Seems like IBM is going to make RHEL closed source. What’s everyone’s opinion about the move? I feel RHEL is now the evil villain distro of the community.
Seems like IBM is going to make RHEL closed source. What’s everyone’s opinion about the move? I feel RHEL is now the evil villain distro of the community.
Jesus christ. They aren’t going closed source. It’s like all these people are new to Linux and don’t understand the GPL, nor the politics behind the license.
I’m not new to linux but the GPL seems quite complicated and I couldn’t even tell you which GPL Redhat subscribe to without going to check.
RHEL may not be going ‘closed source’ but they are closing down the channels to access the code and will prosecute any customers who distribute the code.
Have they actually stated this, or is it just an opinion? Because my understanding of the GPL is that it would violate the license to put that restriction on their customers.
I worked for a fairly large tech company (not a household name, but well known in it’s sector) and this was their policy for core business IP related changes GPL things. Modified GPL sources were neatly packaged up and available but it was a violation of the support contract to share them.
It ultimately doesn’t matter (to those customers) if it’s a violation of the license - the customers were large businesses who were not going to risk an expensive court case without a clear victory against a company they’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) in, on some moral crusade.
I’m not defending it (and I did not enjoy working for said company), just saying that this model already exists.
Edit: I should also say that I have no idea if that’s going to be RedHats policy, but it would make sense if it were.
It’s not like the entire operating system is GPL. The customers are obviously free to redistribute the source for the free software components.
The GPL is very simple and it simply makes it impossible to do what you suggest RHEL are trying to do.
The don’t have to allow you to download the source code without asking, but they must provide full source code when asked. The licence say’s it in very simple terms, the code must be provided when requested and a reasonable fee can be charged for covering distribution costs. Basically they can charge you for the cost of postage of a set of DVDs full of source code.
It’s all in the preamble. V3 is a bit more complicated to combat certain things like tivoisation that came about after gpl V2 came out but it doesn’t allow Redhat to avoid giving the source when asked, but they don’t have to give it when not asked.