[CentOS-devel] First round of RHEL programs announced

Thu Jan 21 11:04:27 UTC 2021
Ljubomir Ljubojevic <centos at plnet.rs>

On 1/20/21 2:14 PM, Mike McGrath wrote:
> Hi all, I know this was a hot topic on the list so I thought I'd share
> today's blog post which covers no-cost RHEL for small production
> workloads and no-cost RHEL for customer development teams.  Keep in mind
> there are other programs coming, these just got done first.
> 
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/new-year-new-red-hat-enterprise-linux-programs-easier-ways-access-rhel
> <https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/new-year-new-red-hat-enterprise-linux-programs-easier-ways-access-rhel>
> 
> Bullet Points:
> 
>   * Self-Support RHEL for no-cost in production use cases of up to 16
>     systems.
>   * No-cost RHEL for customer development teams (larger number of
>     systems for non-production cases).
>   * Available no later than February 1
>   * Single Sign-on via a Red Hat account, or Github, Twitter, Facebook
>     or other accounts (You'll soon not need to provide all kinds of
>     personal information like you used to).
> 

Hi. I am glad our relentless pestering was not for nothing, no-cost for
small production use is what will appease many who did not already
decided to switch to other distros (maybe even though who did not start
to actually convert to other distro's). Based on comments about 'what to
do next" some ~30% stated they will move to Debian/Ubuntu. I personally
have only one personal web/mail server and the rest are Samba + Windows
VM internal servers so I have to chose between TrueNAS that has ZFS + VM
+ excellent web config vs classical Linux server (at this point no-cost
RHEL is real option).

And I guess with no-cost RHEL's after a while RHEL market share will
rise  and Red Hat will be able to see direct impact of no-cost
production servers on market share.


I read announcement and few articles and comments on Facebook, and I
have few comments and questions.

1. Wording of the blog article has left me confused what exactly
"small-use production" means (exact definition) since no-cost license is
tied to "Developer" license which is for next 10 days still "no
production use". I had read it later somewhere on Red Hat site but the
blog it self is not explicit enough. So make sure texts clearly state
"Developer" status is only a legacy and production systems are allowed.

2. It is not clear if only server variants are allowed or if RHEL
Workstation variant will be able to register under Individual Developer
license. I use CentOS 8 on my laptop and have Apache + MySQL +
PostgreSQL installed although rarely used. What variant
Workstation/Server should be installed in such case and will there be
any limits what can be installed if one is chosen instead of the other
(I never installed RHEL aside from initial beta releases and will have
to research this first)? CentOS has all the packages from all the RHEL
variants accessible in single variant.

3. Users that register Individual Developer licenses should be warned
that they need to renew subscription every 365 days and that they should
not miss the date(?). Someone commented that if subscription is not
renewed before it expires they might be problems? Is that true, and what
are the problems if it is true? Notice that with no-cost production
licenses many who register will have no clue about registration process
(on any distro) and you should make everything about registration and
subscription as plain/simple as possible and explained as detailed as
possible (during the registration should be best).


-- 
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant