Linux

I am not concerned at all, mostly because I do not think that they have taken any anti-user actions recently.

There is no circumstance, where I as a user, either as a personal user or in my professional capacity as someone running production systems, am affected by their source code decision. It's only an issue if I decide I want to release a Green Hat Linux AND I want to be their customer.

The GPL does not force them to do business with me, and it does NOT require them to distribute source to me if they did not distribute the software to me. Many people may consider this move against the spirit of the GPL, and I think that's what is causing most of the anger. Well maybe it's time for a new GPL then that codifies that and explicitly says that, and start the herculean effort of driving adoption of that new license. It didn't go well for GPLv3 or AGPL.

Now the Fedora telemetry proposal... is just that, a proposal. They are being transparent about "hey we are considering this, what do y'all think?". Well, they're certainly getting feedback on what the community thinks about that.

Here, people are angry that they are even considering the idea of telemetry. This is understandable. People treat telemetry like it's a dirty word, because Microsoft and co. have made it so. Telemetry can be used for nefarious purposes, there is no doubt about that.

I believe that telemetry can be a good thing when it is done correctly. The question of whether the box should be checked by default is an important one, they need to be careful that users actually understand and having it enabled is an informed decision and not something they click past without comprehending. As long as the data collected is restricted, strictly filtered to avoid fingerprinting and leaking user data, this can be used to improve the software. Without any data on how your users experience your software, you are flying blind and throwing darts at your codebase trying to make improvements. The people filing bugs are usually not representative of the average user or their experience. Basic information like "does anyone even use this" or "how reliable is this feature" can help them prioritize their efforts.

I'll take a trust but verify approach on this. The client side code of Fedora is all open source, so if I have concerns I can take a look at exactly what it is doing and raise the alarm if there's problems. I'm sure someone will make a Fedora De-telemetrified Spin I can switch to in that case. After all Fedora is not RHEL, their source issue is orthogonal to this one.

If you made it this far, you may think I made some reasonable points... or you think I'm on Red Hat's payroll (I'm not). Well, I gave it straight as asked, this is how I feel. I'm a user if both RHEL and Fedora and I'm not planning to change that anytime soon.

I think it will be fine, but I'd personally rather not support their behavior. Arch and Debian are fine for me.

Not worried at all. Their source code controversy mostly hurts companies that want to run RHEL without paying IBM, as after these changes distos like Alma Linux and Rockey Linux might diverge more from RHEL and they will have a harder time to guarantee bug-for-bug compatibility.

Fedora is not trying to steal business and government contracts away from RHEL and as a normal user you don’t need this bug-for-bug compatibility anyway. You can just sign up for a RedHat developer account and download RHEL Server for free, this includes a GUI everything you need to run it on a workstation. You can even view the source code trough their website.

So I am not worried that CentOS stream or Fedora will go away, RedHat is not trying to hurt consumers, they just want that enterprises (that are interested in support contracts) actually pay them when they use the work they put into RHEL. If they want a free version, they can still use CentOS stream.

I am not worried at all. Fedora and CentOS Stream are upstream of RHEL and I don't see them giving up community-driven development in either of those projects.

I guess Debian had it right all along. Free and Open Source Software is important.

Not remotely.

Maybe certain people should think twice about setting up an entire business model of support based on having the current company do all the engineering work, cloning it, and then taking the support contracts for it.

Both Fedora and CentOS Stream are still very much upstream. Just certain CentOS alternatives are throwing a hissy-fit/tantrum that their nice neat little "cloned distro + support" business model fell apart overnight because they built their entire business off of what's basically (not entirely) a loophole.

Red Hat controls Fedora, anyone saying Fedora is independent is just spouting nonsense.

I've been on Fedora all this time because I loved Red Hat. Oh, how wrong I was.

Single users really don't need to worry much. If you really want to use Fedora, keep using it. But even if you get burned somehow in the future, it's not hard to switch to some other distro. Just make sure your data is relatively portable. You do that normally, right?

If you're a sysadmin, though, you should think carefully with anything Red Hat based.

Fedora is community owned, it's just the upstream for RedHat. RHEL is based on Fedora. So I don't really think there's a cause for concern, unless RedHat uses its powers within the Fedora project (some people involved with the Fedora project are RedHat employees) to make things worse for Fedora but if they do, Fedora will lose users, so RHEL will lose free testers.

