4 ms·

This is kind of a weird take unless you're some corporate lacky. Where does the GPL only refer to users? Isn't anyone supposed to be able to get access? The AG

This is kind of a weird take unless you're some corporate lacky. Where does the GPL only refer to users? Isn't anyone supposed to be able to get access? The AGPL does, for certain; it's what I license my work under to ensure it can't be rehosted somewhere and be proprietary'd. Interestingly, Red Hat appears to be gatekeeping what constitutes a user of their systems in order to offer GPL terms only to those who are users. This requires payment, so it's a way for business to refuse open terms unless paid for. Why is that okay? They accept patches from community members, what moral right do they have to repackage and then withhold source when asked? The true freeloaders of libre software have always been commercial efforts. If they couldn't freeload off of GNU, Linux, and BSD, where would we be? Quite insulting for Red Hat to declare others to be freeloading when they are the ones profiting on the community's work. They wouldn't have a company without free software. Nobody's entitled to profit. I hope some rights holders sue Red Hat to keep the source shared. They're perfectly free to build their own non-GPL distro on top of Linux, nobody'll stop them, and they won't have to share.

bruce511 3y ago
>> Where does the GPL only refer to users? Isn't anyone supposed to be able to get access? The AGPL does, for certain; The AGPL was designed (partly) to overcome this specific limitation in GPL3. The preamble and license [1] reads; Preamble "By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users. ... "if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. The license itself is best read by a lawyer, but you'll notice when talking about object code (section 6) the source is "bound" to the object code, and its recipients. There's no requirement to make the source generally available. Aside- the Linux kernel uses GPL2 which has even fewer requirements than v3. But the concept of supplying code "to the user" is there as well.
- zlg_codes 3y ago
  So, in context, the recipient is the purchaser of a RH support contract, and they would argue that it should be ONLY the recipients who receive the source? The primary problem I see here is, a purchaser is receiving source in return for the ability to distribute it, if they want to keep support. Quite a one-sided agreement that seems to dilute the spirit of libre software. You have the freedom still, sure, but choosing to use it ends the contract.
  - bruce511 3y ago
    This is exactly the argument being made. RH are complying with the terms of the license. They equally gave the right to fire customers if they choose. Given that the customer really has no major incentive to distribute the source, its not a terribly hard decision to make. On the one hand this is a matter of law, and the law is being upheld. On thd other hand it's a matter of "spirit" and "community" and other non-legal arguments. Which IMO is neither here nor there. There's always someone who wants you yo do things another way; you can't please everyone all the time. What I don't get is the fuss. If you don't like the red hat policy then pick another distro. There are plenty to choose from.
    - zlg_codes 3y ago
      > What I don't get is the fuss. What do you mean by "fuss"? Left to interpretation, anything not aligning with your view could be classified as fussing. I don't use RH so it doesn't affect me personally, but they still hold sway in the ecosystem at present and their practices may inspire others to use orthogonal contracts to disincentivize the use of rights granted by the GPL. We can choose non-RH today, but can you not picture a future where this is practiced by more than just them? When social practices change in influential places, it can have far-reaching consequences that don't appear related at first. If others didn't look to RH for guidance or examples of how to do business on Linux, I'd be much less concerned.
