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If Red Hat chooses not to perform their duties under the GPL, then any holder of copyright can require Red Hat to remove the owner's source packages from the co

• BossingAround 3y ago
  CentOS Stream source code is available.
  • chasil 3y ago
    CentOS stream is not RHEL, and that is what will be needed by Rocky, Alma, and Oracle. I don't think it will be much more difficult to obtain.
    • bonzini 3y ago
      IIUC (I work for Red Hat but not on how sources are distributed), there is absolutely no change in practice. CentOS Stream RPM sources are stored in GitLab therefore the whole history is available including past minor releases of RHEL. The only change is that the repositories will not be mirrored to git.centos.org.
      • mroche 3y ago
        Some clarification is needed here. git.centos.org (g.c.o) has been the historical canonical local for RHEL sources that have been exported out of Red Hat. On any given package you would see several branches, one for each major release and other organizational artifacts (e.g. c7, c8, c9, etc). Initially CentOS Stream 9 was exported to g.c.o as it wasn't a true upstream in the full sense of the word, but with CentOS Stream 9 that changed. c9s is developed in full on GitLab, and now c8s as well, while the final RHEL sources for those packages are still output to the c8 and c9 branches on g.c.o. What changes here is that Red Hat will no longer be exporting the c8 and c9 content to any git platform (c7 will continue as exists until its EOL). Customers can access sources as needed via the Customer Portal and CDN repositories, but sources in git form will not be publicly available for those artifacts. Moving forward, only c8s and c9s sources will be available, and g.c.o will not see any updates for EL8 and EL9. While most (I'd estimate at least 95%) of the platform will match in terms of NEVRA between versions available in CentOS Stream and their RHEL counterparts, there are some packages that will not due to the way they are developed.
• pavon 3y ago
  > Red Hat could minimally perform this duty by providing the source only to those who download the binary releases. The article states clearly that they are doing this, no need to speculate.
  • axus 3y ago
    Currently you need a Red Hat account to download an ISO image, but you don't need to be a customer. IBM/Red Hat's announcement says that you need to be a customer or partner to download the source, so one could be able to download binary but refused the source. I also wonder how it will go if AWS provides RHEL for a server, and you ask them for the source.
• 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
  I doubt most RHEL packages use the GPL. They were publishing full source out of goodness of their hearts (or maybe to conquer more market share and then potentially convert some of that into sales if you're more cynical).
  • chasil 3y ago
    The kernel, the compiler, the C library, and the init system have more sway than various packages under BSD, MIT, or other licensing.
    • 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
      It was more about the second part of your comment. Even if they're forced into providing source for the few essential system libraries (plus the kernel), I don't see what it gives you without the rest of the system (most of which is under pushover licenses because we can't learn from our mistakes).
    • WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
      But then I’m laughing in OpenSSL.
• dralley 3y ago
  >Red Hat could minimally perform this duty by providing the source only to those who download the binary releases. As there are several avenues for free downloads (developer, 16 free licenses for small business, etc.), the source will be available by that route. If you read the original announcement, this is exactly the case "For Red Hat customers and partners, source code will remain available via the Red Hat Customer Portal." In theory nothing prevents Rocky and Alma from buying a license, downloading the sources, and rebuilding the packages from there. The terms of service restrict only redistribution of binaries, not sources, and the GPL dictates that those would remain available.
  • bonzini 3y ago
    Rocky and Alma will just use CentOS Stream distgit sources on GitLab, just like Facebook does for their internal rebuild.