this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Rocky Linux is for-profit! I'd chose AlmaLinux (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by tram1@programming.dev to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I was curious why CERN and Fermilab chose AlmaLinux instead of Rocky Linux. After googling, I found out that the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation, which controls Rocky Linux, is a public-benefit corporation. This is a for-profit type of corporation, unlike what the name suggests. The AlmaLinux OS Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit, which in my mind is clearly the type of organization that should control such an OS.

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[–] digdilem 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your headline is sensationalist and inaccurate, and your description has only partial truths. You need to appreciate some history to understand that Rocky is not for profit and why. This isn't anti-Alma, which was founded and is supported by Cloudlinux - a commercial company by the way - because that's not actually important either.

Rocky Linux is owned by RESF which is owned by Greg Kurtzner, backed by a board of trustees. Greg, together with Jason "Rocky" McGaugh, created CentOS Linux back in 2004. Since then, Redhat "Embraced, extended and then extinguished" CentOS Linux through gaining legal ownership of the project and its name, and control of its board of trustees.

When Redhat (through control of CentOs' board) finally pulled the rug (with very little notice) on CentOS 8 in 2020, Greg figured he could correct the organisational mistakes made with CentOs that allowed Redhat to kill it. He talks about that here In honour of Jason, who has since died, he named the new distro Rocky.

Rocky must be owned by a legal entity, and they chose a PBC - the reasoning is described very clearly on Rocky's website here and it's made clear that it is not for profit. It's possibly that might change, sure, but somewhere along the line you have to look at the bigger picture and decide to trust a distro. I trust Rocky. I also trust Debian and OpenSuse. And, because they've also proved themselves honest and transparent ** despite being founded and sponsored by a commercial company** , I trust Alma. All are good choices. The beautiful part about all these good, open and free distributions is you can choose which you want to use, that you're not locked into them and whether you want to contribute or not.

There /is/ a link to CiQ with Rocky via Greg, and CiQ is commercial, but Rocky itself is not, is definitely NOT for profit, and there's no need to pay CiQ a bean if you don't want to.

Anyone can pick holes in any distribution. They can take any part of the legal structure and present it to suit their own agenda, or misunderstand the whole.