Red Hat’s Rise to Fame

Red Hat is the darling of the North American enterprise market. You can hardly walk into any high availability datacenter without seeing it. It’s a badge of honor honestly, earned over nearly three decades of excellence in open-source software. It’s not a title I bestow lightly, and certainly not one I would ascribe to the Red Hat of today. Red Hat rose from the ashes of the dot-com bubble as a paragon of open-source. It not only proved that open-source could be commercial, but that it could be profitable too. Over the past decade in particular, it has grown from the distro of the server closet to the distro of choice for anyone who could afford to use it.

The Turning Point: IBM’s Influence

But what changed? Why have I felt the need to write this article today? Recent decisions, which I will blame IBM squarely for, have resulted in Red Hat taking an approach that is almost adversarial to its community. First, they attempted to kill off community distros by castrating CentOS, then they decided to attack community distros altogether by restricting access to their source. I should note that while this is a shortsighted and frankly deplorable move, they are entirely within their legal rights to do so.

Distros like Rocky and Alma continue on, albeit with a slightly harder road ahead of them. The Oracles of the world chug along with a veritable mountain of resources to throw at the problem, and the SUSEs of the world usurp RHEL with hard forks and paths away from Red Hat altogether. What has IBM, having puppeted Red Hat, achieved in this situation? CentOS is no longer the distro of choice under their control, and now Sys admins are getting spooked by IBM’s inability to resist the rocking of the boat. IBM has given up huge portions of its control of the market for nothing but ill will. It is honestly mind-boggling.

Reassessing the Open-Source Landscape

So where do we go from here? In the grand scheme of things, an open distro acts as a driver for the industry it occupies. Like me, so many professionals gained experience with Red Hat systems because CentOS made it free and easy to acquire. A wide audience allows a business to capture as many potential users as possible after all. It was a win-win situation that IBM’s greed destroyed. This is a backward step, that sacrifices Red Hat’s ability to gain markets for the short-term gain of profits. It’s a depressingly typical situation of “death by MBA”. Red Hat can no longer be trusted to cultivate a community that is open and collaborative. Anything they touch that is not protected by licenses protecting distribution, such as the GPLv3, should be met with caution.

Let’s not mince words: what IBM has done with Red Hat is a classic example of a corporate giant missing the forest for the trees. In their quest for short-term gains, they’ve kicked a hornet’s nest, stirring up rage within the open-source community and opening doors for competitors wide open. The beauty of open-source has always been its flexibility and community-driven nature. When a juggernaut like IBM tries to strong-arm its way through, it’s not just ruffling feathers; it’s potentially stifling the innovation that’s at the heart of what makes open-source great.

It’s becoming increasingly evident that the future of RPM-based Linux in the enterprise space is up for grabs. Competitors are circling, and there’s a real chance for a seismic shift in the landscape. For anyone invested in this space, it’s time to start thinking hard about where your allegiances lie and what your next move is. Stick with a faltering giant, or jump ship to something that won’t potentially bite you after the lock-in has taken hold. The choice is yours, but remember – in the tech world, yesterday’s decisions won’t win tomorrow’s wars.