How Red Hat Divided the Open Source Community (msn.com) 191
In Raleigh, North Carolina — the home of Red Hat — local newspaper the News & Observer takes an in-depth look at the "announcement that split the open source software community." (Alternate URL here.)
[M]any saw Red Hat's decision to essentially paywall Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or RHEL, as sacrilegious... Red Hat employees were also conflicted about the new policy, [Red Hat Vice President Mike] McGrath acknowledged. "I think a lot of even internal associates didn't fully understand what we had announced and why," he said...
At issue, he wrote, were emerging competitors who copied Red Hat Enterprise Linux, down to even the code's mistakes, and then offered these Red Hat-replicas to customers for free. These weren't community members adding value, he contended, but undercutting rivals. And in a year when Red Hat laid off 4% of its total workforce, McGrath said, the company could not justify allowing this to continue. "I feel that while this was a difficult decision between community and business, we're still on the right side of it," he told the News & Observer. Not everyone agrees...
McGrath offered little consolation to customers who were relying on one-for-one versions of RHEL. They could stay with the downstream distributions, find another provider, or pay for Red Hat. "I think (people) were just so used to the way things work," he said. "There's a vocal group of people that probably need Red Hat's level of support, but simply don't want to pay for it. And I don't really have... there's not much we can tell them."
Since its RHEL decision, Red Hat has secured several prominent partnerships. In September, the cloud-based software company Salesforce moved 200,000 of its systems from the free CentOS Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The same month, Red Hat announced RHEL would begin to support Oracle's cloud infrastructure. Oracle was one of the few major companies this summer to publicly criticize Red Hat for essentially paywalling its most popular code. On Oct. 24, Red Hat notched another win when the data security firm Cohesity said it would also ditch CentOS Linux for RHEL.
The article delves into the history of Red Hat — and of Linux — before culminating with this quote from McGrath. "I think long gone are the times of that sort of romantic view of hobbyists working in their spare time to build open source. I think there's still room for that — we still have that — but quite a lot of open source is now built from people that are paid full time."
Red Hat likes to point out that 90% of Fortune 500 companies use its services, according to the article. But it also quotes Jonathan Wright, infrastructure team lead at the nonprofit AlmaLinux, as saying that Red Hat played "fast and loose" with the GPL. The newspaper then adds that "For many open source believers, such a threat to its hallowed text isn't forgivable."
At issue, he wrote, were emerging competitors who copied Red Hat Enterprise Linux, down to even the code's mistakes, and then offered these Red Hat-replicas to customers for free. These weren't community members adding value, he contended, but undercutting rivals. And in a year when Red Hat laid off 4% of its total workforce, McGrath said, the company could not justify allowing this to continue. "I feel that while this was a difficult decision between community and business, we're still on the right side of it," he told the News & Observer. Not everyone agrees...
McGrath offered little consolation to customers who were relying on one-for-one versions of RHEL. They could stay with the downstream distributions, find another provider, or pay for Red Hat. "I think (people) were just so used to the way things work," he said. "There's a vocal group of people that probably need Red Hat's level of support, but simply don't want to pay for it. And I don't really have... there's not much we can tell them."
Since its RHEL decision, Red Hat has secured several prominent partnerships. In September, the cloud-based software company Salesforce moved 200,000 of its systems from the free CentOS Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The same month, Red Hat announced RHEL would begin to support Oracle's cloud infrastructure. Oracle was one of the few major companies this summer to publicly criticize Red Hat for essentially paywalling its most popular code. On Oct. 24, Red Hat notched another win when the data security firm Cohesity said it would also ditch CentOS Linux for RHEL.
The article delves into the history of Red Hat — and of Linux — before culminating with this quote from McGrath. "I think long gone are the times of that sort of romantic view of hobbyists working in their spare time to build open source. I think there's still room for that — we still have that — but quite a lot of open source is now built from people that are paid full time."
Red Hat likes to point out that 90% of Fortune 500 companies use its services, according to the article. But it also quotes Jonathan Wright, infrastructure team lead at the nonprofit AlmaLinux, as saying that Red Hat played "fast and loose" with the GPL. The newspaper then adds that "For many open source believers, such a threat to its hallowed text isn't forgivable."
EL RHEL for long (Score:5, Informative)
>"At issue, he wrote, were emerging competitors who copied Red Hat Enterprise Linux, down to even the code's mistakes, and then offered these Red Hat-replicas to customers for free."
Exactly like it has always been with CentOS, and Scientific Linux, and others. What changed was a sudden expectation by IBM that all that could be monetized.
>"These weren't community members adding value, he contended, but undercutting rivals."
They aren't undercutting anything as rivals, because they were free. And RedHat wasn't adding any value for most of the FOSS software they were distributing, either.
