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.
Ok. I understand what you are saying, and there might be historical reasons for the founders of Rocky to believe they can defend better against a takeover by being a PBC. I don’t know if that’s true, I’m not a lawyer. The thing is that if an organization can legally make a profit, I don’t trust that it does not. I’m not trying to insult Greg Kurtzner, I don’t know him. But I wouldn’t need to trust him if they had made a non-profit.
And sure, Alma exists because of funding from corporate interests, but so does the Linux kernel, and GNOME, and probably a large percentage of free software. That’s the point of copyleft, when companies improve free software it remains free.
Personally I’ve never used RHEL, CentOS, Rocky Linux, or AlmaLinux. I was just curious why Fermilab and CERN chose Alma instead of Rocky, which I had heard about more. I found out and I believe they did the right thing, hence the headline. I have no fucking agenda. (maybe you do)
PS: The whole thing, including this post, assumes that Alma and Rocky have the same goal (which apparently is no longer true), and that non-profits can make no money (which… WTF IKEA).
