3 ms·

To all of you saying this is a GPL violation, I highly doubt a company with the size and pedigree of Red Hat doesn’t have lawyers that thoroughly understand the

by _2z1p 3y ago

To all of you saying this is a GPL violation, I highly doubt a company with the size and pedigree of Red Hat doesn’t have lawyers that thoroughly understand the GPL. I’m not a lawyer, but the way I read it, yes this is against the spirit but not the law. That being said, I feel like GPLv4 will be here any day now to close this loophole, like they did with the anti-Tivoization clause for v3.

gizmo686 3y ago
Companies violate the law all of the time. The procedural hurdles of enforcing GPL are significant, to the point where blatent violations normally go unpunished. Assuming someone with standing decides to sue and ends up winning the lawsuit, the punishment is generally minor. Mostly the outcome is that the company must comply going forward. If you can get years of non-compliance in beforehand, and use that to reshape the market in your favor, why is the fact that a court might eventually tell you that you violated the license a problem?
- lockhouse 3y ago
  Wouldn’t Oracle have standing if what Red Hat did was a license violation? Why would they risk that? There’s an old joke that Oracle is a company of lawyers with a small software engineering department.
  - gizmo686 3y ago
    Why would Oracle sue them? There is almost nothing for them to gain if they win, and a long and expensive court process regardless.
    - lockhouse 3y ago
      This move by Red Hat was aimed squarely at them. It makes it much more difficult and expensive for Oracle to make their RHEL clone.
      - gizmo686 3y ago
        Oracle sues Red Hat for violating one of Oracle's licenses. Red Hat comes into compliance and shares the source of whatever Oracle IP is in RHEL. I'm sure Oracle can find some IP of theirs in RHEL, but I don't think they own enough to be useful.
        lockhouse 3y ago
        Yeah, just OpenJDK, MySQL, and btrfs, nothing important, right? https://github.com/oracle https://github.com/oracle

by _2z1p 3y ago

gizmo686 3y ago

Companies violate the law all of the time. The procedural hurdles of enforcing GPL are significant, to the point where blatent violations normally go unpunished. Assuming someone with standing decides to sue and ends up winning the lawsuit, the punishment is generally minor. Mostly the outcome is that the company must comply going forward. If you can get years of non-compliance in beforehand, and use that to reshape the market in your favor, why is the fact that a court might eventually tell you that you violated the license a problem?

lockhouse 3y ago
Wouldn’t Oracle have standing if what Red Hat did was a license violation? Why would they risk that? There’s an old joke that Oracle is a company of lawyers with a small software engineering department.
- gizmo686 3y ago
  Why would Oracle sue them? There is almost nothing for them to gain if they win, and a long and expensive court process regardless.
  - lockhouse 3y ago
    This move by Red Hat was aimed squarely at them. It makes it much more difficult and expensive for Oracle to make their RHEL clone.
    - gizmo686 3y ago
      Oracle sues Red Hat for violating one of Oracle's licenses. Red Hat comes into compliance and shares the source of whatever Oracle IP is in RHEL. I'm sure Oracle can find some IP of theirs in RHEL, but I don't think they own enough to be useful.
      - lockhouse 3y ago
        Yeah, just OpenJDK, MySQL, and btrfs, nothing important, right? https://github.com/oracle https://github.com/oracle