>"And in a year when Red Hat laid off 4% of its total workforce, McGrath said, the company could not justify allowing this to continue"
Like I said, the CHANGE was the sudden expectation they could extort more money out of the market by force. First they kill CentOS. Most could probably swallow that. I was fine with it, myself. But the next move to try and kill all the community EL was going too far.
>"They could stay with the downstream distributions, find another provider, or pay for Red Hat. "I think (people) were just so used to the way things work," he said."
And if RedHat focused on things beyond the code/updates, like they have in the past: support, training, certification, classes, customization, addons, documentation, conferences, licensed toolkits, validation services, etc. then there would be no issue. Instead, they are alienating everyone and flushing their mindshare down the toilet.
>"Since its RHEL decision, Red Hat has secured several prominent partnerships. In September, the cloud-based software company Salesforce moved 200,000 of its systems from the free CentOS Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux."
Due to extortion, not due to adding any value to Salesforce. It is a likely a short-term gain that will be lost. And for every Salesforce, you probably will lose many others- especially those who will grow up using something else instead because they feel RHEL is to restrictive/walled/proprietary.
There was a fine line in maintaining what was the view of "enterprise Linux", and I think IBM/RedHat crossed the line. Now the definition will start to get fuzzy and likely land in other hands. Yes, RedHat has contributed a lot to the FOSS community, but the FOSS community is what their entire product line is built on top of.
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Exactly like it has always been with CentOS, and Scientific Linux, and others.
Where "others" includes Oracle Linux.
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For the edification of others, as far as I know, Oracle's Linux is based on RHEL. And Oracle charges MONEY for support of their Oracle Linux. So, direct competitor, and not a value added reseller or value added support company.
If someone knows better, please, let us know. Last time I worked at Oracle, was 2011, but that was for Solaris support. Not their Oracle Linux.
Re: EL RHEL for long (Score:2)
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Before being acquired by IBM, Red Hat tried to counter Oracle but without alienating community too much (then CentOS was good and freely available). Post-IBM, they lumped community competitors (Rocky, Alma) and Oracle together as the "enemy". But without this extended community (from free downstream alternatives to 3-rd party repos that serve both RHEL and its derivatives to documentation sites), the value proposal of RHEL decreases dramatically.
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For the edification of others, as far as I know, Oracle's Linux is based on RHEL.
What's RHEL based on? Hopes and prayers? Puppy farts?
Last time I worked at Oracle, was 2011, but that was for Solaris support. Not their Oracle Linux.
So you only profited indirectly (MONEY) from the behavior you're complaining about?
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If Fedora is ok, why wasn't centos?
Red Hat made a bad move, year after year F500 companies and others will look to stop spending on RH, probably moving to LTS Ubuntu or Debian.
Re: EL RHEL for long (Score:3, Informative)
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I totally understand but you're missing the point, they shouldn't downstream Fedora if CentOS can't downstream Red Hat.
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If Ubuntu created the equivalent of RHEL's developer toolsets, this would be an easy decision for many. I can run GCC 12 on the ancient RHEL 7 using official packages [redhat.com]. Similar for LLVM/clang 15 [redhat.com]. The binaries produced are compatible with stock RHEL 7 and derivatives without any glibc or libstdc++ issues. RH makes this easy.
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>"If Ubuntu created the equivalent of RHEL's developer toolsets, this would be an easy decision for many."
Considering some of the bad things Ubuntu has done, and its commercial nature, it is likely the FOSS community would not choose it as the next definition of EL.
I bet most would want Debian, especially if the Debian group can put together something longer than LTS. Perhaps a new company will come along and offer all the support stuff that RedHat does, but for Debian, instead. There might already be
Re:EL RHEL for long (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: EL RHEL for long (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a bad thing and it's still a bad thing.
It replaced simplicity and easily interchanged components with a brick of psuedo-modular parts that required one another.
It didn't make the system less fragile, all it did was improve boot times slightly compared to sysvinit with startpar, at a time when boot times are less relevant than ever before because suspend-resume actually works on most Linux systems now.
Shell scripting is a core feature of Unix. Templates and boilerplate made init scripting easy just in time for systemd to come along and declare that it's hard.
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What changed was a sudden expectation by IBM that all that could be monetized.
While IBM might have been more receptive, RedHat has *long* been of mixed feelings about the clones. They exercised the trademark hammer to try to crush CentOS early on (20 years ago). Then they seemed to embrace by acquiring the project, but at the same time anyone with 'business strategy' meetings with them would be treated to their regular rant about those freeloading clones and how they are thinking of ways to dismantle the clones. IBM might have tipped the scales in favor of those voices, but those
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>"These weren't community members adding value, he contended, but undercutting rivals."
They aren't undercutting anything as rivals, because they were free. And RedHat wasn't adding any value for most of the FOSS software they were distributing, either.
Also, the GPL doesn't require community members to add value, good thing for RedHat.
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Due to extortion, not due to adding any value to Salesforce. It is a likely a short-term gain that will be lost. And for every Salesforce, you probably will lose many others- especially those who will grow up using something else instead because they feel RHEL is to restrictive/walled/proprietary.
I wonder if that's why Salesfarce laid off 9,000 people... to pay for their 20,000 redhate licenses, and for the support contract.
Yawn... (Score:2, Informative)
Yawn, is there anything we didn't already know in TFA? I'll write a blog post saying exactly the same thing and get it published on Slashdot; profit!
Re:Yawn... (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably the biggest thing of note is not what TFA says, but where it was published. The News & Observer is the "main-stream media" traditional newspaper in Raleigh, NC (USA), the location of Red Hat HQ. The article made the Sunday, Nov. 5 print edition of the paper, which means that the issue of what Red Hat has done is getting coverage outside of the tech industry. It was the "top of the fold" lead article in the local section of the paper.
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Maybe so but this is the third RHEL story posted in two days.
Forgive us for feeling jaded.
Short sighted (Score:3)
Yes, they are technically making the source available to those they must and any separate contract or agreement which requires those customers not to share it on would trigger the GPL violation.
But that aside they've made a mistake here. The only reason everyone uses RHEL is that everyone uses RHEL... at small companies, at home in their lab, in the cloud, etc. It is the standard and without any certification at all you can be sure anyone competent with linux knows their way around RHEL. Red hat is the most accessible and obvious choice for someone looking to pick up *nix skills. Today they'll increase sales because there are a lot of those people already but if they've just killed their source of fresh bodies for tomorrow, moreover, by angering the community they've made themselves the antithesis of the core philosophy evangelized by every project, advocate, and technology which enables learning tech skills outside academia and enterprise possible at all.
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everyone uses RHEL... at small companies, at home in their lab
Now you're really pushing it IMHO... RHEL at home, eh?
But nevermind. Where I live, everyone uses Ubuntu, rather than RHEL.
Re:Short sighted (Score:5, Funny)
He said "at home in their lab"... clearly he is referring to evil villains, who fuel their dreams of world conquest with RHEL.
Re:Short sighted (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to use Centos for just about everything - werk had it, so at home I used it too (to save me having to remember /etc/apache2 or /etc/httpd, yum or apt, etc).
These days, I'm using Ubuntu for just about everything. Where I get a say in the matter, I'll never spec a RHEL branch distro again, although I do support a client who (now) has a load of Rocky Linux.
Don't get me wrong, Redhat/IBM won't be crying into their tea about this - to date I've made them about $0, and so they've lost nothing. But, I'd argue that the mindshare is worse - not that I'm some awesome influencer, but if people like me aren't recommending RHEL-line distros, then they're going to have a dwindling user base, and a dwindling funnel of clients. They'll likely do fine though, holding the likes of Oracle plus maybe a few government agencies to ransom, or maybe some of the big manufacturers or whomever. It'll be just like AIX - "like Unix, but no one has ever used it".
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Yes, they are technically making the source available to those they must and any separate contract or agreement which requires those customers not to share it on would trigger the GPL violation
That's right. The GPL is a distribution license. It transfers the rights to modify and redistribute the code to any recipient provided said code was received through a legitimate distribution. As a paying customer of the product you have this right to receive the source code if you receive the compiled software.
Perhaps you signed away your right to redistribute as part of a separate customer agreement. Stop being a customer. Now you can redistribute the GPL source code you already legitimately received ea
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> Perhaps Red Hat's customer licencing does violate the GPL. If so they won't be able to distribute the binaries to their customers, who paid for it. Now they have defrauded their customers, shouldn't take long to fix in court.
I'd actually be very interested in a ruling on this: do "consequences" (customer relationship termination) to exercising rights granted by the GPL constitute "further restrictions on the rights granted by the GPL" .
I'd argue yes, but that's just me.
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I believe Lawrence Lessig once said that all such cases he
Re:Short sighted (Score:4, Interesting)
Correct (from memory too), but legalweasly technically, as far as I understand:
they are complying by making sources available to their customers, they're not even prohibiting redistribution, just saying "if you redistribute, we will no longer accept you as a customer".
And that is where the discussion whether this falls under "further restrictions" starts.
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"if you redistribute, we will no longer accept you as a customer"
Another way of saying that is "if you don't agree to these further restrictions beyond the GPL we won't distribute this source to you" and in setting those terms RH loses their own right to distribute under the GPL. The GPL defines the only permissible conditions you may set on distribution, it doesn't say anything about exceptions for if the restrictions are added with additional agreements so splitting it into a seperate piece of paper doesn
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Just to be clear: I agree with your interpretations.
> "if you don't agree to these further restrictions beyond the GPL we won't distribute this source to you"
No, the end-user (customer) got the source to the binary he obtained. What he won't get is any future binaries (and associated sources) from redhat.