      - bruce511 3y ago
        By "fuss" I mean the agitation of non-customers. This happens a fair bit I the OSS space. Non-users have very strong opinions on how companies, that have OSS offerings, should behave. Because the software is OSS, customers, or more often not-even-customers, feel the urge to comment. Clearly this case is not a legal issue. It's a business issue. And the business case being made by RH is that they choose not to do business with folk who distribute their source. That's novel, but not illegal. Regarding "business on linux", to all intents and purposes it doesn't exist. Apart from RH, The percentage of users who have ever spent a dime on -any- Linux OS or Linux program is a rounding error from 0. Every second week there's a "show HN" on some new startup or scheme to somehow pay OSS developers. The "business" of OSS, and business if Linux, is an unsolved problem. RH is at least innovating in the space, although very (very) few have been successful using their model. Your concern for this innovation is noted, but, with respect, only affects users who are not customers. Which suggests you are less concerned with the business of Linux, and more concerned with getting stuff going free. (Which I get; we all like free things.) If OSS -could- figure out a viable business model though, then that would allow many more OSS projects to exist, suck less, and make better progress. This would be a huge win for users to have the ability to control their own machines.
em-bee 3y ago
Where does the GPL only refer to users? Isn't anyone supposed to be able to get access? the GPL always only gave rights to the users of the software, never the general public. only users have the right to get the source code. the users however also have the right to share their copy which is why it is usually pointless to not make the code public in the first place. red hat circumvents that by using a support contract that terminates when users share their copy.
- zlg_codes 3y ago
  > red hat circumvents that by using a support contract that terminates when users share their copy. Ah, thanks for that piece of info!
- oso2k 3y ago
  > red hat circumvents that by using a support contract that terminates when users share their copy. This is not true. Subscribers are allowed to share copies of source code, per the GPL, without penalty. See Section 1.4 of https://www.redhat.com/licenses/Appendix-1-Global-English-20230620.pdf https://www.redhat.com/licenses/Appendix-1-Global-English-20... Also, penalizing customers for sharing source code makes no sense when we already do that by upstreaming our work and our internal policy is to "Upstream First". https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/what-open-source-upstream https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/what-open-source-upstream
  - em-bee 3y ago
    if they can share all the sources freely, then what exactly is preventing anyone from building RHEL clones?
    - oso2k 3y ago
      Skill? Funding? Effort? Nothing? It’s why we have CentOS’s origination before we hired the developers, Oracle’s Enterprise Linux, RockyLinux, AlmaLinux. We have invested massive amounts of dollars & human resources into our CI/CD, QA/QE, and performance testing. Maybe that worries people? That’s speculation on my part. What we changed (my opinion: doesn’t represent what Red Hat is saying, has said, or will say) was an optimization (or correction for an oversight) to our CI/CD process after making CentOS the upstream to RHEL. We used to sanitize the RHEL srpms of Red Hat trademarks, graphics, proprietary information, embargoed information or source, etc. Since of a lot of the RHEL developers are CentOS, Fedora, upstream developers and this helped especially those CentOS developers. But if RHEL is downstream and already a git pull of those CentOS, Fedora, upstream, then sanitizing srpms is redundant, duplicative and even unnecessary for CentOS’s benefit.

