Thanks! That helps me understand things much better. I looked through
the survey and the questions were way over my head.
On 7/19/2023 8:41 AM, Kevin Mckenzie wrote:
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 <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of Jon
Perryman <jperr...@pacbell.net>
Date: Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 8:47 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU>
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?
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