Open Stack

On 16/06/16 23:04, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2016-06-16 16:04:28 -0400 (-0400), Steve Gordon wrote:
> [...]
>> This is definitely a point worth clarifying in the general case,
>> but tangentially for the specific case of the RHEL operating
>> system please note that RHEL is available to developers for free:
>>
>>      http://developers.redhat.com/products/rhel/get-started/
>>      http://developers.redhat.com/articles/no-cost-rhel-faq/
>>
>> This is a *relatively* recent advancement so I though I would
>> mention it as folks may not be aware.
>
> Just to clarify, this is free-as-in-beer (gratis) and not
> free-as-in-speech (libre)? If so, that's still proprietary so I'm
> curious how that changes the situation. Would OpenStack welcome a
> project built exclusively around a "free for developer use" product
> into the tent?

The binaries are free-as-in-beer - IIUC you can't redistribute them. The 
source code, of course, remains free-as-in-speech as it has always been. 
(It's easy to forget the distinction when you work in Python all day and 
there are no binaries, but it's the source code that counts.) And of 
course there are freely-distributable binaries built from that source 
available in the form of CentOS.

So the question is mostly moot - we should *almost* never encounter a 
dependency on RHEL in particular (as opposed to EL builds in general - 
RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux/that Oracle thing/whatever). However in the 
tiny number of cases where there is one, I think it's entirely 
reasonable for the OpenStack community to require (a) that it not be a 
*hard* dependency; and (b) that a "level playing field" exists - i.e. 
the team must have no objection in principle to somebody using similar 
mechanisms to implement equivalent functionality for other operating 
systems.

(I should clarify that this is my personal opinion; I don't speak for 
Red Hat.)

I believe we follow that policy already anyway. e.g. TripleO never uses 
RHEL in the gate, only CentOS AFAIK.

cheers,
Zane.