4 ms·

I suspect that republishing the sources will be against the terms you agree to in your subscription.

by totallywrong 3y ago

jacooper 3y ago
They can't add more terms on the GPL and call it GPLv3.
- pavon 3y ago
  Yes they must abide by the terms of the licenses of the software they redistribute. But they could start licensing the parts they write more restrictively, like RPM spec files. I don't think this will happen given how much back and forth there is between RHEL and Fedora, but IBM is in charge now.
dralley 3y ago
I don't believe the terms of service restrict (or even could restrict, see GPL) the redistribution of _sources_. Compiled binaries are another matter.
- saltcured 3y ago
  The game that has been spelled out elsewhere is that the subscription can be terminated for this violation of the subscription terms of service (which is not the same thing as the software license). This termination would prevent you from receiving future versions of binaries or sources. So, RedHat can satisfy the letter of the law regarding licensing, where source is distributed under GPL to those who received the binaries. With each incremental binary distribution they satisfy the GPL rules and makes source available to the recipient of binaries, but they may cut off a customer as soon as they detect that the customer is actually exercising their full GPL rights. So that customer loses access to future binaries and corresponding sources. This attitude violates the experience many of us take for granted about free software and the GPL, where we expect a community to be engaging as an equivalence class of members sharing the same rights. But the GPL started with provisions enabling this narrower sense. The source distribution could be offered individually to each recipient of binaries _or_ made generally available to the public independent of any existing exchange of binaries between two parties. So the GPL allowed the recipient to transitively distribute the sources they have received, but does not actually obligate the original distributor to also provide sources to other unrelated parties.
  - mananaysiempre 3y ago
    > So the GPL [...] does not actually obligate the original distributor to also provide sources to other unrelated parties. It seems important to note that the Debian Free Software Guidelines as applied by the Debian project specifically exclude any software that requires providing source to unrelated people this way (the “desert island” and “dissident” tests[1]). In practice, the “unrelated” people in license terms of that kind are usually the original copyright holders. [1] https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  They can’t, I think, but nothing prevents your support contract (and thus access to subsequent updates in any form) from terminating when you release the source. You can do it, IBM will just refuse to do any more business with you from that point on. This kind of GPL not-a-workaround always made me feel a bit queasy, but open access to RH code (even if a bit stale and hard as hell to get to build) alleviated that feeling somewhat. I guess it no longer does.
m463 3y ago
I believe the GPL - which redhat must agree to when redistributing binaries - prevents redhat from creating that sort of restriction.

I suspect that republishing the sources will be against the terms you agree to in your subscription.

jacooper 3y ago

They can't add more terms on the GPL and call it GPLv3.

pavon 3y ago
Yes they must abide by the terms of the licenses of the software they redistribute. But they could start licensing the parts they write more restrictively, like RPM spec files. I don't think this will happen given how much back and forth there is between RHEL and Fedora, but IBM is in charge now.

dralley 3y ago

I don't believe the terms of service restrict (or even could restrict, see GPL) the redistribution of _sources_. Compiled binaries are another matter.

saltcured 3y ago
The game that has been spelled out elsewhere is that the subscription can be terminated for this violation of the subscription terms of service (which is not the same thing as the software license). This termination would prevent you from receiving future versions of binaries or sources. So, RedHat can satisfy the letter of the law regarding licensing, where source is distributed under GPL to those who received the binaries. With each incremental binary distribution they satisfy the GPL rules and makes source available to the recipient of binaries, but they may cut off a customer as soon as they detect that the customer is actually exercising their full GPL rights. So that customer loses access to future binaries and corresponding sources. This attitude violates the experience many of us take for granted about free software and the GPL, where we expect a community to be engaging as an equivalence class of members sharing the same rights. But the GPL started with provisions enabling this narrower sense. The source distribution could be offered individually to each recipient of binaries _or_ made generally available to the public independent of any existing exchange of binaries between two parties. So the GPL allowed the recipient to transitively distribute the sources they have received, but does not actually obligate the original distributor to also provide sources to other unrelated parties.
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  > So the GPL [...] does not actually obligate the original distributor to also provide sources to other unrelated parties. It seems important to note that the Debian Free Software Guidelines as applied by the Debian project specifically exclude any software that requires providing source to unrelated people this way (the “desert island” and “dissident” tests[1]). In practice, the “unrelated” people in license terms of that kind are usually the original copyright holders. [1] https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html
mananaysiempre 3y ago
They can’t, I think, but nothing prevents your support contract (and thus access to subsequent updates in any form) from terminating when you release the source. You can do it, IBM will just refuse to do any more business with you from that point on. This kind of GPL not-a-workaround always made me feel a bit queasy, but open access to RH code (even if a bit stale and hard as hell to get to build) alleviated that feeling somewhat. I guess it no longer does.

m463 3y ago

I believe the GPL - which redhat must agree to when redistributing binaries - prevents redhat from creating that sort of restriction.