quaddo

From TFA:

Some commentators are pointing out that it’s possible to sign up for a free Red Hat Developer account, and obtain the source code legitimately that way. This is perfectly true, but the problem is that the license agreement that you have to sign to get that account prevents you from redistributing the software.

So although the downstream distros could still get hold of the software source code, they can’t actually use it. In principle, if they make substantial modifications, they can share those, but the whole raison d’être of RHEL-compatible distros is to avoid major changes and so retain “bug-for-bug compatibility.”

Of course, they could take a “publish and be damned” attitude and do it anyway. At best, the likely result is immediate cancellation of their subscription and account. That could work but will result in a cat-and-mouse game: downstream distributors continually opening new free developer accounts, and the Hat potentially retaliating by blueprinting downloads and stomping on violators’ accounts. It would not be a sustainable model.

At worst, though, they could face potentially getting sued into oblivion.

ETA the full context.

Last year, CBS correspondent David Pogue commented on the sub’s “jerry-rigged” design before

A shame that this keeps getting brought up. Yeah, some of the stuff was super-basic. But the absolutely key component, ie, the pressure vessel itself, was anything but jerry-rigged.

That said, I’m really curious how the pressure vessel failed. My random guess is that the viewport glass (which may not have been glass at all) cracked and then ruptured. I know that one of the vessels that has been down to the Mariana Trench experienced glass cracking; that was definitely a sweaty palms moment for the crew.

Also, given that the hatch had to be bolted shut from the outside, I’ve been wondering whether they need to be set to specific torque values each time. Meaning, what would happen if they were unevenly torqued down? My bet is you’d get uneven warping where the hatch mates to the vessel cylinder. Even if the warping is microscopic at sea level, the stress differential would get magnified at depth.

It’s also got to be pretty rattling to folks like David Pogue who have already been passengers. I’ve heard David himself say he’s still trying to process it all. But there’s got to be an ample heaping dose of “holy shit, that could have been me if the dice had fallen differently”. It’s already started to bother me that he keeps getting pulled into interviews; the first one was fine, but to keep pressing him with “what are your thoughts/feelings”… I’d rather buy him a beer and talk about literally anything else, so he can have a breather.

I pointed out the whole ‘Gate’ coincidence to my wife just last night.

Thanks for this, it was definitely a nice overview. Not the first time I’d heard of NixOS, but I do seem to be seeing more frequent and more substantial discussions of it.

What I’m getting from all this, is that it looks to be a great way to set up reproducible desktop environments. And servers too, I suppose.

What I’m not getting from this: a compelling reason to switch from established players like RHEL and Ubuntu in combination with cloud-init and Terraform and the likes of Chef/Puppet/Ansible/Salt to spin up a cluster in the cloud, reconfigure, tear down, etc.

In case anyone is misreading me: this is not a dig at NixOS. It definitely looks interesting. Like, to the point that I’ll at least spin up a VM on my Manjaro laptop and see whether I should perhaps consider wiping and reinstalling with NixOS. The “configuration through code” is extremely appealing here.

My concern here is corporate inertia. And before anyone gets gets ready to launch a diatribe about how corporations don’t decide what the best tech is, I will agree with you. I’ve been around a while, and excitedly watched as Unix ramped up and displaced platforms like VAX/VMS and AOS/VS, using smaller and faster hardware. Then along came Linux and the battle for which distros would dominate.

As for configuration through code, I’ve been keeping a keen eye on things (tinkering when it’s been possible to do so) since the days of cfengine and Jumpstart. I used to share this site with anyone that would listen to me; it’s dated now, but the underlying principles are (were?) solid: http://infrastructures.org/

So for now, I think I’ll have to limit my professional NixOS usage to tinkering and potentially useful side projects. For personal usage? Yeah, it might become my daily driver, but I need to find the time to tinker.

I will say that I’m presently involved in an effort to test something out that has my company’s product available using rpm-tree. Not my decision, this is all being driven by a customer that has a lot of clout; they really, really want to use rpm-tree. It’s proven to be a bit onerous at times.

What this NixOS discussion has managed to do for me is to have me wondering whether a NixOS approach would have worked out better; my sense is that yeah, maybe it would have. But my feelings here might simply be the result of “woo, shiny new object”, which has definitely colored my opinions of things in my career of ~35 years. Something that I’ve had to restrain my excitement over, pending corporate sanity checks.