Seems like IBM is going to make RHEL closed source. What’s everyone’s opinion about the move? I feel RHEL is now the evil villain distro of the community.
Jesus christ. They aren’t going closed source. It’s like all these people are new to Linux and don’t understand the GPL, nor the politics behind the license.
I’m not new to linux but the GPL seems quite complicated and I couldn’t even tell you which GPL Redhat subscribe to without going to check.
RHEL may not be going ‘closed source’ but they are closing down the channels to access the code and will prosecute any customers who distribute the code.
and will prosecute any customers who distribute the code
Have they actually stated this, or is it just an opinion? Because my understanding of the GPL is that it would violate the license to put that restriction on their customers.
I worked for a fairly large tech company (not a household name, but well known in it’s sector) and this was their policy for core business IP related changes GPL things. Modified GPL sources were neatly packaged up and available but it was a violation of the support contract to share them.
It ultimately doesn’t matter (to those customers) if it’s a violation of the license - the customers were large businesses who were not going to risk an expensive court case without a clear victory against a company they’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) in, on some moral crusade.
I’m not defending it (and I did not enjoy working for said company), just saying that this model already exists.
Edit: I should also say that I have no idea if that’s going to be RedHats policy, but it would make sense if it were.
The GPL is very simple and it simply makes it impossible to do what you suggest RHEL are trying to do.
The don’t have to allow you to download the source code without asking, but they must provide full source code when asked. The licence say’s it in very simple terms, the code must be provided when requested and a reasonable fee can be charged for covering distribution costs. Basically they can charge you for the cost of postage of a set of DVDs full of source code.
It’s all in the preamble. V3 is a bit more complicated to combat certain things like tivoisation that came about after gpl V2 came out but it doesn’t allow Redhat to avoid giving the source when asked, but they don’t have to give it when not asked.
The RHEL approach seems to involve only supplying source code to customers already consuming binaries who will already be under other restrictions as they have agreeded to other T&C’s.
RHEL has been moving towards this for a decade, it seems unlikely they have forgotten about the GPL.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/
The Register seems to think they are acting perfectly in line with the GPL.
They are acting perfectly in line with the GPL. The GPL only grants you access to source code for the binary you already have.
If you don’t have the binary/executable you don’t have the right to the source code.
It will be interesting how RH provide access to GPL source (that which they have modified) going forwards. I suspect they will heavily push a subscription to centos stream which solves everything, but they have to provide the source regardless, and are allowed to charge a reasonable fee for admin and media costs etc. I don’t think a hefty centos subscription will meet that, however they could give a discounted access hoping that you then continue at full cost later.
Anything they have licensed under BSD etc would have none of those protections. They don’t have to give you anything, which is one of the arguments against the GPL from the BSD camp, that the GPL gives the user the same rights as the developer.
So to get source for many projects (modified by RH, otherwise go somewhere else) you will have to have a Centos stream subscription. But anything GPL will in practice be available upon request as long as you have the corresponding binary, which you can obtain from any installation of Centos of RHEL as is within your rights. But expect to have to push past the sales reps who insist you get a subscription. If they like they merely have to charge you $10 for a CD-R in the post, if they wish to be slightly annoying.
That’s not how I understood it. I think saying “closed source” is kind of misleading.
Decent breakdown from The Register:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/
Seems they have been quite focused on the embrace, extend, extinguish plan for a decade or so.
Ah,
paying customers will be able to obtain the source code to Red Hat Enterprise Linux… And under the terms of their contracts with the Hat, that means that they can’t publish it.
This follows GPL
Does this affect Fedora?
It doesn’t seem like it, RHEL is based on Fedora. Fedora is beta RHEL more or less. But Alma, Rocky and Scientific Linux will all be in trouble as they’re based on RHEL. Or at least that’s what I make of it
What are the implications of this move on fedora? I’ve been thinking of moving to fedora but I’m not so sure now
If i’m not mistaken I don’t think that Fedora will be affected because Fedora is upstream from RHEL. Now distros such as Alma, Rocky, and EuroLinux may be affected because they are downstream from RHEL. But I can be wrong.
So Red Hat benefits from the Fedora Project?
