 The Linux community is in shock because a couple of days ago, Red Hat announced that they're no longer going to make the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux available to the public. They've decided to stop making that source code for real Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They're not going to make it available publicly unless you are a paying customer, then you will have access to the source code because the license, the GPL demands that they provide you source code if you're a paying customer. But to become a paying customer, you also have to agree to a separate agreement with Red Hat that you can have the source code to look at, but you are not allowed to then redistribute that source code. So essentially Red Hat Enterprise Linux is becoming closed source. Initially, I hadn't planned on making a video commenting about this new story because I'll be honest, I'm a little surprised that so many people within the Linux community actually were shocked by this because I wasn't shocked at all. Ever since Red Hat was purchased by IBM, I kind of thought that this was a possibility eventually. One of the things with Linux companies or free and open source software companies, the ones that were built and formed around the ideals of free and open source software, I trust those companies typically, you know, even Linux distributions like Ubuntu with Canonical, the corporation behind it. You know, those are Linux guys that started the company and are still running the company. Red Hat, I trusted Red Hat, right? For many years now when IBM bought them, it changes things a little bit because IBM's not a Linux company. They have a Linux component to them now, especially now that they own Red Hat because they purchased Red Hat. But IBM is they've got their hands in a lot of different pies, right? There's a global conglomerate kind of business where this, do they really care about the ideals of the free and open source software movements? No, that's not what IBM is about. And even though you could trust Red Hat and a lot of the people that worked for Red Hat before the IBM purchase are still there, still. Ultimately, the leaders of IBM call the shots and if they want to close source Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they can make that happen just like that. And apparently that's the way they're going now. And again, it's not shocking, right? When these Linux-y companies like Red Hat or Canonical, if Canonical is ever purchased by some bigger company and maybe Microsoft one day buys Canonical for whatever reason, right? Would I still feel the same way about Canonical and Ubuntu if now that company was now owned by a parent company like Microsoft? Hell no, I wouldn't. You know, I'd be worried about their distribution as well. So you kind of could see this coming. You've seen this with other companies that have gotten their hands on Linux distributions or freedom of source software Oracle is a horrible company when it comes to freedom of source software. Anything Oracle touches, they typically destroy. The other reason I initially didn't think I was going to make a video about this topic is because at the end of the day, whatever happens with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, does that really matter for me? The Linux desktop user, because that's what I am. I don't work in IT. I'm not a system admin, right? Most of you guys that watch my content are probably not in those fields. You're just average computer users that just happen to use Linux on the desktop. So what does this Red Hat Enterprise Linux go and close source? What does that mean for you? Absolutely nothing. It will have absolutely zero impact on anything that we do on our desktop Linux distributions. For one thing, nobody uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a desktop operating system. The only people that would use Red Hat as a desktop distribution were people that were system administrators, worked in IT. They worked with a lot of Red Hat servers, so they run Red Hat on their home computers, you know, those kinds of people. But I've never met anyone in real life that didn't have that kind of job that actually ran Red Hat. I mean, most people have never even heard of Red Hat. The average desktop Linux user, they don't know what the hell Red Hat Enterprise Linux even is. And because I don't work in an IT field, I'm not a network admin or anything like that, you know, I'm going to have a totally different take than a lot of people that are going to comment on this. Because at the end of the day, Red Hat Enterprise Linux really doesn't mean anything to me. I've never used it. I've never talked about it. You guys know I've never actually talked about Red Hat ever on my Linux channel. I've made like 1400 videos about Linux and Fred open source software. I don't think I've ever mentioned Red Hat, the distribution mentioned Red Hat, the company, of course, because they do a lot of stuff with Fred open source software. They do contribute a lot, a lot of code. There's a lot of pieces of software that they help sponsor and fund. They have contributors contributing to the Linux kernel. So Red Hat, the company is certainly matters in the Linux ecosystem. Red Hat, the distribution, not that much. Now, for those of you that do work in the IT space, you work a lot with servers. And you work with distributions such as Almo Linux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux. Now, all of those distributions are one-to-one binary compatible with Red Hat. They're essentially Red Hat Enterprise Linux clones. And now, because Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be closed source, those distributions now are not going to be able to make that one-to-one binary compatible clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux because they won't have the available source code that's publicly available to make that magic happen. So these Red Hat clones, what they're going to have to do is now they're going to have