7 ms·

I mean, RHEL clearly does not care about the GPL. Couldn’t the same argument be made then about RHEL and their attempts to undercut all the devs who put in free

by goolz 3y ago

I mean, RHEL clearly does not care about the GPL. Couldn’t the same argument be made then about RHEL and their attempts to undercut all the devs who put in free time to make Linux?

pjmlp 3y ago
Devs that happen to compile their work with GCC, mostly sponsored by Red-Hat?
- goolz 3y ago
  Your argument is circular. And “mostly sponsored” is just another way of saying sponsored. Just because you sponsor something does not mean you own it. It does not really give you many rights as I understand. Because you are a sponsor, not an investor. You make the argument for GCC but that is a piece of GNU which I feel furthers my point. Cool, RHEL put some money into an already free and open piece of software… that makes them exempt from violating the GPL? edit: Stallman, any thoughts?
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Mostly sponsored means where the contributors get they money from. They aren't violating the GPL as per legal point of view. Whatever morals people think should go beyond legal matters is wishful thinking. Anyone is also welcome to up their game and pay the projects Red-Hat is putting money on. Whose the first?
    - goolz 3y ago
      Fair enough, IANAL so I guess I let emotion get the best of me. That said as of v3 of the GPL: “ You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License.” I guess I am curious what the legal reasoning is behind them skirting it is.
- goolz 3y ago
  A separate train of thought, but also, GCC was released 36 years ago. RHEL only 23. So GCC was fine without for 13 years. My bet is they would be fine without another 13, too.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Yeah, the days of egcs politics and stagnation versus commercial compilers.
- rurban 3y ago
  You mixed that up with systemd or gnome. gcc is developed mostly by suse, not redhat
nsajko 3y ago
> RHEL clearly does not care about the GPL You're obviously confused as to the terms of the license. Red Hat seems to be fully compliant.
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  s/fully/minimally (where they used to be even more compliant than the spirit of the license).
  - fredski42 3y ago
    Can you eloborate on the minimally vs fully. In my book you are either compliant or you are not. Or is this a case of spirit vs letter? If so, I would love to know the spirit part.
    - sudosysgen 3y ago
      This is a case of 100% violating the spirit, and perhaps also violating the letter. The GPL requires that the distributor place no restriction on redistribution of the sources or binaries by their clients. The subscription agreement, however, is terminated if you exercise this right, despite Red Hat not being allowed to restrict the exercise of this right. This is on the very edge of legality and may be found illegal - they're shifting the consequence somewhere else to say that it's not redistribution that's restricted, but that if you redistribute then they restrict everything else.
      - justsomehnguy 3y ago
        > The subscription agreement, however, is terminated if you exercise this right, despite Red Hat not being allowed to restrict the exercise of this right. This one. Though they can add any restrictions (like asking money for the sources, which GPL is fine with).
        sudosysgen 3y ago
        No, you cannot add any restriction to asking for sources nor to redistribution. You can only ask in exchange for sources for the cost of physically distributing the source, nothing more, and in that case you must offer it to anyone asking at all, even if they do not have the binary. Otherwise, you have to distribute it for free on the same medium as the binary itself. You can not either add any restriction to the act of distributing the program or it's sources. The GPLv2 says for example "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.". The question is whether or not terminating the subscription is a restriction, which it totally is to any reasonable reading by a layperson, and may be as well in front of a judge.
tpush 3y ago
No it cannot. On one side your Red Hat: - takes non commercial open source and does integration and sells support. Also contributes to a megaton of open source projects across all layers of Linux. The other you have the rebuilds: - take Red Hat's commercial but open source work - does no integration work whatsoever, since RHEL's already done that - trivial contributions to almost no open source projects that aren't only necessary for their position as a clone - undercuts RHEL in support offering since they don't have to do practically anything themselves. So yeah, RHEL is an excellent citizen of open source and the others are just parasitic freeloaders.
- JonChesterfield 3y ago
  I used to build on centos to check my code would run on red hat. That doesn't seem particularly parasitic. Since they canned centos I no longer try to check whether anything will run on red hat.
  - tpush 3y ago
    Why not just test your stuff on CentOS Stream or even just Fedora? RHEL is for big business having bespoke applications; unless you need the stability nobody expects normal open source devs to make RHEL their testbed.
    - tannhaeuser 3y ago
      > Why not just test your stuff on CentOS Stream or even just Fedora? Because that doesn't say anything about stuff running on RHEL, and you can test on Debian just as well so why bother?
      - tpush 3y ago
        What is the use case for needing to test stuff in RHEL that isn't an Enterprise App where you want/need to buy a license anyway? Like, why do you care about RHEL at all in a way that isn't covered by CentOS Stream?

