You were very clear

> screw over our community

For some definition of community.

From my observation point, I see that Rocky already has some sizeable following. Esp, from research community.

We do indeed. Adoption numbers are promising <https://rocky-stats.tiuxo.com/auto.html> but community size is enormous as well. 9071 folks on https://chat.rockylinux.org, ~300 folks on IRC, ~4100 folks on the forum, etc.

Adoption by many large organizations / businesses was also quite fast. And may have even caused us some trouble, I suspect the attention garnered by NASA's use of Rocky Linux had something to do with instigating Red Hat's recent antics.

The charts really look impressive. I didn't expect such an uptake. The funny thing is, people have tried it first (ephemeral instances), then started to migrate.

Fascinating. No wonder why Red Hat got a little irritated.

What are you trying to imply here Paolo?

That there is a community around enterprise Linux that you chose not to participate in, and that is the Fedora ELN/CentOS Stream community.

And that I think I am finally understanding the differences between Alma and Rocky.

The difference was painfully obvious about 3-4 months in, this only confirms it. Everyone here keeps asking why would one pick AlmaLinux over literally anything else, while I'm sitting here asking myself how would anyone risk running his business on a distribution built on such a shady foundation, from sources obtained in a metaphorical back alley. Feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen, I wouldn't want to be on the receiving side of that for sure.

We participate in the Enterprise Linux community just fine. Our community members report bugs and throw patches at upstream projects, run SIGs creating value for EL, maintain Fedora and EPEL packages, etc.

You're talking about the users' community (and I have nothing to complain about that) and generic upstream; however I am talking about the builders' community instead.

Can you elaborate how the patches, bug reports, package maintenance, etc, do not benefit the "builders' community"? They all go to the same upstream.

And what exactly do you mean by "builders' community", do you actually mean "Red Hat"?

By "not participate in" do you mean "not pay your employer"? Which we do, actually. Just wired a good chunk of money to Red Hat the other day, ostensibly earmarked for supporting the Fedora project.

The builders community is where the next EL is built. It's Fedora ELN and CentOS Stream. You made your choice to keep focusing on "bug-for-bug" downstream instead, that's fine but I like it less than working together with Red Hat, Alma, Facebook, Intel and others.

> ostensibly earmarked for supporting the Fedora project.

Thanks for that. I never said you don't support the rpm-/Fedora-based ecosystem as a whole, and I appreciate that you also do so monetarily.

> there is a community around enterprise Linux that you chose not to participate in, and that is the Fedora ELN/CentOS Stream community.

> I never said you don't support the rpm-/Fedora-based ecosystem as a whole,

Er. Really?

This is the dichotomy it pains me to see. Users who contribute are builders. That's the open source way. You don't have to be on a SIG or involved in the monthly meetings of an advisory council to contribute value to open source projects.

Maybe this dichotomy prompted the whole "hackers and hobbyists" imagined threat.

By builders I mean specifically those users that work with the full set of RPMs of the distro. It's not a badge of honor, it's a specific and very specialized way to consume what a distro offers.

In the case of EL, Fedora and CentOS Stream are communities that office both users and builders, but the two groups congregate in different places. For example EPEL is targeted at the user community but it is outside the focus of the builder community. ELN is of interest to builders but it is outside the focus of the user community.

All users can choose to contribute (with bug reports, code, whatever) at either the upstream or the distro level; or they can just be users. Builders are a (very small) subset of the people who consume a distro, and like all users they can choose how much to participate in the community and whether to be contributors or not.

The builders enable the downstream users, though.

But that ship sailed, the good of the downstream users' contributions are not enough to cancel out the negative net value of the builders' bad behavior.

I absolutely haven't said I consider builders bad and I also was careful not to say rebuilders! I am being very careful with my words. Please don't put things I didn't say in my mouth.

However: unfortunately part of what you said is true. Red Hat apparently took this decision because of some new facts that caused the negative from the "rebuilders" to increase, and the decision had the potential of hurting the users of the rebuilds.

Fortunately it's clear now that there are multiple ways for the downstreams to adapt[1]. Users will be able to keep their distros and—if they wish—contribute in a number of ways to the community. And builders and Red Hat will be able to collaborate in a shared place which is ELN for major released and Stream for minor releases. In a sense this removes excuses from Red Hat and should make everyone feel safer.

[1] you could say despite Red Hat's change, and I accept that. But it's also thanks to Red Hat going overall beyond the requirements of the open source licenses, with things such as Stream and the UBI source container.

Thank you for that.

This also decides the Alma vs Rocky question for me. Rocky wins.