to start basing their distributions off of CentOS Stream. The problem is CentOS Stream is not one-to-one compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS Stream is actually upstream from real. So it's going to be, you're never going to have that pure Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone that you had before. Ultimately, it sounds like Red Hat was just tired of being charitable and allowing all of these distributions to essentially base off of them. Many of them were just straight clones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And these people, there's millions of servers out there that are running things like Alma and Rocky and before that, CentOS and Scientific Linux and all these other Red Hat clones that were around to try to circumvent actually having to get the proper Red Hat Enterprise Linux and then having to purchase a support license for it. Now, once again, because I am not in IT, these distributions like Alma Linux and Rocky Linux, they're not even on my radar. I've played a little bit with them in the past but because they're server distributions, they're not Linux desktop distributions. So Red Hat is an enterprise server distribution. All of these clones of it are also enterprise server distributions. As such, if you're like me, mostly a Linux desktop user, how will this impact your life? Not at all. And naturally, some of you are going to say, well, what about Fedora? Isn't Fedora kind of like a Red Hat clone? No, no, no. Fedora is upstream from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So actually, they're more of almost like alpha or beta testing for what will eventually be put into real. So it won't affect Fedora at all. Fedora is not impacted by this whatsoever. The only real connection that Fedora and Red Hat have is Red Hat, the company is a sponsor of the Fedora distribution. So, you know, they provide support, monetary support for Fedora. And as far as I know of, that hasn't changed, at least not yet. Now, for those of you that do work in the server space and you're heavily invested in Red Hat, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem, obviously you're impacted by this. So, I mean, what are your options? Well, your options are to actually pay for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, become a paying customer, right? And a lot of you guys are probably not doing that. You're probably using one of the clones like Alma or Rocky. And if you're doing that, then you could be impacted because I'm not sure how those distributions are going to handle this situation. Now that they're no longer gonna have that source code available to them publicly, that they need to actually make that one-to-one binary compatible clone of Red Hat. So in a lot of ways, I think this is going to have an impact on really two companies. I think, first of all, this is going to make Red Hat and its parent company, IBM, a lot of money because a lot of Red Hat users that weren't paying for a license are now going to pay for a license. Now, they're gonna lose a lot of users, but a lot of the users weren't paying for a license anyway. So in the end, even though they're gonna piss off millions of people, I think it's going to be profitable for them, which they think that too. Otherwise, why would they be doing this? Another company, I think this will greatly benefit, I think it will greatly benefit Canonical because obviously they make a competing product with Ubuntu Server. And I think if you're looking for a corporate-backed Linux distribution, a server distribution that obviously is still open source, right? Ubuntu Server is probably where you'll wanna move to. And if you're scared that one day you might run into the same problem with Canonical, especially if Canonical gets purchased by another company that is not so free and open source software friendly, Debian, right? So I mean, there's plenty of great Linux server distributions. So if you just wanna leave all of this red hat madness behind, you know, check out Ubuntu LTS Server. If you want a corporate product that you can actually pay for support and get support for, or if you want just a pure community distribution that will never, ever go closed source, Debian GNU slash Linux is probably the best server distribution. And they actually call Debian, Debian GNU slash Linux because they're very heavily invested in the free software movement. They actually believe in the free software movement. So that would be my suggestion if you're looking for a place to go. But again, this only applies to server distributions. Those of us using our desktop Linux distributions like my arch-based distributions are not going to be affected. Those of you running all the various Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions, it doesn't matter. And even those of you that are using something like Fedora or RPM distributions like OpenSUSE, this has absolutely zero effect on any of our standard Linux desktop distributions. So don't worry, this isn't Linux Armageddon or anything. This is not the end of the world. Now, before I go, I do need to think a few special people. I need to think the producers of this episode. Gabe James Maxim, a homies too bald, Matt Mimic, Mitchell Paul, Royal West, Armored Dragon, Bash Potato Chuck, Commander Angry, George Lee, Marshdom, Mythos, Nate, Erion, Paul Peace, Archimdor, Polytech, Rialatis Royales, Red Prophet Roland, Tools Devler, Willie and Zenibit. These guys, they're my high steered patrons over on Patreon. Without these guys, this quick little episode about Red Hat going closed source, it wouldn't have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now, these are all my supporters over on Patreon. I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work, wanna see more videos about free and open source software, not like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, subscribe to Distro Tube over on Patreon. Peace. Remember when all the Red Hat fanboys used to tell us that Ubuntu was evil?