To be honest, very worried. I used Fedora as my main for about a decade but these days, I just don't care for it anymore, and every piece of news that comes out about IBM and Red Hat makes me even more worried about the future. Sure, it's ostensibly community-driven, but Red Hat has historically been very involved with it.

Hopefully I'm wrong, and I'm sure someone will tell me I'm wrong, but Arch and Debian seem to have the best chances at a good future these days.

Yeah I am a bit salty about all of the whole "Opt-out" telemetry thing. I know its just a proposal but just feels a bit slimy.

Fedora is upstream of RHEL which is supposed to result in a mutually beneficial arrangement where Fedora users are essentially testers / bug reporters of code that will eventually make its way into RHEL. Its just part of the collaborative, fast, and "open" nature of FOSS. Adding sneaky/opt-out telemetry just feels like a slap in the face.

super small ex. I am a big Podman user these days, and have submitted a few bug reports so the Podman github repos which has been fixed by RedHat staff. This makes it faster for them to test and release stable code to their paying customers. Just a small example but it adds up across all users to make RHEL a better product for them to sell. Just look into the Fedora discussion forum, there is so much bug reporting and fixing going on that will make its way to RHEL eventually.

Making and arguing for "Opt-out only" telemetry is just so tone deaf to the Linux community as a whole, but I think they got the memo after the shit storm that ensued over the past few days.

But HEY one of the biggest benefits of Linux is that I can pretty painlessly distro hop. I've done it before and can do it again. All my actual data is on my home server so no sweat off my back. openSUSE is looking pretty good, maybe I will give it a try.

I don't give a shit about fedora but I'm very worried about the future of Linux as a whole, red hat has an undisputable importance in the Linux ecossistem and these movements maybe are a signal that IBM don't give a fuck about that

Not even a little bit.

It inspired me to move on. I'm running OpenSUSE now. I don't really want to be involved in RedHat-related products in any way. Between redhat and the talk of telemetry, I'm out.

When kernel-0.96 came public, i checked it out on my Amiga as it was released for Motorola chips as m68k .. and still is :)

Then RedHat came with their first distro, so i had it running on a Motorola 68060 for some time. It was the swap from i386 to i686 and later, with Vesa local bus, my Amiga lost the performance race. Then, a good friend gifted me an i686 PC. WindowsXP was on it and boah, what a crazy shit that was. Filenames and libraries had stupid names and in a file hirarchy, everything was just dumb there, so installed RedHat on that and since then it was all good.

Fedora came, RedHat closed their enterprise buisness sector and then we had Fedora. Up until doday im using it and enjoy the community, wich has a very scientific and innovative spirit. Fedora was always one of those distros, going new ways on a stable and solid base, thanks to RedHat.

Even if RedHat would drop out completely with their Fedora support - wich will never happen - Fedora would be mature enuff to survive. Should Fedora nontheless go for another path wich im not happy with, ill change, but it does not look like that

So nope, im not worried a single bit^^

Only a little. The only thing I'm really worried about is IBM (maybe secretly) forcing Red Hat to reduce or cut its involvement with Fedora to save money. Without Red Hat's help, Fedora might struggle, but I don't think it will die or be corrupted as a result of whatever's going on.

Also, while I don't have the full picture, I heard that the whole "closed source" thing was an exaggeration in the first place. So maybe there isn't really much to worry about. We'll just have to see of course. I like Fedora a lot, but I can just switch if I need to, so I'm not really letting this worry me.

I'm choosing to divest and look for more opportunities to help community ran distros to better fill that niche. Maybe NixOS or Guix as system os and rke2 and flatpak for the rest of services and apps.

If the time comes, that Fedora doesn't fit me, I will go back to good old Debian.

IDK, I don't use Fedora anymore and all the redhat problems lol using RPM sounds meh

I don't care about it at all. If you want freedom from corporations, use community owned distros.

@shapis
I'm gonna keep using fedora for now, largely becouse I don't want to go to the effort to set certain things up all over again, but I'm at least paying enough attention to what's going on that if they do something I see as to far I'll switch

Still not sure what too though

As someone who hasn’t really been following, what anti-user decisions are those?

I don't see the big deal around the issue. It does not impact me as a non enterprise user.

i use arch btw

Not at all. There are many many projects out there which should be killed anyway. Just stop using them.

Not worried at all, I've moved on many years ago.

Very

Not at all. RHEL is still the standard in my field of work and I'm not seeing that going away any time soon. So it makes sense for me to stay in the ecosystem for career development. If I see any evidence of future changes in Fedora that compromises privacy or security I might change my mind.