7 ms·

In at least a couple places, the article says what Red Hat is doing is “technically legal” or “technically in compliance” with the GPL. I don’t find it very us

In at least a couple places, the article says what Red Hat is doing is “technically legal” or “technically in compliance” with the GPL. I don’t find it very useful or enlightening when people start talking about “intention” in this context. If you intend for some particular outcome to happen, you really need to make sure that it’s written into the license! That’s what licenses and contracts and every annoying legal-type thing that exists are for! On a related topic: Taking a quick scan of GPLv2, this doesn’t even seem to grossly offend the principles or intent of the license - am I reading it wrong, or, when it comes to appropriately distributed software (i.e., bearing notice, license terms, copyright, disclaimer, etc.), it seems to say pretty clearly that source only need to be provided to recipients of the modified program? I guess there’s some ambiguity about what 2(b) could mean?

jzb 3y ago
You're not reading it wrong. The popular understanding of the GPL vs. the actual text of the GPL are two extremely different things. Red Hat is far from alone in this. If I'm not mistaken, there's a whole cottage industry of WordPress plugin and theme developers who use basically this model. The plugin or theme is GPL'ed because it depends on WordPress, which is GPLed. But they gate the software and require payment to get it. They may also have an agreement that sets out a limit on redistribution for access - if you buy the theme or plugin from them and then set about redistributing it, they're not going to take your money in the future. I can't think of any good way to close the "loophole" here in a GPL-type license that doesn't essentially force a developer to distribute to anybody they've ever done business with, forever. Any language that would force Red Hat to keep its subscription with an "offending" customer would also tie their hands for cutting off access for other reasons -- because who wouldn't claim that the reason Red Hat cut the subscription was over distribution?
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  What's the loophole? This is working exactly as intended, no? GPL is to grant the user of software freedoms. Free as in freedoms, not beer. It's origin was from the user of a printer driver being frustrated they couldn't debug and fix an issue.
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    The loophole is that as soon as you exercise your rights, you lose future access. So if you want access, you can't exercise your rights.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - bhelkey 3y ago
      You have the right to do whatever you want with the software. You don't have the right to force someone else continue to work for you and provide you with updates.
      - jonhohle 3y ago
        I don’t understand why this isn’t blindingly obvious. A copyright holder releasing their software under an open license is a huge privilege given to their customer. It doesn’t matter what reading they are doing it - marketing, hoping for external contribution, goodwill, etc. - it is their right to choose a license. It is also their right to change their license at any time. While I’ve not chosen RedHat for my own projects, I used it for nearly two decades at companies where it was already in place. Some of those had support contracts, others didn’t. Based on my experience, RedHat is one of the main reasons Windows didn’t completely take over backend systems. They offered a cohesive, supported server OS that could be run for less than the cost of Windows or Unix servers on nearly any hardware. I could enumerate the things I don’t like about RedHat Linux, but in an enterprise setting, the volumes of documentation, mature and complete set of repositories, and huge community essentially negate my own preferences. Their new licensing may make them irrelevant going forward, but I’m thankful for all they’ve done overall… except for systemd, burn it with fire! ;-)
      - Semaphor 3y ago
        It’s not about forcing, it’s about someone threatening you with an unfavorable outcome if you exercise your rights. That is (as I said repeatedly) not against the letter of the GPL (IMO). But it’s a chilling effect on exercising your rights.
invalidator 3y ago
They are providing the source as required. However, a key part of the GPL is that RH's customers should also be able to redistribute the source to anyone else, and RH is preventing that through contract law.
- jaywalk 3y ago
  They are, of course, always free to distribute the source to anyone else. RedHat cannot stop that. But if they do distribute the source to anyone else, RedHat is free to stop taking their money and not provide the software and source code to them in the future. It's shitty, but I can't see any realistic way to close this loophole.
  - nextaccountic 3y ago
    GPL says that you can't impose further restrictions on the people you distribute GPL software to. Everybody should receive the entire set of freedoms unfeterred. Using contract law (or using blackmail, or using anything else) to restrict redistribution of the source appears to not be in compliance of GPL to me. I can't see how a judge might find otherwise. The problem is, who has standing here? The Red Hat customer or the copyright holder?
    - dralley 3y ago
      How about we use a different analogy. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft - they all have patches to the linux kernel which they do not always open source. And nothing in the GPL compels them to open source them so long as they aren't distributed outside the company, and are only used on internal systems. Let's say an employee with access to those internal kernels, who is under an employment contract and non-disclosure agreement, releases the kernel source code with those patches included. Would the GPL prevent that employee from being fired and/or sued for violation of NDA? Nope. >GPL says that you can't impose further restrictions on the people you distribute GPL software to. That's just the thing. Red Hat does not impose any further restrictions on the software that has been distributed to you. You can continue using RHEL, in theory, even with an expired license. There is no "kill switch". But Red Hat is not obligated to continue providing you with access to their services, including their software update repositories.
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>I don’t find it very useful or enlightening when people start Equally, I dont find it very useful or enlightening when people point out the obvious while ignoring intent completely. While I agree with some of your premise, nothing is ever perfect, and the interpretation of legal agreements is why many lawyers make lots of money, and why we have 10's of thousands of people employed in the legal profession So simply saying "will if you wanted X you should have written it down" is a simplistic take on a complex problem. If we could do that we would not have law suits debating the details of contract, nor would we have countless unintended consequences from various laws passed by the various legislative bodies >Taking a quick scan of GPLv2, this doesn’t even seem to grossly offend the principles or intent of the license - It does in fact offend the principles which si why GPLv3 was created, and AGPL and other versions of the license to counter some of the "holes" companies like RedHat exploit in GPLv2. Linux however has always and likely always will resist moving to GPLv3
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fragmede 3y ago
It's because when writing a contract, you can't consider all of the corner cases like you might be able to with code. The intention is that to be sharing stuff, where "sharing" and "stuff" is, unfortunately, poorly defined. The feeling is that Red Hat is going against the spirit of the GPLv2 because they're penalizing people for sharing. Yes, the legal system involves a bunch of minutiae so that a good contract would define "sharing" and "stuff" explicitly but for people that don't want to be lawyers, it is an "annoying legal-type thing" that they really don't want to deal with. It forms opinions for people about the law when the law clashes with the intention of it, so it's useful for others.
michaelmrose 3y ago
The intention is explicitly and obviously that additional restrictions not be placed on these downstream users. The fact that you are only required to transmit to the entire universe is merely limiting the burden placed upon you not delineation of the limit of who can access the source. If you can't explicitly tell foo they can't do bar but you ensure for practical purposes that they can't use the the expensive thing they paid for and must incur potentially millions in migration costs you are at least in violation of the spirit of the license.

