红帽对开源的承诺：对git.centos.org变更的回应

本文作者是红帽核心平台副总裁Mike McGrath，以下为他博客全文，我们进行了中文翻译，供您参考。

I spent a lot of time walking this weekend thinking about the reaction from our industry to my last blog post. We’ve been called evil; I was called an IBM exec who was installed to turn Red Hat closed source — and that’s only the “nice” stuff. So let’s clear things up. 

上周末，我花了很多时间思考业界对我上一篇博客的反应。有人称我们是邪恶的；有人称我是被安插进来将红帽变成闭源的IBM高管——这还只是其中较“友善”的说法。下面，有一些事情我们想澄清下。

My name is Mike McGrath, and I’m the Vice President of Core Platforms Engineering at Red Hat. I’ve been here for 16 years, and before I started working here, I was a volunteer in the Fedora Project. Open source and all that phrase entails are very important to me. Over the past week, I’ve seen many people say many unkind and untrue things about hard-working Red Hatters who, like me, value this work to its core.

我叫Mike McGrath，是红帽核心平台工程副总裁。我在红帽工作已有16年了，在加入红帽之前，我是Fedora项目的志愿者。开源，以及和开源相关的所有事，对我来说非常重要。过去一周，我看到很多人对我们辛勤工作的红帽员工说了很多不友善和不实的话，这些员工和我一样，非常看重我们所做工作的核心价值。

Despite what’s currently being said about Red Hat, we make our hard work readily accessible to non-customers. Red Hat uses and will always use an open source development model. When we find a bug or write a feature, we contribute our code upstream. This benefits everyone in the community, not just Red Hat and our customers.  

尽管目前有关红帽的言论不一，但我们一直确保我们的辛勤工作成果对非客户也是可获得的。红帽采用并将一直采用开源开发模式。当我们发现一个漏洞或编写一个新功能时，我们会向上游贡献我们的代码。这不仅造福红帽和我们的客户，也让社区中的每个人受益。

We don’t simply take upstream packages and rebuild them. At Red Hat, thousands of people spend their time writing code to enable new features, fixing bugs, integrating different packages and then supporting that work for a long time - something that our customers and partners need. 

我们不是简单地拿来上游软件包并进行重建。在红帽，成千上万的人花费时间编写代码，实现新功能、修复漏洞、集成不同的软件包，然后长期提供支持服务——这些是我们的客户和合作伙伴所需要的。

This is about the hours and late nights we spend backporting a patch to code that is now 5 to 10 years old or older; at any given time, we are supporting 3-4 major release streams, while applying patches and backports to all. Additionally, when we develop fixes for issues in RHEL, we don't just apply them to RHEL - they are applied upstream first, to projects like Fedora, CentOS Stream or the kernel project itself, and we then backport them. Maintaining and supporting an operating system for 10 years is a Herculean task - there‘s enormous value in the work we do.

这意味着我们花费了大量时间和无数个夜晚，将补丁反向移植到距现在已经有5到10年，甚至更久历史的代码上；无论何时，我们都在同时为3-4个主要版本流提供支持，同时对所有版本提供补丁和反向移植。此外，当我们为RHEL中的问题开发修复补丁时，我们不仅仅将其应用于RHEL——首先是应用于上游项目，例如Fedora、CentOS Stream或内核项目本身，然后再进行反向移植。维护和支持一个操作系统长达10年是一项艰巨的任务——我们所做的工作有着巨大的价值。

We will always send our code upstream and abide by the open source licenses our products use, which includes the GPL. When I say we abide by the various open source licenses that apply to our code, I mean it. I was shocked and disappointed about how many people got so much wrong about open source software and the GPL in particular —especially, industry watchers and even veterans who I think should know better. The details — including open source licenses and rights — matter, and these are things Red Hat has helped to not only form but also preserve and evolve. 

