Posted on 09/21/2024 6:50:09 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Wind River, the Alameda-based software company that once upon a time was part of Intel, on Tuesday announced eLxr Pro, a commercial Linux offering tailored for enterprise use.
In a way, this release represents something of a new chapter in the brouhaha that started in 2020 and which resulted in several new Linux distributions after Red Hat ended support for CentOS, the community clone of its commercial operating system.
This time, however, the new distro isn’t based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but on Debian. It’s exactly the same software as eLxr, a Linux distribution that Wind River released back in July which is based on software that was initially developed for StarlingX, the company’s kubernetes platform, after Red Hat pulled the plug on CentOS.
“Like many companies in the industry, when the CentOS announcement came out we suddenly had a commercial product that we had a significant problem with,” Wind River’s chief technology officer Paul Miller told me in a recent interview. “We took a hard look at the market and the open source community and we decided to move StarlingX to a Debian-based operating system, and we did that to really align to a more pure open source methodology, so that frankly, our business couldn’t be controlled by another enterprise’s desires.”
That last point, about not being “controlled by another enterprise’s desires,” is why Wind River isn’t falling in line behind the RHEL clones, which created something of a cottage industry of subscription-free RHEL copies such as AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and others. This includes established players such as Oracle (which already developed and marketed its own modified RHEL clone), which teamed up with SUSE and the HPC-based startup behind Rocky Linux, CIQ, to create OpenELA, an organization tasked with working around Red Hat’s attempts to restrict access to RHEL’s source code.
“We generally feel, after spending a lot of time studying that part of the industry and the open source community, that continuing down any type of RHEL path inevitably ties you to the whims of Red Hat,” Miller said.
It’s rare these days to find a large commercial company that actually “gets” open source. Most want to treat open source as if it’s some kind of business model — which it’s not — and then get frustrated by the number of people who use their code for free, which by definition open source licenses allow. The folks at Wind River seem to understand that and design business plans specifically designed for open source licenses.
For example, when the company wanted to release and monetize its own server and edge versions of Linux, it started by releasing the software it’d developed as the community distribution eLxr, and then gave away any ownership rights it had to the property to the community.
“One of the fundamental concepts that we believed would be attractive to the industry is to fully release the open source software into the open source community with no sovereign rights from a commercial entity, including Wind River, over the name, over the code, or over the product,” Miller said. “In other words, by truly following an upstream first, true open source methodology.
“We see that as very different than what others are doing,” he added. “If we look at Red Hat with RHEL, and the way that Fedora and CentOS worked, that commercial entity Red Hat had a lot of control over the open source community.”
Miller pointed out that Red Hat isn’t the only example of a corporate entity enforcing ownership rights over Linux and open source projects.
“If you look at Canonical and Ubuntu, of course there’s a free version of Ubuntu, but Ubuntu itself is owned by Canonical, it’s not fully in the open source community, even though it is a derivative of Debian,” he said. “What we’ve chosen here is a bit brave in a way. We’ve decided to release 100% of the code into the community. We’ve decided to assert no commercial rights over the software or the name, and this allows the community to fully own the open source project.”
By the time the project was released in July, eLxr had been pre-scaled into two editions: eLxr Edge and eLxr Server. Edge is down-and-dirty, no frills, simple and basic, available for RISC-V and Arm processors. Data center-bound Server has pretty much everything enterprises need in a server OS, and is available in x86 and Arm versions.
At this point it would be fair to wonder what’s in it for Wind River. After all, it’s not in business to be a charitable institution, so it’s certainly expecting the time, effort, and money it spent developing and releasing the software to contribute to its bottom line. The answer, of course, is that it offers all sorts of paid support for users that want it or need it.
“If people want a commercially supported version of eLxr that allows them to get security updates and STIGs and the type of things that are important for certain commercial use cases, we’ll provide that as a paid service,” Miller explained.
That’s where eLxr Pro comes in, which because it’s the same code as eLxr is a “rose by any other name” sort of thing. If its downloaded and being used for free, it’s eLxr. Once support is purchased, it’s eLxr Pro.
“It is the exact same software,” Miller added. “In fact, eLixir pro is really a services and support offering against the eLxr Open Source Project.”
