---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Yasha Karant <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: FWIW: AlmaLinux now available.
To: scientific-linux-users <[log in to unmask]>


I have not downloaded (and thus not installed) AL8.  From below:

> My recollection of a fresh install of SL (it has been a number of years,
and thus memory may be defective) is that SL provided a set of mirrors.
Is one to assume that AL8 has no such mirrors or that AL8 network
bootable media does not include the list so established?

The installation media for RHEL and AlmaLinux 8 do not list available
mirrors. Since it's the installation screen, it's not trivial to
cut&paste mirrors in from elsewhere, and you have to know from painful
personal experience that the multiple software channels do not have
repodata at their common root, and you need to installs from locations
like:

    https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__repo.almalinux.org_almalinux_8_BaseOS_x86-5F64_os_&d=DwIBaQ&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=ZaofRdHgfmovUmm0fI4JNI-rP1iVq8lV72rcADHtMIg&s=PAatBBittNI5FOviZTEOIZxrpkPqquxijmY0kNHQ2qM&e= 

Having to dig down to the "BasOS" or "AppStream" repos is part of the
"multiple channels" craziness I'm unhappy about with RHEL 8 and its
peers.

>This is similar to the comment I posted on AL8 based upon the AL web
site.  However, is IBM RH *required* to provide downloadable full source
(including any special "build" tools that are required), or to charge a
sensible price for distribution of the full source on physical media?

Depends on the software and the license. RHEL does not publish
"quota-devel" in their primary channels. Neither did CentOS, though
they later published it in the "Devel" channel. They are now
publishing source to all at git.centos.org.

> If IBM RH were to refuse to release buildable source identical to what
is used to produce IBM RHEL, given the large number of lawyers working
for IBM, could FSF, Linux, etc, do anything or would the matter be
litigated (essentially forever)?  All of the software is released

Depends on the license. For Ansible Tower, which is a commercial
software published by Red Hat, they don't publish RPM's or SRPM to the
world at large. They do publish AWX source code, which is the upstream
software for it, over at source code. But installing AWX is a moving
target and vulnerable to version skew of its dependencies due its
reliance on using "pip install" for *everything*.

> without any guarantees -- is there a guarantee that what IBM RH releases
in source will in fact be what is used internally within IBM RH to
generate the IBM RHEL binary installation?

I don't know of any license that requires this.