4 ms·

License situation is still unclear to me. GPL explicitly does not allow to forbid further redistribution. RedHat does that. I'm not a lawyer, but from a layman

License situation is still unclear to me. GPL explicitly does not allow to forbid further redistribution. RedHat does that. I'm not a lawyer, but from a layman PoV this seems sketchy.

nolist_policy 3y ago
I'm not going to analyze if this is illegal or not (I don't think it is). It has been discussed elsewhere already. But even if it where illegal, the only people in a position to sue would be the contributors of the upstream projects that get packaged into RHEL. And I don't see anyone having the appetite for that. I contribute a lot to QEMU and there I'm practically working side-by-side with redhat devs. They contribute so much (maintainership, code review, testing infrastructure and much more), suing them wouldn't occur to me in the slightest.
- _cenw 3y ago
  Don't think of it as suing your coworkers, think of it as suing your coworkers corporporate overlords?
  - freedomben 3y ago
    I think you're missing GP's point (or possibly I am but I don't think so). They aren't saying they are buddies and so they wouldn't want to sue. They are saying "Red Hat pays a lot of people to work on this, possibly to the point where the project would be dead without them. They're not just packaging up somebody else's code and shipping it" I adamantly agree with GP. There are important projects that wouldn't exist without Red Hat, or if they did they would pale in comparison to the proprietary solutions and wouldn't be seriously used. Qemu/KVM is a big one. Without Red Hat's investment, it would all be VMware and anyone wanting to (seriously)_virtualize on Linux would be using VMware.
microtonal 3y ago
IANAL, but that doesn't mean that Red Hat does have to give you the source code. They only have to provide the source code to customers to which they distribute the binaries. Of course, for GPL code, their customers could redistribute the source code. AFAIK, the current kerfuffle is about providing RHEL source packages through git.centos.org. They currently only provide RHEL through a subscription and they fulfill the GPL if they offer their RHEL subscribers the source code.
- error503 3y ago
  >Of course, for GPL code, their customers could redistribute the source code. The fact that the subscription agreement does not allow this is exactly what we're discussing here.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    The GPL does not say that they are obligated to sell you the next version. The entire point of the GPL is to let you own the software you have bought and, examine, learn and change. The rule Red Hat have brought in is that if you exercise that right then they don't want to continue selling their software to you. That is totally within their rights, it's not like they are suing you for illegal distribution.
  - houseofzeus 3y ago
    It doesn't prevent you redistributing what you have already been given (binaries or source), it does however allow Red Hat to not give you future iterations.
    - error503 3y ago
      They can't prevent you, because that would violate the GPL. However I'd say getting your subscription revoked as a penalty means it is not 'allowed'. The intent of the GPL to allow distribution to third parties seems pretty clear, and a company refusing to deal with you after you exercised a right explicitly granted by the licence definitely seems like a 'dick move', despite being legal.

License situation is still unclear to me. GPL explicitly does not allow to forbid further redistribution. RedHat does that. I'm not a lawyer, but from a layman PoV this seems sketchy.

nolist_policy 3y ago

I'm not going to analyze if this is illegal or not (I don't think it is). It has been discussed elsewhere already. But even if it where illegal, the only people in a position to sue would be the contributors of the upstream projects that get packaged into RHEL. And I don't see anyone having the appetite for that. I contribute a lot to QEMU and there I'm practically working side-by-side with redhat devs. They contribute so much (maintainership, code review, testing infrastructure and much more), suing them wouldn't occur to me in the slightest.

_cenw 3y ago
Don't think of it as suing your coworkers, think of it as suing your coworkers corporporate overlords?
- freedomben 3y ago
  I think you're missing GP's point (or possibly I am but I don't think so). They aren't saying they are buddies and so they wouldn't want to sue. They are saying "Red Hat pays a lot of people to work on this, possibly to the point where the project would be dead without them. They're not just packaging up somebody else's code and shipping it" I adamantly agree with GP. There are important projects that wouldn't exist without Red Hat, or if they did they would pale in comparison to the proprietary solutions and wouldn't be seriously used. Qemu/KVM is a big one. Without Red Hat's investment, it would all be VMware and anyone wanting to (seriously)_virtualize on Linux would be using VMware.

microtonal 3y ago

IANAL, but that doesn't mean that Red Hat does have to give you the source code. They only have to provide the source code to customers to which they distribute the binaries. Of course, for GPL code, their customers could redistribute the source code. AFAIK, the current kerfuffle is about providing RHEL source packages through git.centos.org. They currently only provide RHEL through a subscription and they fulfill the GPL if they offer their RHEL subscribers the source code.

error503 3y ago
>Of course, for GPL code, their customers could redistribute the source code. The fact that the subscription agreement does not allow this is exactly what we're discussing here.
- happymellon 3y ago
  The GPL does not say that they are obligated to sell you the next version. The entire point of the GPL is to let you own the software you have bought and, examine, learn and change. The rule Red Hat have brought in is that if you exercise that right then they don't want to continue selling their software to you. That is totally within their rights, it's not like they are suing you for illegal distribution.
- houseofzeus 3y ago
  It doesn't prevent you redistributing what you have already been given (binaries or source), it does however allow Red Hat to not give you future iterations.
  - error503 3y ago
    They can't prevent you, because that would violate the GPL. However I'd say getting your subscription revoked as a penalty means it is not 'allowed'. The intent of the GPL to allow distribution to third parties seems pretty clear, and a company refusing to deal with you after you exercised a right explicitly granted by the licence definitely seems like a 'dick move', despite being legal.