I'm just saying I'm not aware of such a discussion having taken place previously.
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Universally consequences may not but in this case the consequence is you will be denied distribution of software which RedHat only has permission to distribute under the GPL. The GPL explicitly defines the only conditions you may set on distribution and while money is permitted restricting redistribution is not. It doesn't really matter what the terms they use, if the net result is condition which isn't in the GPL RedHat is committing a copyright violation.
RH could claim this condition is for non-gpl softwa
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Re: Short sighted (Score:2)
You get 16 free licenses with any account, most small businesses and home users wonâ(TM)t need to pay for RHEL still.
All the RHEL code is available upstream. The only thing youâ(TM)re not allowed to do is make a clone of the exact composition that a RHEL branded distro has.
Can we please stop using the term Red Hat (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct title: How Software Consultancy Firm IBM divided the Open Source Community.
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Re:Can we please stop using the term Red Hat (Score:4, Funny)
And turkeys trust farmers right before thanksgiving because they've been cared for so well right up until then. It doesn't work out so well for the turkeys.
Didn't they came up with "Open Source"? (Score:2)
I mean they are an "Open Source" company, not a "Free Software" company. Those 2 words are not synonyms.
"Open Source" essentially means that the source code of a software package is available, but not that you, as an end-user, should ever change it.
"Free Software" instead focuses on the point that at least the "power user" should change the software package to your own needs. Patchsets and forks are welcome here, even if they diverge from the original version.
Note that this is not necessarily dependent on p
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I mean they are an "Open Source" company, not a "Free Software" company.
I don't know how they can achieve that, provided that their main product is "Free Software", protected by GPL no less.
Also, RH has no problems whatsoever with the end user changing the source they're given, recompiling it, running it, etc. They just don't want him/her distributing the source code, that's all.
There are multiple options (Score:3)
There are multiple ways to deal with people who want to use their FOSS rights, without actually following the spirit. By themselves those ways aren't inherently bad, but by combining it you can effectively circumvent the idea behind "Free Software" without technically being in violation of the GPL.
The most obvious is to simply reject all patches or other input you do not like. That's why, for example, Firefox doesn't have a list of obviously untrustable domains where it doesn't execute Javascript from. By i
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The spirit of open source requires that you don't put limitations to what the users can do with your product. For example, requiring your users to not "profiteer" from your product is contrary not only to the spirit of OSS, but to the letter of most open source licenses as well, and the GPL in particular. That's why people think the RH's move is problematic. RH have "profiteered" from open source, yet they violate its spirit.
Honesty requires me to state that technically, RH is probably not in any license vi
Re: Didn't they came up with "Open Source"? (Score:2)
What are you talking about? The GPL has always promoted you making money off the distribution of the product, as long as you provide the source code together with the product. You are free to strip any reference to Red Hats work product and rebuild Linux RPM. It wonâ(TM)t be RHEL and it will be a lot of work.
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The RHEL EULA is not compliant with the OSI Open Source definition.
The OSI doesn't get to define Open Source. We were using that phrase for well over a decade before the OSI was invented and its members told lies about inventing the phrase. Free Software was literally invented because Open Source didn't mean what the OSI falsely claims the authority to decide it means now. Christine Peterson is a fraud and supporting that fraud makes you a liar and/or an ignoramus who should leave the retellings of history to people who were actually there.
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Backwards, like a number of your recent posts.
Free Software long predates the coining of the term "Open Source," although they meant something very similar. Also predates the OSI.
The Free Software movement, with which I more closely sympathize, emphasizes that freedom is valuable for its own sake.
The Open Source movement tries to sell businesses and organizations on the practical benefits that result from the availability of source code. Which do exist, to be sure, but only for as long as the concept of f
As I recall... (Score:4, Insightful)
The original intent of commercial distros was, as I understood it, to make their money by providing paid-for support, paid-for certifications, and paid-for additional features. The software could be free at point of delivery because the costs were all handled by the value added by the company.
Are they saying that this model doesn't work, at least to the extent needed to pay for the staff required? That they need to add closed-source add-ons to make an organisation as large as Red Hat viable?
If that is indeed what they're saying, then I can sympathise to an extent. However, there must be plenty of office software and games they could write and make a decent profit from. In other words, charge for add-ons that add value, rather than mission-critical components. As soon as the ecosystem becomes uncompetitive by price, you lose everything.
I have to say that it does feel like IBM really doesn't quite grasp the new paradigm. It does feel very much like IBM's suits are still thinking along 1970s or 1980s lines when it comes to business. And I'd point out to them that this approach has failed spectacularly over the years. Once upon a time, "nobody got fired for buying IBM". But those days are gone and they're not coming back.
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The original intent of commercial distros was, as I understood it, to make their money by providing paid-for support, paid-for certifications, and paid-for additional features. The software could be free at point of delivery because the costs were all handled by the value added by the company.
