7 ms·

Imagine a Red Hat evil twin, developing an Arm64 port behind the closed doors, releasing it under SSPL, requiring a CLA and not accepting merge requests for a p

Imagine a Red Hat evil twin, developing an Arm64 port behind the closed doors, releasing it under SSPL, requiring a CLA and not accepting merge requests for a potentially paid feature, Windows on Arm64 support.

geodel 6y ago
Yeah imagine of the evil of asking money from customers for work done or service provided. Never heard such thing in human history.
- andrewshadura 6y ago
  No, the evil of pretending to be open source and pro community, but only really caring about $£€.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    If the community chooses MIT/BSD inspired licenses, they don't care about such companies coming into action.
    - josephcsible 6y ago
      How often does the community choose a non-copyleft license? What I always see is a company choosing a non-copyleft license.
      - spijdar 6y ago
        I'm a sample size of one, but I often pick a permissive BSD/MIT license for the personal software I develop, and at times will pick BSD-licensed over GPL-licensed software. I prefer the brevity and clarity of the shorter licenses, personally. I've also found that, sometimes, if there are two similar projects with a BSD vs GPL split, the BSD project tends to be more pragmatic and focused on the product/code more, while GPL projects err towards ideology, possibly at the cost of functionality. OpenSSH vs lsh as an example.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        All the time, in the OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD ecosystems. In fact, being anti-GPL has become kind of fashionable, so there you have it.
ryukafalz 6y ago
Thankfully they couldn't; OpenJDK is released under the GPL. Copyleft works, people!
- Alupis 6y ago
  > Thankfully they couldn't; OpenJDK is released under the GPL. Copyleft works, people! Not quite. There are many commercial JDK/JVM offerings that are closed source and survive very well with their "secret sauce" (usually GC related), such as Azul's Zing JVM. Red Hat's customer base that used JavaEE containers (and just Java code in general) was large enough that Red Hat could have easily decided to implement and maintain their own JDK offering - but they didn't. Probably based on Red Hat's history of being a good open source "netizen", they chose to use the GPL code even though they did not have to. We're all better off because of Red Hat's contributions to OpenJDK (porting to 64 bit ARM included) - but that's not exactly "Copyleft works!".
  - ece 6y ago
    Redhat is a big contributor to OpenJDK, so there's really less of a "maybe not" than you think. Even Azul maintains an OpenJDK distribution, so copyleft is playing a part in keeping things more open and supported than not.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      The part OP missed, and perhaps you may be overlooking, is none of these companies are required to use OpenJDK (and the GPL'ed code) for some unavoidable business reason. They opted-into using it consciously. Red Hat because they embrace Open Source above all else (or at least did at the time), and Azul as opportunists during the decline of Oracle JDK as a way to get Java users into their ecosystem (and eventually make money). OpenJDK is wildly popular as the defacto reference implementation of Java, due to moves Oracle made a few years back (on purpose to push Java language development into a more community-driven approach). OpenJDK is good, but there are reasons people seek out custom implementations (massive heaps, pauseless GC, better tooling and monitoring, re-implemented IO, etc). All that is to say, contrary to OP's original assertion, it's not that Red Hat "couldn't" release some closed source JDK... they chose to embrace the GPL'ed code. The notion that "Copyleft Works!" is by compelling companies to open source their GPL'ed code. That's not what happened here.
INTPenis 6y ago
That's business as usual. Open source is breaking the norm of the corporate world and that is usually what makes a product like raspberry pi gain traction. Because it's accessible enough for regular people to play with for free. Countless manufacturers have made closed products and sold them for license money. Nothing new there.

geodel 6y ago

Yeah imagine of the evil of asking money from customers for work done or service provided. Never heard such thing in human history.

andrewshadura 6y ago
No, the evil of pretending to be open source and pro community, but only really caring about $£€.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  If the community chooses MIT/BSD inspired licenses, they don't care about such companies coming into action.
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    How often does the community choose a non-copyleft license? What I always see is a company choosing a non-copyleft license.
    - spijdar 6y ago
      I'm a sample size of one, but I often pick a permissive BSD/MIT license for the personal software I develop, and at times will pick BSD-licensed over GPL-licensed software. I prefer the brevity and clarity of the shorter licenses, personally. I've also found that, sometimes, if there are two similar projects with a BSD vs GPL split, the BSD project tends to be more pragmatic and focused on the product/code more, while GPL projects err towards ideology, possibly at the cost of functionality. OpenSSH vs lsh as an example.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      All the time, in the OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD ecosystems. In fact, being anti-GPL has become kind of fashionable, so there you have it.

ryukafalz 6y ago

Thankfully they couldn't; OpenJDK is released under the GPL. Copyleft works, people!

Alupis 6y ago
> Thankfully they couldn't; OpenJDK is released under the GPL. Copyleft works, people! Not quite. There are many commercial JDK/JVM offerings that are closed source and survive very well with their "secret sauce" (usually GC related), such as Azul's Zing JVM. Red Hat's customer base that used JavaEE containers (and just Java code in general) was large enough that Red Hat could have easily decided to implement and maintain their own JDK offering - but they didn't. Probably based on Red Hat's history of being a good open source "netizen", they chose to use the GPL code even though they did not have to. We're all better off because of Red Hat's contributions to OpenJDK (porting to 64 bit ARM included) - but that's not exactly "Copyleft works!".
- ece 6y ago
  Redhat is a big contributor to OpenJDK, so there's really less of a "maybe not" than you think. Even Azul maintains an OpenJDK distribution, so copyleft is playing a part in keeping things more open and supported than not.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    The part OP missed, and perhaps you may be overlooking, is none of these companies are required to use OpenJDK (and the GPL'ed code) for some unavoidable business reason. They opted-into using it consciously. Red Hat because they embrace Open Source above all else (or at least did at the time), and Azul as opportunists during the decline of Oracle JDK as a way to get Java users into their ecosystem (and eventually make money). OpenJDK is wildly popular as the defacto reference implementation of Java, due to moves Oracle made a few years back (on purpose to push Java language development into a more community-driven approach). OpenJDK is good, but there are reasons people seek out custom implementations (massive heaps, pauseless GC, better tooling and monitoring, re-implemented IO, etc). All that is to say, contrary to OP's original assertion, it's not that Red Hat "couldn't" release some closed source JDK... they chose to embrace the GPL'ed code. The notion that "Copyleft Works!" is by compelling companies to open source their GPL'ed code. That's not what happened here.

INTPenis 6y ago

That's business as usual. Open source is breaking the norm of the corporate world and that is usually what makes a product like raspberry pi gain traction. Because it's accessible enough for regular people to play with for free. Countless manufacturers have made closed products and sold them for license money. Nothing new there.