bruce511 3y ago

>> Where does the GPL only refer to users? Isn't anyone supposed to be able to get access? The AGPL does, for certain; The AGPL was designed (partly) to overcome this specific limitation in GPL3. The preamble and license [1] reads; Preamble "By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users. ... "if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. The license itself is best read by a lawyer, but you'll notice when talking about object code (section 6) the source is "bound" to the object code, and its recipients. There's no requirement to make the source generally available. Aside- the Linux kernel uses GPL2 which has even fewer requirements than v3. But the concept of supplying code "to the user" is there as well.

zlg_codes 3y ago
So, in context, the recipient is the purchaser of a RH support contract, and they would argue that it should be ONLY the recipients who receive the source? The primary problem I see here is, a purchaser is receiving source in return for the ability to distribute it, if they want to keep support. Quite a one-sided agreement that seems to dilute the spirit of libre software. You have the freedom still, sure, but choosing to use it ends the contract.
- bruce511 3y ago
  This is exactly the argument being made. RH are complying with the terms of the license. They equally gave the right to fire customers if they choose. Given that the customer really has no major incentive to distribute the source, its not a terribly hard decision to make. On the one hand this is a matter of law, and the law is being upheld. On thd other hand it's a matter of "spirit" and "community" and other non-legal arguments. Which IMO is neither here nor there. There's always someone who wants you yo do things another way; you can't please everyone all the time. What I don't get is the fuss. If you don't like the red hat policy then pick another distro. There are plenty to choose from.
  - zlg_codes 3y ago
    > What I don't get is the fuss. What do you mean by "fuss"? Left to interpretation, anything not aligning with your view could be classified as fussing. I don't use RH so it doesn't affect me personally, but they still hold sway in the ecosystem at present and their practices may inspire others to use orthogonal contracts to disincentivize the use of rights granted by the GPL. We can choose non-RH today, but can you not picture a future where this is practiced by more than just them? When social practices change in influential places, it can have far-reaching consequences that don't appear related at first. If others didn't look to RH for guidance or examples of how to do business on Linux, I'd be much less concerned.
    - bruce511 3y ago
      By "fuss" I mean the agitation of non-customers. This happens a fair bit I the OSS space. Non-users have very strong opinions on how companies, that have OSS offerings, should behave. Because the software is OSS, customers, or more often not-even-customers, feel the urge to comment. Clearly this case is not a legal issue. It's a business issue. And the business case being made by RH is that they choose not to do business with folk who distribute their source. That's novel, but not illegal. Regarding "business on linux", to all intents and purposes it doesn't exist. Apart from RH, The percentage of users who have ever spent a dime on -any- Linux OS or Linux program is a rounding error from 0. Every second week there's a "show HN" on some new startup or scheme to somehow pay OSS developers. The "business" of OSS, and business if Linux, is an unsolved problem. RH is at least innovating in the space, although very (very) few have been successful using their model. Your concern for this innovation is noted, but, with respect, only affects users who are not customers. Which suggests you are less concerned with the business of Linux, and more concerned with getting stuff going free. (Which I get; we all like free things.) If OSS -could- figure out a viable business model though, then that would allow many more OSS projects to exist, suck less, and make better progress. This would be a huge win for users to have the ability to control their own machines.

em-bee 3y ago

Where does the GPL only refer to users? Isn't anyone supposed to be able to get access? the GPL always only gave rights to the users of the software, never the general public. only users have the right to get the source code. the users however also have the right to share their copy which is why it is usually pointless to not make the code public in the first place. red hat circumvents that by using a support contract that terminates when users share their copy.

zlg_codes 3y ago
> red hat circumvents that by using a support contract that terminates when users share their copy. Ah, thanks for that piece of info!
oso2k 3y ago
> red hat circumvents that by using a support contract that terminates when users share their copy. This is not true. Subscribers are allowed to share copies of source code, per the GPL, without penalty. See Section 1.4 of https://www.redhat.com/licenses/Appendix-1-Global-English-20230620.pdf https://www.redhat.com/licenses/Appendix-1-Global-English-20... Also, penalizing customers for sharing source code makes no sense when we already do that by upstreaming our work and our internal policy is to "Upstream First". https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/what-open-source-upstream https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/what-open-source-upstream
- em-bee 3y ago
  if they can share all the sources freely, then what exactly is preventing anyone from building RHEL clones?
  - oso2k 3y ago
    Skill? Funding? Effort? Nothing? It’s why we have CentOS’s origination before we hired the developers, Oracle’s Enterprise Linux, RockyLinux, AlmaLinux. We have invested massive amounts of dollars & human resources into our CI/CD, QA/QE, and performance testing. Maybe that worries people? That’s speculation on my part. What we changed (my opinion: doesn’t represent what Red Hat is saying, has said, or will say) was an optimization (or correction for an oversight) to our CI/CD process after making CentOS the upstream to RHEL. We used to sanitize the RHEL srpms of Red Hat trademarks, graphics, proprietary information, embargoed information or source, etc. Since of a lot of the RHEL developers are CentOS, Fedora, upstream developers and this helped especially those CentOS developers. But if RHEL is downstream and already a git pull of those CentOS, Fedora, upstream, then sanitizing srpms is redundant, duplicative and even unnecessary for CentOS’s benefit.