[ale] Maddog’s take on recent Red Hat source distribution changes

[Solomon Peachy]

On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 02:52:17AM -0400, Steve Litt via Ale wrote:
> Seems pretty clear to me. If you let somebody have the program, whether
> for free, for a million dollars, alone or bundled, if the program was
> GPLv2 you have to give them the source, and more importantly, you have
> the right to redistribute the source.

Sure.  But what you don't get is the right to any/all future versions of 
the software or any type of support, which is also something the GPL 
makes explicitly clear.

From the GPLv3 text (ie covering most GNU software in Linux 
distributions): "you may charge any price or no price for each copy you 
convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee."

Also:

"The requirement to provide Installation Information does not include a
 requirement to continue to provide support service, warranty, or updates
 for a work that has been modified or installed by the recipient, or for
 the User Product in which it has been modified or installed."

> I know, I know, we can argue about first, second, third, fourth and
> fifths parties, but section 6 is clear that if you come into possession
> of the software you have the right to redistribute it.

Red Hat's own agreement text explicitly contradicts this statement, 
which (paraphrased) says something to the effect of "Nothing in this 
agreement is intended to limit your rights under open source software 
licenses"

> And yes, I know, you can't buy Red Hat without agreeing not to
> redistribute the source. 

No, you agree to not "give another party the benefit of the subscription 
services", which is emphatically _not_ the same thing.  That falls under 
a run-of-the breach of contract, and the worst-case penalty is that RH 
cuts you off from _future_ updates and support, something the GPL 
explicitly allows (as that's also the default state!)

Meanwhile, anyone can get the complete corresponding sources to a given 
RHEL point release on a USB stick by sending Red Hat $5, with zero 
restriction on what you do with it beyond the software licenses itself.

> Once again, I'm pretty darn sure that if there's a deep pockets
> lawsuit from a Red Hat customer who chooses to follow section 6 of
> GPLv2, Red Hat will lose, 

No, it's called a legal, voluntary contract, which can have nearly any 
terms in it, even the point of waiving fundamental human rights.  Breach 
the contract, the other party can cut you off from its benefits, and 
then you're back at the default state... which is no warranty, no 
support, no updates.  Remember, the _only_ thing giving you rights to 
warranty/support/updates from Red Hat is that contract!

> Trouble is, FSF doesn't have the money to fight a legal battle with Red
> Hat.

RH has had these terms essentially unchanged in their RHEL agreement 
since ~2002, a full five years before GPLv3 was drafted.  Furthermore, 
this approach was actually pioneered by Cygnus with GCC (ie an actual 
GNU project) in ~1989, two years before GPLv2 (and Linux 0.01) was created.

If the FSF wanted to disallow this sort of thing, they've now missed two 
major oppportunities to do so.  Instead, they've _strenghtened_ the 
language manking it clear that the default state is no warranty, no 
support, no updates, and that the user modifying, installing, or even 
_obtaining_ installation instructions is sufficient grounds to cut off 
support/updates.

in all seriousness, what exactly is the FSF supposed to do to correct 
this?  Support/warranties/etc already fall outside of the GPL, so short 
of mandating some sort of warranty (which isn't ever going to happen, 
for many, many sound reasons) their hands are pretty much tied.

The FSF might not _like_ this, but any remedy would likely be far worse 
than the problem (and probably not be enforcable under copyright law 
anyway -- remember, you can always sign a contract saying that you waive 
these new clauses of the GPLv3.141 or whatever, and then we're right 
back where we started!)

> About systemd: If I and let's say six of my friends were paid half of
> what Red Hat paid Poettering and his crew, we could have incorporated
> every feature of systemd without creating a massively entangled mess.

Funny thing is that a lot of people have claimed something like this, 
yet nobody has produced even a _design outline_, much less anything more 
substantive.

> I very much liked the history, but I just don't buy the article's
> defense of Red Hat.

That's not surprising; you're coming into it with a very strong bias. 

 - Solomon
-- 
Solomon Peachy			      pizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp)
                                      @pizza:shaftnet dot org   (matrix)
Dowling Park, FL                      speachy (libra.chat)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20230820/433978e6/attachment.sig>