A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model
sfconservancy.org
This article was originally published primarily as a response to IBM's Red Hat's change to no longer publish complete, corresponding source (CCS) for RHEL and the prior discontinuation of CentOS Linux (which are related events, as described below). We hope that this will serve as a comprehensive document that discusses the history of Red Hat's RHEL business model, the related source code provisioning, and the GPL compliance issues with RHEL.

…this completes what appears to be a decade-long plan by Red Hat to maximize the level of difficulty of those in the community who wish to “trust but verify” that RHEL complies with the GPL agreements. Namely, Red Hat has badly thwarted efforts by entities such as Rocky Linux and Alma Linux. These entities are de-facto the intellectual successors to CentOS Linux project that Red Hat carefully dismantled over the last decade

  • @[email protected]
    12•2 years ago

    In essence, Red Hat requires their customers to choose between (a) their software freedom and rights, and (b) remaining a Red Hat customer.

    A very good writeup, made me better understand the way Red Hat is creatively interpreting the GPL. I hope they won’t just get away with this and go back to better cooperating with the FOSS community.

    • The_Pete
      7•2 years ago

      Honestly, while I agree, I’d assume that the people with enough money to sue IBM also have enough money to just buy license. Seems like a no win for us.

    • @[email protected]
      5•2 years ago

      Context just before that quote:

      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.

      This is rich, don’t know how many people are aware of that.