IBM: We poured money and resources into Linux before 99% of the business world had even heard of it. We helped make it great. Why shouldn’t we require a return on that investment?
PLEASE UNDERSTAND, I think IBM/RH is bone-headed as heck and are now inexcusable violators of the GPL, and other licenses.
I knew they were going to *break* RH and make it something abominable.
But they *were* there at the very beginning of the 2000s, promoting Linux heavily. (Not altruistically, of course)
This is not a violation of the GPL. They are allowed to charge for access to the source. If you provide binaries/images to a customer, you also must provide source. However, anyone who doesn’t pay isn’t entitled to it.
However, this is still a total bonehead move.
But anyone with access to source code licensed under GPL can legally redistribute said source code. One of the fundamental freedoms is that if you are given GPL-licensed source code, you can modify and redistribute it as much as you like.
I think the real problem might be that some of the work from Red Hat doesn’t fall under the GPL, hence this wouldn’t apply, but I’m not sure.
Or what if they only distribute it to companies that sign an agreement not to redistribute? Then they have the right to redistribute according to the GPL, but if they do, Red Hat will kick them out. This would seem like a way to circumvent the fundamental ideas behind the GPL and free software. If they do this, I can no longer be supportive of Red Hat in any way, and will likely have to distro-hop away from Fedora due to this misalignment of ideology.
