RHEL no longer open source?

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Redhat announced that they no longer will be providing source access for RHEL via git.centos.org and also making Centos Stream the center of development for future version of RHEL. Customer can still get the RHEL source via the customer portal if they have a subscription.

This caused outrage in the community. RHEL clone such as Alma Linux and Rocky Linux fetch source code from git.centos.org to build a bug-to-bug compatible version with RHEL. Both communities still assesing this recent development to determine their course of action going forward.

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This is what Fedora Project Leader, Matthew Miller said:-

Sure, but... that's the opposite of the direction things are going.
Previously, what happened to make a major RHEL release was:

1. Some Fedora Linux Release -> an internal bootstrap
2. ... a year or so of secret work ...
3. RHEL Beta
4. RHEL Release
5. CentOS Linux rebuild
6. Internal RHEL build process, internal work on minor release
7. RHEL updates appear in publiuc
8. CentOS Linux rebuilds of those.

There's no connection to Fedora beyond the intial fork, and a lot of work
done inside Red Hat without any transparency.

Now, CentOS Stream brings that to the surface:

1. Fedora Rawhide continually updated
2. ELN maintained in parallel, as part of Fedora
3. At some point, ELN branched to new CentOS Stream
4. ... a year or so of CentOS Stream development in public ...
5. RHEL Beta forked from that, released
6. Work on RHEL updates visible in CentOS Stream
7. Updates appear in CentOS Stream
8. Updates released to RHEL

Note that with CentOS Stream 10 / RHEL 10, step 3 here will _maintain git
history from Fedora, which is a big improvement in preserving all of the
incredible, valuable work from Fedora contributors.

All of this is the exact opposite of Red Hat preparing to make some new base
for RHEL. Additionally, this model provides a clean path for
Red-Hat-opinionated decisions to differ from those we make from Fedora. Take
BTRFS as an example. Or, the increase in CPU baseline. Like this:

Fedora Linux: Community Space

• Community engineering decisions
• No special code privileges due to your employer
• Community-run infrastructure with RH investment, significant resources
  from Amazon, contributions from other companies
• Community quality engineering with RH investment
• Community support
• No cost

CentOS Stream: Shared Space

• Red Hat Engineering decisions with community input
• Pull requests from the community, approval from Red Hat engineers
• Red Hat-provided and maintained infrastructure
• Red Hat quality engineering with partner and community involvement
• Community support
• no cost

Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Product Space

• Red Hat Engineering decisions with customer input
• Red Hat engineers and only RH engineers do the work
• Red Hat infrastructure
• Red Hat quality engineering (mostly done in Stream, though)
• Enterprise support
• Subscription, including low- and no-cost options

Previously, we had a whole convoluted thing which people tried to describe
in terms of MC Escher paintings. This is far better, and Fedora is in a
better place. In the earlier setup, CentOS was sometimes positioned as a
competitor (although generally, those of us working in the actual Fedora and
CentOS communities didn't have any interest in playing that game.)

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/PPM7P7IZYJZRVHS6LCFHVVIJ6FGWUPD4/

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And from Aleksandra Fedorova, RHEL/CentOS Stream CI Engineer:-

On 6/21/23 22:26, Gerald Henriksen wrote:
...

CentOS Stream topic is still confusing to many, thus I am going to use
the opportunity to mention two talks which I have provided at FOSDEM
2022 [1] and Open Infra Summit 22 [2] on the matter:

[1]
https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/centos_stream_stable_and_c...
[2]
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/centos-stream-talk-at-openinfra-su...

I also have a leaflet version [3] for those who prefer text.

[3] https://gitlab.com/bookwar/centos-leaflet/-/blob/main/centos-leaflet.pdf

---

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that people refer to upstream
development, Fedora development and CentOS/RHEL development using just
one word - development, while in reality these are three very different
activities, and all of them are required for the RHEL existence.