jzb 3y ago

You're not reading it wrong. The popular understanding of the GPL vs. the actual text of the GPL are two extremely different things. Red Hat is far from alone in this. If I'm not mistaken, there's a whole cottage industry of WordPress plugin and theme developers who use basically this model. The plugin or theme is GPL'ed because it depends on WordPress, which is GPLed. But they gate the software and require payment to get it. They may also have an agreement that sets out a limit on redistribution for access - if you buy the theme or plugin from them and then set about redistributing it, they're not going to take your money in the future. I can't think of any good way to close the "loophole" here in a GPL-type license that doesn't essentially force a developer to distribute to anybody they've ever done business with, forever. Any language that would force Red Hat to keep its subscription with an "offending" customer would also tie their hands for cutting off access for other reasons -- because who wouldn't claim that the reason Red Hat cut the subscription was over distribution?

madeofpalk 3y ago
What's the loophole? This is working exactly as intended, no? GPL is to grant the user of software freedoms. Free as in freedoms, not beer. It's origin was from the user of a printer driver being frustrated they couldn't debug and fix an issue.
- Semaphor 3y ago
  The loophole is that as soon as you exercise your rights, you lose future access. So if you want access, you can't exercise your rights.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bhelkey 3y ago
    You have the right to do whatever you want with the software. You don't have the right to force someone else continue to work for you and provide you with updates.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      I don’t understand why this isn’t blindingly obvious. A copyright holder releasing their software under an open license is a huge privilege given to their customer. It doesn’t matter what reading they are doing it - marketing, hoping for external contribution, goodwill, etc. - it is their right to choose a license. It is also their right to change their license at any time. While I’ve not chosen RedHat for my own projects, I used it for nearly two decades at companies where it was already in place. Some of those had support contracts, others didn’t. Based on my experience, RedHat is one of the main reasons Windows didn’t completely take over backend systems. They offered a cohesive, supported server OS that could be run for less than the cost of Windows or Unix servers on nearly any hardware. I could enumerate the things I don’t like about RedHat Linux, but in an enterprise setting, the volumes of documentation, mature and complete set of repositories, and huge community essentially negate my own preferences. Their new licensing may make them irrelevant going forward, but I’m thankful for all they’ve done overall… except for systemd, burn it with fire! ;-)
    - Semaphor 3y ago
      It’s not about forcing, it’s about someone threatening you with an unfavorable outcome if you exercise your rights. That is (as I said repeatedly) not against the letter of the GPL (IMO). But it’s a chilling effect on exercising your rights.

