What's everyone's take on the current Red Hat kerfuffle?

[Arnox]

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.

[thinkpadx]

bs and really do not care.

[m_pav]

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

[Adrian]

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.

[FullScale4Me]

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.

[rambo919]

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

[asqwerth]

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.

[AK-47]

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.

[asqwerth]

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.

[Paul..]

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.