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.
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.
That’s not how I understood it. I think saying “closed source” is kind of misleading.
Decent breakdown from The Register:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/
Seems they have been quite focused on the embrace, extend, extinguish plan for a decade or so.
Ah,
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.
This follows GPL
I’m a GPL noob, can someone elaborate on this? My belief was always that if you get your hands on GPL licensed software then you have the right to redistribute it under the same license for free or even charge for it.
The GPL essentially states that you must give copies of source code to the same people you give copies of binaries. Red Hat is not under any strict requirement to give copies of source code to everyone. What this means in practice is that Red Hat is essentially forcing everyone to agree to their license terms, in addition to the GPL, in order to access the RHEL source code.
What Red Hat appears to be doing is very much in a gray area, and at the very least it violates the spirit of the GPL if not the actual agreement as written. In fact what they’re trying to do may very well end up contravening the GPL. This is one of the clauses in the GPL:
If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.
In other words, if Red Hat tries to wrap the GPL in some bullshit extra license that says e.g. “you are not allowed to give copies of this source code to a third party” (such as, say, Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux or some other downstream distro), then I think their customers can simply remove that term from their license as it’s a “further restriction” as defined by the GPL. However, Red Hat also has in their license some restrictions that allow them to terminate their agreements with a customer at any time and for any reason whatsoever. Red Hat wields that like a cudgel, threatening their customers with Red Hat license termination if those customers choose to exercise their full rights under the GPL in ways that Red Hat doesn’t like. This article has a much more in-depth analysis if you want to know more.
I believe you are correct. Any paying Red Hat customer consuming GPL code has the right to redistribute that code. What Red Hat seems to be suggesting is that if you exercise that right, they’ll cut you as a customer, and thus you no longer have access to bug fixes going forward.
I suspect it’s legal under the GPL. I’m certain it violates the spirit of the GPL.
you have the right to redistribute it under the same license for free or even charge for it.
if the GPL is the only license, then yes. however, if there are additional licenses applied which don’t conflict with GPL, you may face restrictions on, say, distribution and sales of the code base, as Red Hat has done.
In effect, it’s open source, but access is restricted to paying customers of RHEL, and they’e not allowed to redistribute or sell it per the additional license they agree to when they purchase it.
Incorrect, redhat are simply saying that to get any source you have to have a centos stream subscription, which would be correct as if you have centos stream binaries you need a subscription anyway, so basically you only get the centos stream source on request if you actually happened to be a centos stream customer.
Now, what happens to centos stream users who used to be subscribing, well they should still be able to get the source for a reasonable fee (to cover distribution costs) for the binary code they have to hand. That means that if they are on an old centos and they want the source for project X version 2.3, and project X v2.3 is under a copyleft license, legally RedHat have a requirement to provide it upon request, but they have no legal requirements to provide source for a version that is from a later version of centos if the customer doesn’t actually have the binaries.
So if they can somehow keep future binary versions of centos code out of the hands of non-paying users they don’t have to give source to versions they don’t have. I don’t think they can do that easily.
This is only for copyleft code. This only applies to code they applied (note I didn’t say contributed) to copyleft code. Thus if they modified GNU Grep, their modifications are under the GPL, thus the code must be provided to anyone who asks for it if they have the binary. But if it is code unique to centos or applied to a project that isn’t under a copyleft licence, or is a project under a copyleft licence that allows non-copyleft modules or linking etc, they don’t have to give any of that.
The GPL is pretty simple, I used to read V2 as a kid in the 90’s and saw it like a Bible lol. V3 is more thorough and not as nice a read but it’s still very clear. However, not all software in a Linux distribution is protected by a copyleft licence like the GPL, this is the line that separates Free Software from Open Source. Welcome to the big problem of Open Source. You all want source code? Well Free Software gives you the rights for it and uses copyright law to protect those rights. But Open Source came about because that idea was incompatible with business who wanted the opposite. So you should expect Redhat to honour their legal obligations under the GPL but you won’t get a source version of centos as not everything in centos is GPL, some will be MIT, or Apache or BSD, and they are not copyleft licences and they give you no right to the source code at all.
