Dear Red Hat: Are you dumb?

Dear Red Hat: Are you dumb?

I've had a busy week, so I didn't have time until today to read this news about Red Hat locking down RHEL sources behind a Red Hat subscription.

I repeat the title: Red Hat, are you dumb?

When Red Hat decided to turn the community CentOS distribution into a leading-edge distro instead of basically "Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but free", users like me were justifiably angered.

I don't contribute to CentOS or Red Hat development much, if at all. But I have, for over a decade, provided software and tools that were compatible with RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, and sometimes other more exotic distros.

I could test my stuff against CentOS Stream... or UBI... or Fedora. Those are mostly like RHEL. Or I could try linking a Red Hat Developer subscription to my test runners and build tools so I could use a licensed copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, because that would be required for... actually ensuring compatibility.

But that's dumb.

So at this point, I have to say: fool me once, Red Hat—shame on you. Fool me twice?

At this point I'm determining whether I want to continue supporting just Fedora, or just dropping all support for RHEL and RHEL-like distributions on my open source projects. It's not worth the hassle if I'm not even sure projects like Rocky or Alma Linux can fill in the gap left by CentOS's demise for users like me.

And no, please don't post "but you can use your Red Hat Developer Subscription!" I don't have to with Debian. Or Ubuntu. Or Arch. Or... you get the point.

Update: Just wanted to point out two official statements, one from Alma Linux, another from Rocky Linux.