invalidator 3y ago

They are providing the source as required. However, a key part of the GPL is that RH's customers should also be able to redistribute the source to anyone else, and RH is preventing that through contract law.

jaywalk 3y ago
They are, of course, always free to distribute the source to anyone else. RedHat cannot stop that. But if they do distribute the source to anyone else, RedHat is free to stop taking their money and not provide the software and source code to them in the future. It's shitty, but I can't see any realistic way to close this loophole.
- nextaccountic 3y ago
  GPL says that you can't impose further restrictions on the people you distribute GPL software to. Everybody should receive the entire set of freedoms unfeterred. Using contract law (or using blackmail, or using anything else) to restrict redistribution of the source appears to not be in compliance of GPL to me. I can't see how a judge might find otherwise. The problem is, who has standing here? The Red Hat customer or the copyright holder?
  - dralley 3y ago
    How about we use a different analogy. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft - they all have patches to the linux kernel which they do not always open source. And nothing in the GPL compels them to open source them so long as they aren't distributed outside the company, and are only used on internal systems. Let's say an employee with access to those internal kernels, who is under an employment contract and non-disclosure agreement, releases the kernel source code with those patches included. Would the GPL prevent that employee from being fired and/or sued for violation of NDA? Nope. >GPL says that you can't impose further restrictions on the people you distribute GPL software to. That's just the thing. Red Hat does not impose any further restrictions on the software that has been distributed to you. You can continue using RHEL, in theory, even with an expired license. There is no "kill switch". But Red Hat is not obligated to continue providing you with access to their services, including their software update repositories.

phpisthebest 3y ago

>>I don’t find it very useful or enlightening when people start Equally, I dont find it very useful or enlightening when people point out the obvious while ignoring intent completely. While I agree with some of your premise, nothing is ever perfect, and the interpretation of legal agreements is why many lawyers make lots of money, and why we have 10's of thousands of people employed in the legal profession So simply saying "will if you wanted X you should have written it down" is a simplistic take on a complex problem. If we could do that we would not have law suits debating the details of contract, nor would we have countless unintended consequences from various laws passed by the various legislative bodies >Taking a quick scan of GPLv2, this doesn’t even seem to grossly offend the principles or intent of the license - It does in fact offend the principles which si why GPLv3 was created, and AGPL and other versions of the license to counter some of the "holes" companies like RedHat exploit in GPLv2. Linux however has always and likely always will resist moving to GPLv3

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fragmede 3y ago

It's because when writing a contract, you can't consider all of the corner cases like you might be able to with code. The intention is that to be sharing stuff, where "sharing" and "stuff" is, unfortunately, poorly defined. The feeling is that Red Hat is going against the spirit of the GPLv2 because they're penalizing people for sharing. Yes, the legal system involves a bunch of minutiae so that a good contract would define "sharing" and "stuff" explicitly but for people that don't want to be lawyers, it is an "annoying legal-type thing" that they really don't want to deal with. It forms opinions for people about the law when the law clashes with the intention of it, so it's useful for others.

michaelmrose 3y ago

The intention is explicitly and obviously that additional restrictions not be placed on these downstream users. The fact that you are only required to transmit to the entire universe is merely limiting the burden placed upon you not delineation of the limit of who can access the source. If you can't explicitly tell foo they can't do bar but you ensure for practical purposes that they can't use the the expensive thing they paid for and must incur potentially millions in migration costs you are at least in violation of the spirit of the license.