by goolz 3y ago

I mean, RHEL clearly does not care about the GPL. Couldn’t the same argument be made then about RHEL and their attempts to undercut all the devs who put in free time to make Linux?

pjmlp 3y ago

Devs that happen to compile their work with GCC, mostly sponsored by Red-Hat?

goolz 3y ago
Your argument is circular. And “mostly sponsored” is just another way of saying sponsored. Just because you sponsor something does not mean you own it. It does not really give you many rights as I understand. Because you are a sponsor, not an investor. You make the argument for GCC but that is a piece of GNU which I feel furthers my point. Cool, RHEL put some money into an already free and open piece of software… that makes them exempt from violating the GPL? edit: Stallman, any thoughts?
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Mostly sponsored means where the contributors get they money from. They aren't violating the GPL as per legal point of view. Whatever morals people think should go beyond legal matters is wishful thinking. Anyone is also welcome to up their game and pay the projects Red-Hat is putting money on. Whose the first?
  - goolz 3y ago
    Fair enough, IANAL so I guess I let emotion get the best of me. That said as of v3 of the GPL: “ You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License.” I guess I am curious what the legal reasoning is behind them skirting it is.
goolz 3y ago
A separate train of thought, but also, GCC was released 36 years ago. RHEL only 23. So GCC was fine without for 13 years. My bet is they would be fine without another 13, too.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Yeah, the days of egcs politics and stagnation versus commercial compilers.
rurban 3y ago
You mixed that up with systemd or gnome. gcc is developed mostly by suse, not redhat

nsajko 3y ago

> RHEL clearly does not care about the GPL You're obviously confused as to the terms of the license. Red Hat seems to be fully compliant.

geerlingguy 3y ago
s/fully/minimally (where they used to be even more compliant than the spirit of the license).
- fredski42 3y ago
  Can you eloborate on the minimally vs fully. In my book you are either compliant or you are not. Or is this a case of spirit vs letter? If so, I would love to know the spirit part.
  - sudosysgen 3y ago
    This is a case of 100% violating the spirit, and perhaps also violating the letter. The GPL requires that the distributor place no restriction on redistribution of the sources or binaries by their clients. The subscription agreement, however, is terminated if you exercise this right, despite Red Hat not being allowed to restrict the exercise of this right. This is on the very edge of legality and may be found illegal - they're shifting the consequence somewhere else to say that it's not redistribution that's restricted, but that if you redistribute then they restrict everything else.
    - justsomehnguy 3y ago
      > The subscription agreement, however, is terminated if you exercise this right, despite Red Hat not being allowed to restrict the exercise of this right. This one. Though they can add any restrictions (like asking money for the sources, which GPL is fine with).
      - sudosysgen 3y ago
        No, you cannot add any restriction to asking for sources nor to redistribution. You can only ask in exchange for sources for the cost of physically distributing the source, nothing more, and in that case you must offer it to anyone asking at all, even if they do not have the binary. Otherwise, you have to distribute it for free on the same medium as the binary itself. You can not either add any restriction to the act of distributing the program or it's sources. The GPLv2 says for example "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.". The question is whether or not terminating the subscription is a restriction, which it totally is to any reasonable reading by a layperson, and may be as well in front of a judge.

tpush 3y ago

No it cannot. On one side your Red Hat: - takes non commercial open source and does integration and sells support. Also contributes to a megaton of open source projects across all layers of Linux. The other you have the rebuilds: - take Red Hat's commercial but open source work - does no integration work whatsoever, since RHEL's already done that - trivial contributions to almost no open source projects that aren't only necessary for their position as a clone - undercuts RHEL in support offering since they don't have to do practically anything themselves. So yeah, RHEL is an excellent citizen of open source and the others are just parasitic freeloaders.

JonChesterfield 3y ago
I used to build on centos to check my code would run on red hat. That doesn't seem particularly parasitic. Since they canned centos I no longer try to check whether anything will run on red hat.
- tpush 3y ago
  Why not just test your stuff on CentOS Stream or even just Fedora? RHEL is for big business having bespoke applications; unless you need the stability nobody expects normal open source devs to make RHEL their testbed.
  - tannhaeuser 3y ago
    > Why not just test your stuff on CentOS Stream or even just Fedora? Because that doesn't say anything about stuff running on RHEL, and you can test on Debian just as well so why bother?
    - tpush 3y ago
      What is the use case for needing to test stuff in RHEL that isn't an Enterprise App where you want/need to buy a license anyway? Like, why do you care about RHEL at all in a way that isn't covered by CentOS Stream?