Sadly, it now seems that this traditional open source business model is dying, if not already dead. The proliferation of cloud computing dealt the mortal blow, and the emergence of GPT and its likes may drive the last nail into the coffin.
Re: As I recall... (Score:2)
No, that model works. What Rocky/Alma and Oracle were doing was taking that value-add (down to the misspellings in documentation), repackaging and selling it as their own.
and here I thought Canonical was messed up (Score:2)
It is all IBM's fault.
People who don't want to pay (Score:5, Informative)
Here's what you can say to us: "goodbye".
We were happy to pay for Red Hat support on our production servers, but not on our Dev/QA servers which go down constantly anyway and nobody cares. However, we needed those servers to be identical to the production server.
... so, we no-longer use RHEL anywhere. Including the servers we were happy to pay for.
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Precisely this.
Redhat built RHEL as a *standard*.
IBM sells RHEL as a *product* and is actively preventing its use as a standard.
The former customers are being slow reactors.
The smart thing to do is to be migrating to a Debian-based system. Or Arch or Nix or Gentoo if you can handle those.
"Wait and see" misses the point that RHEL has been withdrawn as a standard and your business is 100% reliant on the whims of IBM.
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Agreed, except I think most software that can run inside containers should, thereby avoiding having to depend on the details of any Linux distribution, nor the behavior of any of their custodians.
Trying to make that case to some internal customers right now. They do want to go to a Debian derivative, knowing that the paid-RHEL-everywhere model is no longer tenable. But I'm trying to make sure they also understand that the vendor of this derivative could try to pull shenanigans as well, and even Debian cou
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My position as well.
And I think many others will come to similar conclusions, thus choking off the great majority of RHEL's user base, AND the willingness of the upstream community to jump through hoops to maintain RHEL compatibility.
Most likely not. (Score:2)
I haven't used an rpm based distro in 2 decades but I can be pretty sure Red Hat didn't divide anything or anybody.
What likely went down es the usual thing: Some suit with little knowledge about legal issues around software and even less about software itself decided to put some branded FOSS distro behind a paywall or subscription without the usual community alternatives. Some other people forked the entire thing in 30 minutes or so, got the message out on the usual mailing lists and online channels and eve
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Well, I'll agree that people are generally only "divided" insofar as you have "everyone but RedHat" and "RedHat".
Note that there's no sign that this hypothetical suit got a lecture and they are stopping with the nonsense. They seem 100% committed to this course with no signs of backing down.
Further, they may have *all* the knowledge about legal issues, and in fact is pushing their strategy as far as they can per the legal understanding. I think they may be legally in the clear with their approach, but I s
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Exactly.
We do not currently live under rule of law, so it's not likely that any legal challenged to IBM's formidable army of lawyers will stand. We won't get relief that way. (Even if Oracle's arguably even more formidable legal team seems to prevail in the short term. That won't lead to anything permanently better.)
But most people still aren't going to risk being fooled a second time by someone who's fooled them once. Especially given that there are multiple better alternatives now, and more likely to
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IBM lawyers vs. Oracle lawyers... not sure who is more 'formidable', but it is telling that Oracle, who is not at all shy about using lawyers, has made no apparent thought towards challenging RHEL practices, and is instead focusing on a "post-RedHat" sort of strategy for a distribution that at least for *now* is heavily the same as RedHat, but I could easily imagine deviations growing over time if OpenELA has 9x the share of RedHat, at what point do you stop bothering to pay attention to the RedHat relation
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I haven't used an rpm based distro in 2 decades but I can be pretty sure Red Hat didn't divide anything or anybody
Right, they united us against them.
What likely went down es the usual thing: Some suit with little knowledge about legal issues around software and even less about software itself decided to put some branded FOSS distro behind a paywall or subscription without the usual community alternatives.
And who did that suit work for?
The confused suit got some basic lectures on FOSS and was also asked to please speak with legal before doing anything stupid and the case was closed.
Redhat has backpedaled on exactly nothing. They are staying the course. They did the stupid thing and they are still doing it.
Erm ... (Score:2)
... spirit schmirit; how do you do that, under the GPL?
I guess you can provide source only to your customers ... but how do you add restrictions and prevent them from copying and giving it away? Doesn't the GPL prohibit adding restrictions?
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> Doesn't the GPL prohibit adding restrictions?
Of course. IBM intends to invalidate the GPL.
Don't fund your enemies.
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Their legal theory is that you are free to exercise your GPL rights, and that the threat of reprisal by shutting down your access to support and updates does not count as restrictions *on the code you already have*. So enjoy redistributing your RHEL9.1 copy that RH got pissed over (as long as you remove their trademarks of course), but no RHEL9.2 for you. You are still unrestricted with respect to that RHEL9.1 software you had when they shut down your access.
Some people who generally don't like it have wr
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"legal" and "right" are not necessarily the same.
