cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/linux/t/91676
It’s been an exciting week for people who care about Linux distributions, FOSS licensing, FOSS distribution, FOSS business models, and the future of open source in general. Red Hat’s an…
While I agree that nobody is entitled to the works of others, I find it both disingenuous and against the spirit of FOSS for Red Hat to lock its code behind a paywall just because it can still use the GPL due to some somewhat sneaky legal maneuvering so it can still call it “open source” by a very narrow technicality. At this point, why even bother? It’s all just so slimy.
From a users’ perspective, you still have full rights to review, modify, and even redistribute the code. Though, exercising the last one is where RH limits people to the future code and software to its customer. A positive right to the developer’s future work is something that would require some kind of funding mechanism, but for the purpose of being Libre/Opensource it was something never guaranteed anyway.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/
As we understand it, this contract clearly states that the terms do not intend to contradict any rights to copy, modify, redistribute and/or reinstall the software as many times and as many places as the customer likes (see §1.4). Additionally, though, the contract indicates that if the customer engages in these activities, that Red Hat reserves the right to cancel that contract and make no further contracts with the customer for support and update services. In essence, Red Hat requires their customers to choose between (a) their software freedom and rights, and (b) remaining a Red Hat customer. In some versions of these contracts that we have reviewed, Red Hat even reserves the right to “Review” a customer (effectively a BSA-style audit) to examine how many copies of RHEL are actually installed (see §10) — presumably for the purpose of Red Hat getting the information they need to decide whether to “fire” the customer.
If you contractually limit user rights to redistribute the code, then how can you actually comply with the GPL? Redistribution isn’t an optional clause.