Seems to me that a lot of people need to brush up on their Free Software, Richard Stallman, FSF, GNU, Open Source history. Free Software is Open Source as defined by the OSI (you don’t know who they are? Brush up like I said) but much that is Open Source is not Free Software and even more is not copyleft.
If you think that copyleft ideology applies to anything considered as “Open Source”, well you don’t have a clue what anything is actually about and you need to do some reading and listening of some Richard Stallman speeches because this confusion is precisely what he and the FSF have been combatting for years only to get barely anywhere because of how marketable “Open Source” is.
So again remember, not all of centos is copyleft. What is copylefted is protected but you won’t get a buildable source version of Centos unless you are a subscriber as many of its parts are not legally available to you, you can get all the GPL copyleft code and centos specific modifications, but a working OS you won’t get.
They would have to rewrite most software if they wanted to make it closed source, otherwise they would be violating licenses
How will it be closed source, per GPL? Are they bundling in proprietary services that are required to make it run?
RHEL is not the “villain distro”, that’s ChromeOS (and possibly CBL-Mariner).
Jokes aside, if they want their source code to only be available to people who pay for it, that’s their decision. I don’t know if there is any benefit to creating a Linux distro based on RHEL VS. another Linux distro that’s still open source but if there is, then I’m pretty sure that the developer is more than willing to pay if they think it’s worth it.
Does this affect Fedora?
It doesn’t seem like it, RHEL is based on Fedora. Fedora is beta RHEL more or less. But Alma, Rocky and Scientific Linux will all be in trouble as they’re based on RHEL. Or at least that’s what I make of it
I had it backwards, I thought Fedora was based on RHEL.
Well if they do go on to paywall it completely then yes my ditaste for RHEL will grow deeper than even Ubuntu
It’s a pity Almalinux was my go-to distro for VMs and whatnot. However, I was recently compelled to use Debian for a provisioning done with Ansible. It was a positive experience, of course one has to deal with the joy of Debian’s versions and packages discrepancies, but hey-ho we crack on. Also, I’ve been hearing good things about Suse, does anyone care to share a story?
Interesting move. The vast majority of VFX studios use (or used) CentOS, Rocky and Red Hat. In fact it’s been recommended in the industry to adopt Rocky by 2024
As others have said, RHEL is not going closed source. They are not violating the letter of the GPL (though IMO, certainly the spirit of it).
I think this is a crappy move by RedHat/IBM and I won’t excuse it, but I will say in their defense they are one of the largest contributors to open source. Everything from the kernel to Gnome and in between. It’s a massive step back from the company they were 5 years ago, though.
I see so many confused here. Unsurprising considering so many have no idea what the GPL is, what Free Software is, why it’s different, very different from “Open Source” software due to copyleft.
Everyone should go read the GPL, read version 2 as it reads very well, version 3 just beefs up version 2 to handle certain situations but its a bit less of a nicer read.
Learn what Free Software is: https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
And listen to a few of Richard Stallmans speeches which he has to continue giving because of this “Open Source” thing that confused everything. Note that the FSF, Richard Stallman and the GPL have nothing to do with Open Source at all. It is the Open Source Initiative that accepts the GPL as a “Open Source” license but not all Open SOurce licenses are Free Software licenses.
Below is a link to the Software Freedom Conservancy who have been talking to Redhat / IBM for years about this very issue before RH/IBM turned tail and stabbed everyone in the back:
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/
Redhat dont have a legal leg to stand on however it will cost you to prove it. You should win, but it will cost you. I am happy to purge any RH software from my systems at work, I was doing that anyway due to what happened to Centos.
Redhat have become the new SCO in essence.
fuck this, man. i hope someone sues their ass and wins; though i’m not sure how or even if it’s possible. the GPL does have this:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License.
but i don’t know if legally speaking, that really extends to them selectively choosing to terminate relationships with customers who exercise their GPL rights. what’s certain is that it’s an incredible asshole move and violates the spirit of the GPL and FOSS in general.
i have to admit i don’t always agree with the stallman position on things, but shit like this really makes me see the value of copyleft licenses and the arguments of the hardcore free software camp. software freedom is so easily lost :(
stallman was right.