While it may be legal to break an agreement because a customer exercises a right in the spirit it was provided, it is clearly unethical. Sure, the GPL should be neutered but NOT in this way. The GPL itself should be rejected because it is unethical. RedHat should abandon the GPL if it is not suited to their profitability. They can't? Perhaps they should have considered that when building their business. Why should they put up with it? Because they agre
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Perhaps they should have considered that when building their business.
Part of the problem being that the people running the business are not those that built the business. Those folks have largely moved on and RHAT's success has attracted people that probably would have loved to start from something like FreeBSD instead, if they had the choice. Now they are 'stuck' with a business success that, in their minds, is 'unfortunately' saddled with Copyleft licensing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see RedHat move on to evaluating, project by project:
-Do they control the copyright enou
Divided? (Score:2)
The OSS community has never been so united on anything. There's a few business-at-any-cost holdouts, sure, but the vast majority of us are in "fuck redhat and fuck IBM" mode now.
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You like to define the "OSS community" as those who believe like you do. It's a big community that includes RedHat and IBM as well as those that have always opposed the GPL.
Not a defense of RedHat/IBM, I'd like them to suffer too, but you do not represent the opinions of all those in open source.
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Not a defense of RedHat/IBM, I'd like them to suffer too, but you do not represent the opinions of all those in open source.
If you think it's just me, I cordially invite you to pull out your head and look around. The masses of both users and corporations are rejecting IBM's interpretation of what is appropriate.
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I think there is still a large movement, though perhaps not total consensus and unity, around each of:
* the security and other problems inherent in an ecosystem that now depends very heavily on systemd;
* the need for consolidation among the numerous partial implementations of Wayland, so that one single API, implemented in consistent ways across multiple compositors, can meet the needs of multiple desktop environments, window managers, and UI toolkits.
I will never want to switc
Red Hat is the Microsoftization of Linux (Score:2)
The true cost of the GPL (Score:2)
How much more obvious could it be that we'd be far better off with a BSD-style license instead of the GPL? All of this is predictable and has been predicted.
Linux is a valuable market, capitalists are gonna grab the biggest pieces they can. The feud between capitalist grift and a communist license, win-win!
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How much more obvious could it be that we'd be far better off with a BSD-style license instead of the GPL?
With the GPL: Redhate is broadly scorned for their violation of the GPL that places additional restrictions on a Linux distribution based on GPL-licensed parts and pieces.
With the BSD license: Redhate does whatever they want and nobody cares because there are no restrictions
IBM would be far better off, the rest of the world would be worse off. Where did you get this IBM-centric world view, and why do you think we're not all going to laugh at you?
BAH! I thought this was about systemd.... (Score:2)
BAH! I thought this was about systemd, turns out, it's just about Red-hatters getting mad about choosing the wrong distro.
Re:Can someone explain to a layman (Score:4)
Re:Can someone explain to a layman (Score:4)
Re:Can someone explain to a layman (Score:5, Informative)
How they're able to keep GPL code to themselves?
They aren't. They're making it available to their customers.
I thought if they modify the code and distribute it they have to make the code available?
They do. To the people they distribute the binaries to. Nothing in GPL2 or 3 requires one to make the source code available to everyone everywhere. Other licenses tend to be more liberal wrt distribution and thus are similarly complied with.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's to stop one of these clone distros from becoming a "customer" and simply re-distributing the source?
Red Hat can pick and choose who is their customer and who remains so. This means that they would drop them as a customer once they find out so they would have to keep on becoming a customer, buying RHEL each time.
From vague memory I believe that this bit is in RHEL's customer contract but it's not a strong memory so can't comment on in detail. There's, also, likely more to it to make it more painful.
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They will not have the right to updates from Red Hat, but presumably if they intend to fork the distro, they don't care about future updates.
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That's the point, they don't intend to fork the distro. The value proposition of CentOS and its clones was precisely that they did NOT fork RHEL; they stayed exactly the same apart from logos and labels.
To continue doing so, the clones would have to regularly buy a new subscription to get the updates up to that point.
Re:Can someone explain to a layman (Score:4, Interesting)
The benefit of RHEL is the ongoing support in a timely manner (ie, quick patches, which is what the clone distros have been distributing previously), which costs a lot of money - the threat here from RH is that if you breach the support agreement by widely distributing the patches, binaries or source code, despite you being allowed to (they dont dispute that), they end the support agreement with you (thry argue that its a separate agreement that they can end without affecting the GPL).
So sure, a clone distro can pay a lot of money to become a top tier customer, and receive one set of updates for that cost before RH cuts ties.
That could get expensive for the clone distro
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(thry argue that its a separate agreement that they can end without affecting the GPL).
The thing is, what they are doing is obviously illegal. The GPL clearly says you can't place additional restrictions on redistribution. That is exactly what they are doing when they say that if you redistribute that code that you have the right to distribute, they will cancel an unrelated contract that they have with you. That is absolutely an additional restriction.