I see so many confused here. Unsurprising considering so many have no idea what the GPL is, what Free Software is, why it’s different, very different from “Open Source” software due to copyleft.
Everyone should go read the GPL, read version 2 as it reads very well, version 3 just beefs up version 2 to handle certain situations but its a bit less of a nicer read.
Learn what Free Software is: https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
And listen to a few of Richard Stallmans speeches which he has to continue giving because of this “Open Source” thing that confused everything. Note that the FSF, Richard Stallman and the GPL have nothing to do with Open Source at all. It is the Open Source Initiative that accepts the GPL as a “Open Source” license but not all Open SOurce licenses are Free Software licenses.
Below is a link to the Software Freedom Conservancy who have been talking to Redhat / IBM for years about this very issue before RH/IBM turned tail and stabbed everyone in the back:
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/
Redhat dont have a legal leg to stand on however it will cost you to prove it. You should win, but it will cost you. I am happy to purge any RH software from my systems at work, I was doing that anyway due to what happened to Centos.
Redhat have become the new SCO in essence.
fuck this, man. i hope someone sues their ass and wins; though i’m not sure how or even if it’s possible. the GPL does have this:
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.
but i don’t know if legally speaking, that really extends to them selectively choosing to terminate relationships with customers who exercise their GPL rights. what’s certain is that it’s an incredible asshole move and violates the spirit of the GPL and FOSS in general.
i have to admit i don’t always agree with the stallman position on things, but shit like this really makes me see the value of copyleft licenses and the arguments of the hardcore free software camp. software freedom is so easily lost :(
stallman was right.
Incorrect, redhat are simply saying that to get any source you have to have a centos stream subscription, which would be correct as if you have centos stream binaries you need a subscription anyway, so basically you only get the centos stream source on request if you actually happened to be a centos stream customer.
Now, what happens to centos stream users who used to be subscribing, well they should still be able to get the source for a reasonable fee (to cover distribution costs) for the binary code they have to hand. That means that if they are on an old centos and they want the source for project X version 2.3, and project X v2.3 is under a copyleft license, legally RedHat have a requirement to provide it upon request, but they have no legal requirements to provide source for a version that is from a later version of centos if the customer doesn’t actually have the binaries.
So if they can somehow keep future binary versions of centos code out of the hands of non-paying users they don’t have to give source to versions they don’t have. I don’t think they can do that easily.
This is only for copyleft code. This only applies to code they applied (note I didn’t say contributed) to copyleft code. Thus if they modified GNU Grep, their modifications are under the GPL, thus the code must be provided to anyone who asks for it if they have the binary. But if it is code unique to centos or applied to a project that isn’t under a copyleft licence, or is a project under a copyleft licence that allows non-copyleft modules or linking etc, they don’t have to give any of that.
The GPL is pretty simple, I used to read V2 as a kid in the 90’s and saw it like a Bible lol. V3 is more thorough and not as nice a read but it’s still very clear. However, not all software in a Linux distribution is protected by a copyleft licence like the GPL, this is the line that separates Free Software from Open Source. Welcome to the big problem of Open Source. You all want source code? Well Free Software gives you the rights for it and uses copyright law to protect those rights. But Open Source came about because that idea was incompatible with business who wanted the opposite. So you should expect Redhat to honour their legal obligations under the GPL but you won’t get a source version of centos as not everything in centos is GPL, some will be MIT, or Apache or BSD, and they are not copyleft licences and they give you no right to the source code at all.
Seems to me that a lot of people need to brush up on their Free Software, Richard Stallman, FSF, GNU, Open Source history. Free Software is Open Source as defined by the OSI (you don’t know who they are? Brush up like I said) but much that is Open Source is not Free Software and even more is not copyleft.
If you think that copyleft ideology applies to anything considered as “Open Source”, well you don’t have a clue what anything is actually about and you need to do some reading and listening of some Richard Stallman speeches because this confusion is precisely what he and the FSF have been combatting for years only to get barely anywhere because of how marketable “Open Source” is.
So again remember, not all of centos is copyleft. What is copylefted is protected but you won’t get a buildable source version of Centos unless you are a subscriber as many of its parts are not legally available to you, you can get all the GPL copyleft code and centos specific modifications, but a working OS you won’t get.
