MX Linux Forum

For those who don't know: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furtheri ... tos-stream

and

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hats ... rg-changes

Basically, they don't want other distros rebuilding and shipping RHEL for themselves without contributing anything to the source. I have my own opinions on this, but I would like to hear what the MX community has to say on this first.

bs and really do not care.

Not a big deal at all. They're just cleaning up and establishing new paths to work within.

Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity.

I think they are a bit confused about how Red Hat itself provides value if they think somebody rebuilding code is stealing from the value they provide.

Personally as far as they respect the licenses they can do whatever they want.

thinkpadx wrote: Mon Jun 26, 2023 10:16 pm bs and really do not care.

+1

I distro hopped to RH once and found the installer amateurish and hopped away so fast that's all I remember.

I think they for once might have a legal problem on their hands..... this could end up creating case law.

I read the article in this week's Distrowatch. Looks like RH stuck with the letter though not spirit of the law, so they might be entitled to do what they did. Though of course it is possible their actions may still be challenged in court.

However, I note from the comments that it is also the specific timing of their actions (in the middle of the life of a release) without notice or warning that a lot of affected people are upset at .

Should be interesting to see what happens next.

They are a business, and a business' goal is to make money. As long as they are not harming anyone, they should be allowed to do whatever they please.
If people have a problem with their practices or methods of operation, they can always vote with their wallet.

But as a Fedora user myself, I have often noticed them taking a legally conservative approach to this sort of things so this is surprising, but with any organisation there are restructures in management and this brings about all kinds of wonders.

I believe the restriction on the GPL is that the code has to be shared with the program's users, but not necessarily everyone. Those users however can share the code and their derivatives as they please, with likely nothing Red Hat can do to stop them. I would interpret that as, if you're not a paying customer, you don't have authorised access to the program, and you are not entitled to the source code.

Based on the DW discussion and comments, Redhat's EULA with their customers has a clause that says unauthorised distribution of the source code enables RH to terminate their contract. Thus, the customer is entitled to ask for the source code and get it. But once they do that, RH can terminate the contract, thus making that customer no longer one, and no longer entitled to further source code.

They are *after all* owned by IBM...so it is no surprise to me that they are ultra careful and ultra conservative...given the long history of the parent company.

From the Distro Watch article:

Red Hat's approach to publishing its source code has meant it has been possible for other organizations to make clones of RHEL which use the same source code and therefore are considered 1:1 compatible (or "bug for bug" compatible) with RHEL. This has given rise to distributions such as Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux OS, Oracle Linux, EuroLinux, and a few others.

Before the Linux community gets it's collective shorts in a knot over Red Hat's announcement, I think that we need to have a real hard look at the business cases of the eleven distros that will be directly affected. If one,or more of them, is repackaging Red Hat's source code without trademarks or attribution (as the DW article infers), and then undercutting Red Hat in the enterprise markets, Red Hat's actions are justified.

Paul.. wrote: Thu Jul 06, 2023 7:25 am They are *after all* owned by IBM...so it is no surprise to me that they are ultra careful and ultra conservative...given the long history of the parent company.

True...IBM zealously guards its IP and now considers the RH sources part of its IP.

As someone who works with RHEL servers on a daily basis I can say it locks our company into the (actually pretty pricey) Red Hat subscription forever, since the developer for the software that's running on there officially only supports RHEL-based systems. Since they are binary-compatible and we have the know-how to run them without official support, there were ideas to switch to one of the free alternatives in the past, but with this change of events this topic gets thrown out of the window.

On the other hand, IF we had decided to do the switch, we'd have been in big trouble now, since we'd basically need to switch back to RHEL asap. And there are probably some smaller companies who are in just that situation now...

In private I'm actually not the biggest fan of the RHEL/Fedora/RPM based systems (thus Debian-based systems are my mains), so it doesn't affect me too much, but of course the open source community will be missing the input from Red Hat. They contributed a not-so-small part of developments in the Linux ecosystem in the past.

I'd be interested to hear what GNU says, as I think Red Hat's position is a violation of the GPL. Which is to say, I think the Distrowatch article is incorrect. Notably absent from the Red Hat blog posts (and also the DW article) is discussion of the derivative work issue. How much time and money Red Hat spends is irrelevant. Only the copyright holder may produce derivative works. The GPL grants permission to create same, but on condition the derivative work is similarly free (in the permissions sense). It's an inherent limitation of the business model Red Hat chose to follow. Only recently did they (i.e., their legal department) decide they could have their cake and eat it too.

asqwerth wrote: Thu Jul 06, 2023 7:13 am Based on the DW discussion and comments, Redhat's EULA with their customers has a clause that says unauthorised distribution of the source code enables RH to terminate their contract. Thus, the customer is entitled to ask for the source code and get it. But once they do that, RH can terminate the contract, thus making that customer no longer one, and no longer entitled to further source code.