Because it's IBM, nobody wants to go to court over it. But because the sources are GPL, nobody has to. They can just take their ball somewhere
Re: Can someone explain to a layman (Score:3)
The terms of service they have to agree to when they become RHEL customers.
As it seems, that is not strictly against the letters of the GPL, either, while most people seem to agree it is against its spirit.
Re: Can someone explain to a layman (Score:2)
The branding, copyright and trade secrets arenâ(TM)t GPL. What RHEL is selling is not the source code.
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What's to stop one of these clone distros from becoming a "customer" and simply re-distributing the source?
Nothing. That's even what some others are doing. For example, OpenELA:
https://linux.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]
What I had heard (and my apologies... this is from memory and may not be 100% accurate) is that RHEL is not distributing source in the same easy to consume fashion. They used to make the .srpm's available (source RPM's) that were fairly trivial to rebuild. I think they now make their patches available separately, and one must go get the upstream source, apply the patches, and work out all the build paramet
Re:Can someone explain to a layman (Score:5, Interesting)
How they're able to keep GPL code to themselves?
They aren't. They're making it available to their customers.
However, they do not allow their customers to redistribute the source code.
I thought if they modify the code and distribute it they have to make the code available?
They do. To the people they distribute the binaries to. Nothing in GPL2 or 3 requires one to make the source code available to everyone everywhere. Other licenses tend to be more liberal wrt distribution and thus are similarly complied with.
It is not RedHat that has issues with that procedure. It is also not RHEL Clones that have issues. They can rightly and easily build and redistribute everything like before. The only one that is really hurt, is the customer that signs the RHEL EULA. Those customers are limited with the usage of the code to cases, where they are not required to provide the sources. This has consequences:
Especially not being able to rely on the OSI definition is troublesome. This actually means, that they have to check each and every package used against the usecase that it is intended for. With RHEL, you cannot decide between "free" and "nonfree" anymore, because the EULA changes every package to nonfree. If RHEL just keep on going, they might already be not compliant with the OSS license they thought to have from the package. This in turn would mean, that they have a subscription, but no license anymore.
Re: Can someone explain to a layman (Score:2)
All the code is still upstream, you are free to build a CentOS clone. What youâ(TM)re not allowed to do is take RedHat branding and support and engineering outputs (eg the configuration necessary for specific software and hardware, knowledge base articles) and publish them for free.
It is pure and simple copyright and trade secret/dress. Youâ(TM)re not allowed to do the same for Proxmox and Ubuntu and SuSE.
Re:Can someone explain to a layman (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that it was *already* a bad idea to use RHEL as a base for any of that, as demonstrated for about two decades now.
Originally, when RHEL wanted to quash the clones, they went for trademarked material (logos, the word Red Hat, etc). Ultimately CentOS did institute a process for de-branding to comply, but the point stands for any random user that they would have had to engage in a tedious de-branding to avoid running afoul of RHEL trademark. So even if you had the source, you could get in trouble if you accidently left the RedHat name in somewhere. Except if it's a copyright declaration then you must preserve the Red Hat words....
In fact, while obviously problematic, this is technically less problematic than missing a trademark violation. If you are caught violating their trademark, they can go after you and shut down your existing distribution channel. If you are caught violating only their EULA, then they can't do anything about your existing use or distribution, but can discontinue your access to updates.
The short story is that you should never use RedHat in this sort of scenario. Of course if you have to restrain yourself so carefully, and the usage you do use must all be registered and audited anyway, then why bother with RedHat when you could use a less tedious distribution? RedHat is banking on their customers being more "I don't care about open source and I'm acclimated to abusive registrations and audits from other software vendors, but I need something that feels like 'good old Unix'.
A kink in the strategy is that all the "It's a pain to work with RHEL directly and RHEL is trying to actively sabotage attempts to be compatible) is that a lot of folks are jumping ship. If you deal with nVidia in any significant capacity, nVidia basically says "forget RHEL, use Ubuntu". Really bad news for RHEL as that effectively causes the AI rush to leave RH behind. Lots of former RHEL-like users have jumped ship now to Ubuntu. Admittedly, a few did go for RHEL, but I think that's a short term boost in exchange for a long term erosion of their relevance.
Easy to explain in detail (Score:3)
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You only have to give code to the people you give binaries to under the GPL
That's true but misleading. Free Software is built on redistribution, and RedHate's license says you can't redistribute the sources you get from RedHate or you are in violation of a DIFFERENT license, even though the GPL explicitly gives you the right to redistribute. RedHate is therefore shipping CONTRADICTORY licenses to its customers. Which one wins? RedHate says theirs does, but there's no legal reason why that license should overpower the other licenses under which RedHate gets the right to redistribut
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"...which run directly contrary to the intent of Free Software ..." ...directly contrary to the intent of the GPL, not "Free Software" generally.
