IBM did no favors here. We pay for Red Hat support on front facing stuff, but used Scientific Linux and then CentOS for over a decade on our backend stuff.

We have already been testing Ubuntu since the CentOS Stream thing caught us off guard. Now with the attacks on downstream players, we will not be paying for equivalent Red Hat licenses. We can’t afford it.

Funding is down. The global economy has been in a downturn for a while, and now the pandemic “free money” boost is done. Our budgets are shrinking.

IBM decided to squeeze their clients at the wrong time. It was a mistake. We are looking outside RHEL and its derivatives for the first time in over 2 decades.