GPL states:

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the
rights granted or affirmed under this License.

That "unauthorized distribution of the source code" sounds a lot like "further restriction" to me.

Adrian wrote: Sat Jul 08, 2023 3:43 pm

asqwerth wrote: Thu Jul 06, 2023 7:13 am Based on the DW discussion and comments, Redhat's EULA with their customers has a clause that says unauthorised distribution of the source code enables RH to terminate their contract. Thus, the customer is entitled to ask for the source code and get it. But once they do that, RH can terminate the contract, thus making that customer no longer one, and no longer entitled to further source code.

GPL states:

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the
rights granted or affirmed under this License.

That "unauthorized distribution of the source code" sounds a lot like "further restriction" to me.

That would only hold true if the entirety of Red Hat's Enterprise version is released under the GPL. Is it?

The more important question is: How much of Red Hat's upstream is released under the GPL and similar 'copyleft' licenses?

Red Hat???? IBM. Oh them. Yawn....

j2mcgreg wrote: Sat Jul 08, 2023 4:08 pm

Adrian wrote: Sat Jul 08, 2023 3:43 pm

asqwerth wrote: Thu Jul 06, 2023 7:13 am Based on the DW discussion and comments, Redhat's EULA with their customers has a clause that says unauthorised distribution of the source code enables RH to terminate their contract. Thus, the customer is entitled to ask for the source code and get it. But once they do that, RH can terminate the contract, thus making that customer no longer one, and no longer entitled to further source code.

GPL states:

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the
rights granted or affirmed under this License.

That "unauthorized distribution of the source code" sounds a lot like "further restriction" to me.

That would only hold true if the entirety of Red Hat's Enterprise version is released under the GPL. Is it?

I don't think there's a collective license or if it's even possible to do that considering that components can have different licenses, but most of the stuff in a Linux distribution including Red Hat is GPLed. I don't think the problem is with random stuff that light be Apache or MIT some other random license, those are just exceptions anyway. And most of the open source license give clear permission to share code, for example Apache: "You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form" or MIT "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so[...]"

That's the point about Open Source, if you have "open source" license that tells you "you can get the code but than you lose the account if you do something we don't want you to do with it" that's not open source in the common understanding, I think Red Hat is practicing shooting their foot... some of their corporate clients might not care about this stuff, but open source fans will sour at this kind of behavior and will eventually drive less people to Red Hat and even Fedora.

Speaking of Red Hat shooting their foot, they're about to become even less popular: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-40 ... -Telemetry
"Privacy preserving telemetry" - no worries, I'm a vegetarian carnivore.

CentOS was the first blood in the water. Telemetry was the next.... this is the third sign of things to come.

None of the large Linux commercial companies are even pretending anymore ever since they allowed M$ on to the FSF board. The devil was let into the treehouse to teach the daemons how to operate.

Debian so far has been the least affected but instead it allowed alphabet crazies into leadership which has thus far cost us Preining but who knows what's still coming.

The big problem everyone is avoiding is currently LinuxLand is set up like a card castle shell game..... and the foundations are being meddled with. People forget that corporations are run by sharks who will do anything they need to in order to ensure the competition never gets out of their safe little patch of dirt and become an actual threat.... it would hardly be difficult given it's open ask no questions nature to run operations to keep Linux small, fragmented, unstable and harmless. The irony is Linux by nature is socially insecure with the only watchdogs like Stallman being happily ostracized when they become a real threat to profits or long term goals.

The big mistake people make is to think that corporations run like nice regular neighbors who would never try to kill and eat you to improve the view.

rambo919 wrote: Wed Aug 02, 2023 2:44 am CentOS was the first blood in the water. Telemetry was the next.... this is the third sign of things to come.

None of the large Linux commercial companies are even pretending anymore ever since they allowed M$ on to the FSF board. The devil was let into the treehouse to teach the daemons how to operate.

Debian so far has been the least affected but instead it allowed alphabet crazies into leadership which has thus far cost us Preining but who knows what's still coming.

The big problem everyone is avoiding is currently LinuxLand is set up like a card castle shell game..... and the foundations are being meddled with. People forget that corporations are run by sharks who will do anything they need to in order to ensure the competition never gets out of their safe little patch of dirt and become an actual threat.... it would hardly be difficult given it's open ask no questions nature to run operations to keep Linux small, fragmented, unstable and harmless. The irony is Linux by nature is socially insecure with the only watchdogs like Stallman being happily ostracized when they become a real threat to profits or long term goals.

The big mistake people make is to think that corporations run like nice regular neighbors who would never try to kill and eat you to improve the view.

Preining had an amazing KDE repo and also has so much knowledge of KDE. Bummer he jumped ship for Arch.