You can not replace upstream with RHEL development, you would have to
create new upstream for that. The same way you can not replace Fedora
development with RHEL/CentOS Stream development, it is a very different
thing and you would need to create it.

The second part comes from thinking of CentOS Stream as something in the
middle, between Fedora and RHEL. CentOS Stream is a rebuild of RHEL. It
is a rebuild of exactly RHEL sources taken from the same git tree as
RHEL builds take those sources. It is not a middle - it is RHEL.

---

So let's look at the sources story closely:

1. How it was before Stream:

there was an internal git tree. RHEL Engineers would commit RHEL changes
to that tree, changes would be built into RPM and SRPM. On release, RPM
and SRPM would be published for RHEL customers. On that release date
CentOS engineers would take the published SRPM, unpack it, and upload
the content to the centos git repo.

So CentOS git essentially contained the "exploded SRPMS". No git history
was available.

CentOS Engineer then would go to CentOS Koji and build the CentOS
package from that exploded source

2. How it was after Stream but Before the announcement:

There is a public git tree on GitLab.com [4] RHEL Engineers commit
changes to it. RHEL engineers build CentOS package in public Stream Koji
and RHEL package internally from the same git commit. CentOS package
becomes public, RHEL package goes into RHEL repository.

[4] https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/rpms/glibc

As soon as RHEL package is released, the SRPM for a RHEL package becomes
available. CentOS Engineer would take that SRPM, unpack it and upload
the content to CentOS Git.

But the CentOS package for that RHEL SRPM has already been built weeks ago.

So now we have CentOS package, which is available for weeks in Koji, its
sources available for the same two weeks on GitLab [4], with proper git
history, MR history, and test history. And then a there is a second set
of CentOS sources (exploded rpms, no history), which are not really
CentOS sources anymore, because CentOS doesn't build anything from them.

3. So what happened?

• CentOS Engineers will not be producing that git repo of exploded SRPMs
  anymore because there is no need for them in CentOS project.

• Red Hat recommends to take RHEL sources from CentOS Stream
  repositories because that is the actual source from which RHEL packages
  are built by RHEL Engineers.

Can you still get access to SRPMs and create exploded sources repo -
Yes. But there is no practical reason for Red Hat or for CentOS Project
to maintain such a service.

There is no change in Fedora or with anything related to Fedora.

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From Michal Schorm, RHEL engineer:-

I'm a Red Hat employed engineer, working on all Fedora, CentOS Stream and RHEL.
This is what each means for me in particular (but should also be
applicable in general) in practice:

• RHEL - only when I'm bound by some legal requirement (embargo, etc.)
  I do work 'RHEL only' (not visible in CentOS stream).
  In practice, such work is expected to be seen in CentOS Stream once
  the legal barrier falls / expires.

• CentOS Stream - all work (except abovementioned) for RHEL is done here.
  The code has been available here (for 2 years already for C9S):
  https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/
  Are you missing anything? (codebase-wise)
  This means my work on RHEL is visible unlike ever before. Open to
  submissions via merge requests
  Also merge requests where I develop changes are open to
  examination during my development of them. (unlike anytime before)

• Fedora - unlike RHEL or CentOS, this is the place where I can
  develop new features.
  I don't have this space downstream.
  So tuning packaging, trying out various enhancements, adopting big
  upstream changes, packing latest greatest upstream releases.
  All that will be branched to form a new RHEL one day. This is the
  only way for me to introduce big changes.
  As I see it, both RHEL and Fedora profit from that to maximum.

And I don't expect this relationship to go away anytime soon.

However I might have misunderstood the core of this discussion.

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While words from RHEL/Fedora/Centos saying the Centos Stream is basically RHEL, many complained that there are many bug/security fixes not available in Centos Stream. Centos Stream/RHEL engineer responded this usually technical issues when the engineer made the fix in RHEL, they forgot push that changes into Centos Stream as well, and not a policy or bad business intention from Redhat.