我们一直并始终向上游发送我们的代码，遵守我们产品使用的开源许可证，其中包括GPL。当我说我们遵守适用于我们代码的各种开源许可证时，我说的是事实。有那么多的人对开源软件和GPL产生如此多的误解，我感到震惊和失望，特别是行业观察者和那些即使是经验丰富的人，我认为他们应该更清楚事实的真相。细节，包括开源许可证和权利是很重要的，这些东西是红帽帮助形成的，也是红帽需要保护和发展的。

I feel that much of the anger from our recent decision around the downstream sources comes from either those who do not want to pay for the time, effort and resources going into RHEL or those who want to repackage it for their own profit. This demand for RHEL code is disingenuous. 

针对最近我们作出的围绕下游源代码的决定引起的愤怒，我感到这些愤怒情绪要么来自于那些不愿为生产红帽企业Linux需要付出的时间、精力和资源付费的人，要么来自那些因为自己的利益而想要重新打包它的人。这些对RHEL代码的需求是不诚实的。

We have to pay the people to do that work — those passionate contributors grinding through those long hours and nights who believe in open source values. Simply repackaging the code that these individuals produce and reselling it as is, with no value added, makes the production of this open source software unsustainable. That includes critical backporting work and future features and technologies under development upstream. If that work becomes unsustainable, it will stop, and that's not good for anyone.

那些在漫长的时间和夜晚中辛勤工作、相信开源价值观的热情贡献者，我们必须为他们的付出给予回报。将这些贡献者生产的代码仅仅拿来只是简单地重新打包，并进行原样转售，没有增加任何的价值，还让开源软件的生产变得不可持续。红帽提供的价值包括关键的反向移植工作，以及在上游进行开发的未来功能和技术。如果开源软件的生产方式变得不可持续，这些都将停止，对任何人都不利。

I want to specifically mention the rebuilders, different from distributions that might, for example, add a new architecture or compile flag (we fully support you in expanding Linux capabilities rather than imitating them). 

我想特别提到重新构建者，他们与那些可能添加新的架构或编译标志的发行版不同（我们完全支持您扩展Linux的功能，而不是模仿这些功能）。

There was a time, not too long ago, that Red Hat found value in the work done by rebuilders like CentOS. We pushed our SRPMs out to git.centos.org in a neat package that made them easy to rebuild; we even de-branded it for them. More recently, we have determined that there isn’t value in having a downstream rebuilder. 

不久之前，红帽发现（例如CentOS）重新构建者的工作具有价值。于是我们将SRPM包（源码包）推送到git.centos.org，让他们可以轻松重新构建；我们甚至为他们去除了品牌标识。最近，我们已经认识到，拥有下游重新构建者没有价值。

The generally accepted position that these free rebuilds are just funnels churning out RHEL experts and turning into sales just isn’t reality. I wish we lived in that world, but it’s not how it actually plays out. Instead, we’ve found a group of users, many of whom belong to large or very large IT organizations, that want the stability, lifecycle and hardware ecosystem of RHEL without having to actually support the maintainers, engineers, writers, and many more roles that create it. These users  also have decided not to use one of the many other Linux distributions.

曾经普遍认可的观点是，这些免费的重建版本只是为了培养RHEL专家，而并非是为了销售。我希望我们能够生活在那个世界，但现实并非如此。相反地，我们发现了一批用户，其中许多来自大型或超大型的IT组织，他们希望获得RHEL的稳定性、生命周期和硬件生态系统，而无需实际支持维护者、工程师、文档编写者和其他更多角色的RHEL的创造者。这些用户也决定不选择其他众多商业Linux发行版中的任何一个。

In a healthy open source ecosystem, competition and innovation go hand-in-hand. Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, AWS and Microsoft all create Linux distributions with associated branding and ecosystem development efforts. These variants all utilize and contribute Linux source code, but none claim to be “fully compatible” with the others.

