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+---
+title: Disruption from Google and Red Hat
+date: "2023-06-27T14:59:08-05:00"
+draft: false
+---
+
+I was 10 minutes from boarding an airplane when I learned
+(by way of a Fireship video)
+that Google Domains was getting the ax.
+That was a terrible way to kick off 3 hours offline.
+
+I have been using Google Domains as my sole domain registry since I began
+self-hosting seven years ago.
+It had a dead-simple interface.
+It offered every feature I needed without any click-throughs to authorize
+'add ons' or 'premium services'.
+It never tried to sell me a nonsense WYSIWYG site builder.
+It was just a domain registry service.
+For all of that, I was happy to pay the 'premium' over at-cost registries.
+
+Google has unfortunately killed off yet another spin-off.
+I've heard for years about Google's track record in this sphere, but I'd never
+actually been *inconvenienced* by it.
+(Okay, technically I had a Google+ account back in the day, but I assure you
+that no tears were spilled on its behalf.)
+
+So... *migrating registries*.
+I re-researched the market and decided that it was time to join the Cloudflare
+hype train.
+Their interfaces are fine, they aren't too annoying with the upsell marketing.
+It's not a terrible experience.
+It actually was easier to do than I expected, including setting up dynamic DNS
+for my home IP address.
+
+Things that are *not* fun:
+teaching myself how to host an email server on a deadline.
+Google Domains made email relaying incredibly simple as long as you were
+already using GMail.
+So jump to today;
+I have *dozens* of subscriptions and resumes using custom email addresses
+that *actually* were being relayed by the Google monolith.
+Even my PGP key would be affected by a DNS migration.
+
+Luckily I have been playing with containerized MTAs for the last couple months
+so I had some foundation to start with.
+Not only could I configure and deploy a server rapidly, I knew how to debug it
+with `telnet`.
+That head start is probably what saved me.
+All that was left to do was:
+ * SPF
+ * DMARC
+ * reverse DNS
+ * port forwarding and firewalling
+ * Cyrus authentication
+ * figuring out what Google wants from me before it's willing to just connect
+ a server that is *definitely listening* and is *definitely doing STARTTLS
+ correctly*, it's not like I'm asking you to *accept an email from my server*
+ just *send an email to my server*, it can't be *that* complicated *please*
+
+I still don't fully understand what ritual Google finally relented on.
+Some people online suggested that *a* DMARC policy had to be published before
+the GMail servers would be willing to acknowledge you.
+Others suggested that the `EHLO` name really mattered.
+I sent about 60 test emails over the course of 36 hours.
+It took until the 14 hour mark for the first one to get through,
+but I have no idea what I changed for that magical moment.
+20+ hours later, some mysterious queue was just beginning to open the
+floodgates on all the rest.
+
+So I have fully migrated off of Google Domains and taken steps to migrate off
+of GMail to boot.
+I've learned my lesson, too.
+Won't catch me dead on GCP.
+
+----
+
+Red Hat also seems to have decided to shoot themselves in the foot this week.
+They seem to be fond of disruption over there, and I'm usually in favor.
+Even if I don't like what they do (i.e. `systemd-resolvd`),
+once in a blue moon they knock it out of the park (i.e. rootless `podman`).
+They light a fire under other Linux projects to keep up-to-date with
+emerging standards and optimizations (i.e. Python packaging backends).
+They've also demonstrated a willingness to pick a fight when it should be
+had (i.e. Google *(deja vu?)* cutting off Chromium)
+
+Unlike many people (I'm sure),
+I never had a problem with the idea of CentOS Stream.
+Hard to fear a rolling release distro when you live on Arch, I suppose.
+Losing the stable releases was unfortunate but heavy delays on version 8
+guaranteed that some poor news was in the wind.
+(For the record: RHEL 8 beta in 2018; RHEL 8 released May 7, 2019; CentOS 8
+release *September 24th*, 2019.)
+Better for the project to reform into something still useful,
+than to buckle and fold under the pressure of maintaining such a major
+piece of infrastructure.
+
+That was the point of CentOS in my mind: infrastructure.
+Am I ever going to buy a RHEL license for my personal projects?
+Of course not.
+But my employers are *(too?)* happy to shell out money for software with
+security and support guarantees.
+Having an open source, ABI-compatible project means that I can develop
+tools and experience in a compatible environment.
+It also enables developers to keep the RHEL audience in mind when testing
+and deploying updates
+The only thing better than using custom and purpose-built tooling
+is using tooling that I didn't have to write.
+All of these were powered by CentOS as infrastructure.
+
+Losing CentOS stable releases was unfortunate, but we move on.
+We try to understand what issues and scarcities caused the project to stumble,
+and try to fix them in the next project.
+Any many people were happy to step forward with their own ideas.
+Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux are both great projects that I hope to try soon.
+
+Red Hat now wants to close their source code.
+It's a sad day and it's inevitable that RHEL will be the ultimate loser.
+Downstream projects will probably migrate towards packaging CentOS Stream.
+They will continue to work perfectly for everyone *outside* of enterprise.
+Eventually enterprise users will have a mess on their hands,
+but deep pockets are not endless pockets.
+At some critical mass of developer hours spent,
+RHEL will go the way of AIX and Solaris.
+In a couple decades we will talk about RHEL the same way sages speak of
+mainframes.
+
+I can understand why the barrel was aimed at their own feet,
+but I can't understand why no one stopped them from pulling the trigger.
+