this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
27 points (96.6% liked)

Open Source

31417 readers
12 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/linux/t/91676

It’s been an exciting week for people who care about Linux distributions, FOSS licensing, FOSS distribution, FOSS business models, and the future of open source in general. Red Hat’s an…

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

As we understand it, this contract clearly states that the terms do not intend to contradict any rights to copy, modify, redistribute and/or reinstall the software as many times and as many places as the customer likes (see §1.4). Additionally, though, the contract indicates that if the customer engages in these activities, that Red Hat reserves the right to cancel that contract and make no further contracts with the customer for support and update services. In essence, Red Hat requires their customers to choose between (a) their software freedom and rights, and (b) remaining a Red Hat customer. In some versions of these contracts that we have reviewed, Red Hat even reserves the right to “Review” a customer (effectively a BSA-style audit) to examine how many copies of RHEL are actually installed (see §10) — presumably for the purpose of Red Hat getting the information they need to decide whether to “fire” the customer.

If you contractually limit user rights to redistribute the code, then how can you actually comply with the GPL? Redistribution isn't an optional clause.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

They don't, but they won't do further business with you if you choose to do so.

The software and code you have is still fully yours though.