3 ms·

(paragraphized/reduced verbosity) RedHat has been trying to figure out how to both benefit from open source and also avoid helping others at the same time.. if

by xt00 3y ago

(paragraphized/reduced verbosity) RedHat has been trying to figure out how to both benefit from open source and also avoid helping others at the same time.. if you think of RedHat the OS as a combination of the linux kernel (worked on by many companies and individuals well beyond RedHat), tons of packages in userspace (of the millions of lines of code in these packages, probably a very very small fraction are from RedHat -- sure yes some important, some less important). Examining the fact that RedHat in principle does some huge amount of testing of the packages and puts them all together -- lets think about that-- do they really? in many cases the upstream package maintainer(s) probably do most of that. So are they going to go build a ton of test vectors for each package and "test" them all .. I highly doubt that.. likely they have a set of tests that they do to try to hit a set of important things that "should work" and if a package happens to cause that to fail, then they roll it back. In the case that RH pushes a patch to the package maintainer -- does that mean they effectively "own" that software and people that want that updated version are trying to get stuff for "free"? From the beginning people have questioned whether they should be able to hold back patches from other people -- in reality, they can try, but they also can't stop people from doing that same patch "somehow".. so effectively unless people can copyright a new patch to open source software and prevent others from doing that same patch, then they have no recourse. Redhat should just lean really hard into the "support" side of things, and whatever margin exists with that, then fine. Sure, does it piss you off that other companies are making money off of your hard work, yes it does, but look at basically all of the other people who were ahead of you who you are also apparently ripping off RedHat..

yawaramin 3y ago
Jeez dude, ever heard of paragraphs? So...which is it? Is Red Hat not really doing all that much work? Which means that people should be happy to use CentOS Stream, which is the free and open source upstream of RHEL? Or are they actually doing some valuable work? In which case they are justified in charging money and providing source code only to their customers, under the provisions of the GPL? Before replying, please go ahead and read up on the GPL and especially the parts where they confirm that it's completely OK to charge money for the software as long as you provide users the source code on request.
- xt00 3y ago
  I'm familiar with the GPL -- one of the key provisions is that users can redistribute the code -- whether RedHat decides to release one version or zero versions of their code should not prevent anybody from redistributing that code when there is an associated binary. Yes you can charge people for that binary and sell the code as well, but if somebody takes the code and redistributes it and even sells it, then they also have to allow others to distribute it -- its like a river of open source that everybody benefits from. Maybe I'm missing the magic sentence in the GPLv2 or v3 license that says something like "if your user takes the code you provided that was under GPL license and sells it, you can sue to stop them." If RHEL succeeds in creating a model that other companies clone where because they provided valuable work they get to stop others from getting a copy of their source code, then the GPL license is basically dead.
  - yawaramin 3y ago
    > Maybe I'm missing the magic sentence in the GPLv2 or v3 license that says something like "if your user takes the code you provided that was under GPL license and sells it, you can sue to stop them." You missed the actual events that happened and made up a narrative of 'Red Hat is suing to stop their customers from redistributing the RHEL source code'. They are not doing that, they are deciding to part ways with customers who do that. The customer still has the right--per the GPL--to keep distributing the copy of the RHEL source code that they got from RHEL, and no one is stopping them from doing that.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    You’re ranting based on internet trolls. GPL doesn’t state that you need to provide source code in any particular form. You can ship a CD to folks who ask and be compliant. They release all of the code for RHEL in git. The just stopped publishing SRPMs so you cannot trivially duplicate RHEL. L

by xt00 3y ago

yawaramin 3y ago

Jeez dude, ever heard of paragraphs? So...which is it? Is Red Hat not really doing all that much work? Which means that people should be happy to use CentOS Stream, which is the free and open source upstream of RHEL? Or are they actually doing some valuable work? In which case they are justified in charging money and providing source code only to their customers, under the provisions of the GPL? Before replying, please go ahead and read up on the GPL and especially the parts where they confirm that it's completely OK to charge money for the software as long as you provide users the source code on request.

xt00 3y ago
I'm familiar with the GPL -- one of the key provisions is that users can redistribute the code -- whether RedHat decides to release one version or zero versions of their code should not prevent anybody from redistributing that code when there is an associated binary. Yes you can charge people for that binary and sell the code as well, but if somebody takes the code and redistributes it and even sells it, then they also have to allow others to distribute it -- its like a river of open source that everybody benefits from. Maybe I'm missing the magic sentence in the GPLv2 or v3 license that says something like "if your user takes the code you provided that was under GPL license and sells it, you can sue to stop them." If RHEL succeeds in creating a model that other companies clone where because they provided valuable work they get to stop others from getting a copy of their source code, then the GPL license is basically dead.
- yawaramin 3y ago
  > Maybe I'm missing the magic sentence in the GPLv2 or v3 license that says something like "if your user takes the code you provided that was under GPL license and sells it, you can sue to stop them." You missed the actual events that happened and made up a narrative of 'Red Hat is suing to stop their customers from redistributing the RHEL source code'. They are not doing that, they are deciding to part ways with customers who do that. The customer still has the right--per the GPL--to keep distributing the copy of the RHEL source code that they got from RHEL, and no one is stopping them from doing that.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  You’re ranting based on internet trolls. GPL doesn’t state that you need to provide source code in any particular form. You can ship a CD to folks who ask and be compliant. They release all of the code for RHEL in git. The just stopped publishing SRPMs so you cannot trivially duplicate RHEL. L