在一个健康的开源生态系统中，竞争和创新是相辅相成的。红帽、SUSE、Canonical、AWS和微软都创建了与之相关的Linux发行版，并进行了品牌推广和生态系统开发工作。这些变体都使用并贡献Linux源代码，但没有一个声称与其他发行版“完全兼容”。

Ultimately, we do not find value in a RHEL rebuild and we are not under any obligation to make things easier for rebuilders; this is our call to make. That brings me to CentOS Stream, of which there is immense confusion. I acknowledge that this is a change in a longstanding tradition where we went above and beyond, and change like this can cause some confusion. That confusion manifested as accusations about us going closed-source and about alleged GPL violations. There is CentOS Stream the binary deliverable, and CentOS Stream the source repository. The CentOS Stream gitlab source is where we build RHEL releases, in the open for all to see. To call RHEL “closed source” is categorically untrue and inaccurate. CentOS Stream moves faster than RHEL, so it might not be on HEAD, but the code is there. If you can’t find it, it’s a bug – please let us know.

最终，我们没有找到重新构建RHEL的价值，并且我们没有义务让重新构建者的工作更加容易；这是我们的呼吁。当我们推出CentOS Stream，大家对它的存在感到困惑。我承认，这个决定改变了长期以来的传统做法，这种改变可能会引起一些困惑。这表现在指责我们“闭源”了，“违背”GPL协议。有CentOS Stream二进制可执行文件；就有对应的源代码库。CentOS Stream的位于GitLab的源代码仓库就是我们构建RHEL发布版的地方，对所有人都是公开的。称RHEL为“闭源”是绝对不真实且不准确的。CentOS Stream的更新速度比RHEL快，RHEL虽不一定指向最新代码，但代码就是在那里的。如果你找不到它，那就是个bug，请告诉我们。

We also provide no-cost Red Hat Developer subscriptions and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for Open Source Infrastructure. The developer subscription provides no-cost RHEL to developers and enables usage for up to 16 systems, again, at no-cost. This can be used by individuals for their own work and by RHEL customers for the work of their employees.  RHEL for Open Source Infrastructure is intended to give open source projects (whether or not they’re affiliated with Red Hat in any way) access to no-cost RHEL for their infrastructure and development needs.

我们还提供免费的红帽开发者订阅和用于开源基础设施的RHEL for Open Source Infrastructure。开发者订阅为开发人员提供免费的RHEL，并可在最多16个系统上使用，再次强调，这是免费的。个人可以将其用于自己的工作，而RHEL的客户则可将其用于员工的工作。RHEL for Open Source Infrastructure旨在为开源项目（无论是否与红帽有任何关联）提供免费的RHEL，满足其基础设施和开发需求。

Finally, I’d like to address every open source company out there, whether your code is open today or you’re considering moving to an open source model. By any measure, Red Hat has “made it” and I hope many open source companies can succeed as we have. You can decide for yourself whether downstream rebuilds are valuable for you and it’s your call to make it easy, or not. 

最后，我想对所有开源公司说，无论你们的代码目前是否开源，或者你们是否考虑转向开源模式。从任何角度来看，红帽都是完全开源的，一直采用开源开发模式。我希望许多开源公司能够像我们一样取得成功。你们可以自行决定下游重建是否对你有价值，并让这一过程变得容易还是不容易。

Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity.

如果是仅仅重新构建代码，而不对现有代码增加价值或进行任何修改，对于所有开源公司来说，这才是真正的威胁。这对开源来说是一个真正的威胁，有可能将开源重新变回到只适用于业余爱好者和黑客的活动。

We don’t want that and I know our community members, customers and partners don’t want that. Innovation happens in the upstream. Building on the shoulders of others is what open source is about. Let’s continue to drive innovation, support one another and keep moving forward.

我们不希望那样，我知道我们的社区成员、客户和合作伙伴也不希望那样。创新发生在上游。在他人的基础上进行建设性的工作正是开源的核心所在。让我们继续推动创新，相互支持，不断向前发展。

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