A superficially modest blog post from a senior Hatter announces that going forward, the company will only publish the source code of its CentOS Stream product to the world. In other words, only 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.
Can we avoid clickbait titles? Really hoping the Lemmy community is better than what Reddit turned into.
…I don’t see how this is clickbait, this is a major damaging move to downstream distros. They can no longer use RHEL source. Also, I just copy and pasted the original article’s title. RHEL is an extremely influential distro, others will follow its lead.
I actually considered changing it at first because I didn’t think it properly conveyed just how damaging to open source this is. This is an inflection point for the entire space. Red Hat is one of the most influential distros and others will follow its lead.
If you disagree with my take, fair, but tell me why. Same for all the people upvoting @carlyman’s comment. I want to have real discourse with you all, and I will change the title if you have good reasoning that it is in fact inaccurate. Like you said, we don’t want this to be like Reddit.
It’s also against the spirit of the GPL if not the letter. Red Hat isn’t just required to release source code to its customers upon request; that source code comes with GPL rights and restrictions attached (including the right to distribute).
Is it legal for Red Hat to require customers to waive their GPL rights? I don’t think it should be, but I don’t think courts are particularly friendly to copyleft holders.
I will leave this article from the Software Freedom Conservancy which gives an analysis of the legal impact of the new terms of the RHEL CCS distribution in terms of the GPL.
In short, it is as you say, not distributing to the public at large is only a violation of the spirit of the GPL but not an actual legal violation. As for redistribution, the new terms stipulate that RedHat CANNOT STOP YOU from redistributing the code (unless you forgot to remove their icons/artwork/copyrightable stuff), but doing so will put you under consideration for a 30-day notice that your ability to access binaries and sources will be revoked.
Additionally, the SFC has gone ahead and assumed that RedHat will have little inclination to sell a single license to Rocky or Alma for them to them attempt a systematic way to get around their RHEL CCS distribution model. In short, RedHat has come full circle in implementing the full breadth of their hostilities towards downstream projects of their RHEL.
I know RedHat folks justify it as “None of the downstream projects helped patched anything. That the downstream projects were the ones being hostile and RedHat is just finally responding in like.” I think the “none” might be over exaggerated, but RedHat has indeed submitted easily over 90% of the patches to RHEL’s code base. That said, working with the community to help foster more contributions is the correct answer, not taking the ball and going home.
All in all, RedHat is basically allowed to do what it is doing. But everyone is free to not like this path RedHat has taken themselves down. I mean, there’s a lot of “questionable” spirit of FOSS that multiple companies that contribute to open source do with their product. cough Java cough.
I agree with the sentiment…but hard not to say this isn’t a clickbait title. Let’s not rely on rhetoric…let’s speak with data, details, and specifics to help foster actual discourse and constructive disagreement.
You’re upset that the headline didn’t have data, details and specifics in it?..
When most people think of clickbait, there is a disconnect between the content presented and the title. There is no such disconnect in this case. Your interpretation of the word is an outlier, and even if I agreed that it was clickbait, you still haven’t convinced me it is a bad thing in this specific scenario.
Accidentally deleted my last comment… but a summary of what I had said, I don’t think it’s clickbait. This is an inflection point for the entire space and I actually considered changing the title because I didn’t think it properly expressed just how damaging it is. It restricts people receiving RHEL source, compromising existing derivatives and essentially closing off the possibility of any more. RHEL is an extremely influential distro, others will follow its lead. Also, it’s a copy and paste of the original title.
If you think anything I’ve said here is incorrect or you have a different perspective, I’m totally open for discourse. Just don’t go around leaving negative comments without explaining yourself - I was hoping this community would be better than Reddit too.
(Lemmy REALLY needs a confirmation box for that. Not the first time lol)
Frankly, I’m more concerned about the precedent this sets for the GPL.
If Red Hat can do this, then there’s nothing (legally) preventing every other megacorp from ending public contributions to Linux and other GPL projects, forking them, and releasing them under restrictive contractual terms.
Granted, not everyone would take their code private. Microsoft and Apple make some contributions to BSD/MIT/etc. licensed software even though they are not required to. However, I think we’d miss out on quite a lot of FOSS development.
Can we also avoid idiots like yourself making stupid comments?
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The title is accurate
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Letting users pick their own title will lead to abuse and manipulation as users try to make a headline fit their narrative.
This is the sort of discourse I left reddit for. Hope your reply made you feel better.
