and advertise that it is 100% cloned, compete for support $ also as offerings, and use Red Hat's name in all their advertising and marketing materials. I don't see it that way - from my view, anyone can take RHEL code, or Linux kernel code, and create their own Linux variant, and try to sell support for it. Similar to how AWS does with their Linux version, and Microsoft with their recent Linux version, and Suse in their classic version, and Ubuntu with their Linux offering. Everyone in this list benefits similar to Red Hat, and uses lots of code created by others for free. So in my view, Oracle, Rocky and Alma all have the ability and freedom to build their own Linux version that runs great and is well supported - but they choose to try to "clone" someone elses product who has spent alot of time and money paying employees to build the value of it. I wish all the people that want "RHEL value" without paying for it, would just put a sock in it already - it is sleazy and scummy in my view...

I am sorry, any panel where Oracle is put on stage to defend open source principals and is put up as some sort of voice of open source, loses credibility with me. A company who is opportunistic and selective, on open source, bashing a company that open sources every product they either help create, or acquire, feels weird to me. In my view, two of the panelists have an undeserved arrogance about the topic, and the other two are more balanced and reasonable. I hope the members of the panel in aggregate can try to add up how many open source related jobs they have helped create, and compare that to what Red Hat has done. All the anger and barbs seem pretty misplaced to me. To B Kuhn specifically, it appears you have found a way to get paid to be an open source purist, and Jeremy A to some extent, but the number of paid positions that are viable to be a purist are small and rare - you seem to want Red Hat and everyone to follow your lead. If Rocky or Alma or Oracle Linux success reduced Red Hat revenue, and these three hire 10, 20 or 30 people and Red Hat lays off 100â(TM)s, how is that good for open source? I feel this group, and anyone who agrees with their viewpoints, need to be more balanced in the response approach - no one is stopping CIQ, CloudLinux or Oracle from creating their own Linux version like AWS, Microsoft and others. Donâ(TM)t see how they are so righteous when the could build a business on open source and add new value - not just take the value someone else created and give it to people for free - I feel like people need to get real alreadyâ¦. They say that Red Hat builds on the work of others who contribute to the Linux modules that they use - and I say great. That is what AWS does also with their Linux, and these 3 companies on the panel should do the same if they want to respectably be in the Linux business, which they appear to want to be.

In terms of alternatives, how can we be sure that Ubuntu sponsor Canonical will not get acquired and change the rules of how freely Ubuntu stable versions are available? This whole thing is making me rethink if it makes sense to rely on free unsupported software at the operating system level. I don't trust oracle and cloud linux also seems like a commercial company wanting to profit from Linux like Red Hat.