The support that Wind River is offering is pretty broad and seems to be something of a what-the-customer-needs smorgasbord. When asked what could be offered as part of a support package, Miller offered up as off-the-top-of-his-head examples: “compliance and hardening, such as STIGs, FIPS, and NIST compliance; managing security; configurations; doing configuration tuning as a service; validating against particular hardware platforms…”
I’m sure there’s more that he didn’t think of on the spur of the moment, just as I’m sure that if there’s something a user needs that isn’t already in a package, Wind River will be happy to supply a quote.
According to Miller, years of experience in the Linux arena has taught Wind River that customers generally want free — meaning no cost or restrictions — access to software when they’re getting their feet wet, kicking the tires, and determining how it might suit their needs.
“When they go to production, they often want a more formally supported version of the product, the way that companies do with Ubuntu Pro or RHEL,” he said. “That’s effectively what we’re offering here, except the notable difference is that we’re not restricting or controlling the open source community in any way. We feel, based on recent experiences with the CentOS issue and other things, that this is going to be welcomed by the community because it’s it’s a very open way of doing business.”
Turning a still-under-development open source project into a community project is not without precedent. When CloudLinux created the RHEL clone AlmaLinux (also in response to the killing of CentOS), the company almost immediately established it as a community owned and operated distro.
Anybody who wants to learn more about eLxr can do so on the distro’s website, where they can also download the software if they want to look under the hood and take it for a ride.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the eLxr Pro maintenance and support program is available on Wind River’s website.
With these two eLxrs, Wind River has created an interesting setup that’s completely cool and copacetic from an open source perspective. Whether it remains so after the inevitable happens and another company comes along and tries to poach Wind River’s customers with cheaper plans that do the same things remains to be seen. Based on my conversation with Miller, if I had money I’d bet that Wind River will pass that test just fine.
Then again, in 2018 I would’ve bet that Red Hat would still be practicing and evangelizing for “the open source way” in 2024, meaning CentOS would still be a thing and this article would be unnecessary.
Wow, Wind River’s still around? Haven’t heard anything from them in ages.
Red Hat is now owned by IBM.
Open source is not in IBM’s genetic makeup.
Their entire business model is to make businesses 100% dependent on IBM products and support.
It’s not surprising they killed the open source aspect of Red Hat soon after they purchased it.
Red Hat is evil.
Open source free with no support vs open source paid with support
Red Hat created Fedora to get people to test Red Hat for free ,LOL
If someone doesn't need that level of support and engineering, then there are plenty of options out there. Nonetheless, if you are just an ordinary "civilian", Red Hat allows 16 free installations for those who want to learn and hack and avail themselves to Red Hat educational resources. It's an excellent deal.
There are so many Linux choices out there like Ubuntu, or Fedora (a Red Hat spin off ) or SUSE or Debian, etc., there is something for every use case. There are no "enemies", only choices.
I know very little programming and/or technical info. regarding computers. I understand that using an open source Linux distro allows a user to have a extremely low cost pay model of an OS...where the user doesn’t need Microsoft or Apple to run their computer.
Aren’t there enough Linux distros, programming languages, and programs, robust enough to run a medium sized enterprise already? So that the exorbitant fees charged by Microsoft and Apple can be avoided? Why the need for users to require a large for profit based OS provider?
“Wow, Wind River’s still around? Haven’t heard anything from them in ages.”
Worked with VxWorks decades ago. Amazing it is still being used in critical applications!
Article: “What we’ve chosen here is a bit brave in a way. We’ve decided to release 100% of the code into the community. We’ve decided to assert no commercial rights over the software or the name, and this allows the community to fully own the open source project.”
For the enterprise, SuSE (SLES) is one of the main players and not the afterthought intimated by the article. But the maintenance subscriptions aren’t cheap.
In terms of Cloud computing, Amazon deserves mention for its Linux variants.
And no mention of Slackware — that ain’t right… lol
I jumped to Debian (from Red Hat) in 2000, for the package management. I haven't really looked back, other than some time with Ubuntu and Mint.
Downloading the iso now.
Open source free with no support"If it breaks you get to keep the parts."
vs open source paid with support
Which makes total sense to me. If nothing else, there are situations where regulatory compliance requires one to have supported software.
Interesting. I find Red Hat's package management (DNF) to be much more powerful and flexible than Debian's APT.
What does Wind River have against a bunch of older women meeting for lunch?
LOL! Wrong Red Hat.
Interesting. I find Red Hat's package management (DNF) to be much more powerful and flexible than Debian's APT.
At the time (2000-ish) it wasn't. Not that I could find.
That's probably true. DNF didn't exist yet, and yum was still in its infancy.
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