The sins of corporations nearly 100 years ago are irrelevant today. Hate IBM all you want, but the Holocaust isn't a good reason, even if it is great theater. You know who else was culpable for the Holocaust? GERMANY. Yet it's not a good reason to hate Germany today.
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"...which run directly contrary to the intent of Free Software ..." ...directly contrary to the intent of the GPL, not "Free Software" generally.
They're the SAME PICTURE
The sins of corporations nearly 100 years ago are irrelevant today. Hate IBM all you want, but the Holocaust isn't a good reason
Yes, it is. They never made up for it, they never even acknowledged it. That means they're still cruising on the benefits they derived from helping to murder Jews. Let them do the math and give up whatever percentage of the corporation was derived from supporting the holocaust and THEN it won't be a good reason.
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Your Nazi friends said more or less the same thing.
I don't have Nazi friends, but various churches did and do.
You have not taken a historically, morally, ethically, or legally tenable position.
You're wrong on literally every point there, son. Abortion predates your monotheistic magical sky daddy religion.
Re: Can someone explain to a layman (Score:2)
The code is available at CentOS. All theyâ(TM)re doing is packaging, configuration, support etc, none of that is required to be GPL.
Basically some people in the OS community are contending that build recipes and configuration files are also supported to be open source, which would be wild since that would require lots of companies (including SuSE, Canonical, Proxmox, really anyone with enterprise versions of Linux) to give their product away for free.
Re:Can someone explain to a layman (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought if they modify the code and distribute it they have to make the code available?
They have to make the GPL+derivitive source code available to anyone to whom they give the binaries, but not to anyone else. As far as I can tell, they do so.
But now they are in clear violation of the GPL when they say that they will cancel any support contracts with any customer who redistributes the GPL code. The GPL clearly states that there can be no additional conditions attached to the redistribution of such code. Canceling a customer's support contracts if the customer redistributes the source code is an additional condition which runs afoul of the GPL.
According to the GPL, Red Hat is no longer legally allowed to use that respective GPL code, and is infringing on a whole ton of copyrights on a daily basis. But the catch is that whoever were to sue Red Hat for copyright infringement would have to defend against IBM's counter assault. It would take very deep pockets to enforce the GPL against Red Hat.
Re: Can someone explain to a layman (Score:2)
The only legal standing is for their customers however.
As a customer if you license red hat and distribute it and they cut you off, then you have legal standing to sue over the contract dispute. Otherwise you don't.
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I agree.
But this makes it ironic, and troubling, that the only ally the FOSS community has, with both the standing and the ability to mount a meaningful battle against IBM's lawyers, is Oracle.
From my point of view, this demonstrates, as if many other things didn't already, that we no longer live under rule of law.
We live where the side with the best lawyers (aka the one with deeper pockets) wins almost 100.00% of the time.
But please consider that if Oracle can manage to beat IBM, what will it then do with
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No. They only need to distribute the code to those who the share the compiled binaries with. And, IIUC, what they're doing is saying that if those folks distribute the source, then their support contracts will be cancelled.
I'm no lawyer, but that sounds technically legal. And rather contrary to the goals of the community.
FWIW, I stopped using Red Hat distributions when they abruptly cancelled the Professional Edition. I switched to Debian and haven't' looked back. (Well, I tried a few other distributio
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Not legal because the GPL prevents further restrictions on the redistribution of code.
But your response is exactly the correct one and the one I would follow as well. Don't count on the "legal system" to protect your rights, if you are able to take advantage of a better way to do so instead. In my case it was Gentoo, but for most people Debian is an at least equally good, and possibly better, choice.
And I hope that will be the response of the upstream authors as well. Don't even test against RHEL. Do te
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While RedHat does pay a lot to help develop the product, they also partake of a great deal of free labor. So they have little room of saying others are freeloaders.
Some open source project maintainers are complaining because they have RHEL users, and formerly they could support them by just loading up CentOS to do debug/reproduce steps. RHEL succeeding in closing off the clones means those projects must leave those RHEL customers twisting in the wind. They don't *want* RedHat or a business relationship, b
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It's actually in RH/IBM's interest to work with the upstream developers who build the product they then sell under terms that violate the GPL and are hence illegal.
However, is it in the community's interests to continue to support RHEL?
Without us RH/IBM becomes a niche product at best. They will have to effectively fork and maintain themselves all the stuff they used to freeload off of us.
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...are crying they don't get someone else's hard work for free..."
But that's the entire justification FOR the GPL, so that Stallman can get other people's work for free.
"They are following GPL to the letter..."
They are not because you are only describing part of the requirement. The GPL requires source to be distributed to receivers of binaries, but it ALSO requires licensing of that source using the GPL (which allows those users to redistribute). The purpose of the additional terms is to neuter the GPL,