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

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

*Steve,*


> I publish most of my stuff under the Expat license (
> https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Expat ), which resembles one of
> the BSD licenses. I do this knowing full well that Red Hat or Microsoft
> or Oracle or Amazon can take some or all of it proprietary. When I want
> to prevent this, I go GPLv2, which I like for its simplicity.
>



*This is fine for software that is completely written by you, as you are
the single copyright holder.   It is also fine for software where it is
written by a group and an agreement is signed where the copyright is under
the control of an organization (to keep things simple, let's call it a
"power of attorney") so the license can be changed.*


*However, in lots of cases neither of these are true.   The Linux kernel is
one of them, and the license can not be changed unless all of the copyright
holders of the  current code base agree.   Some of them will not agree.
Some have left the project.   Some are dead and their heirs will not agree
or can not be found.*
*Of course there could be a large sandbox created and the entire code base
could be re-written under a plan to coordinate the copyright, but that
would be a lot of work.   This is, in effect, what happened with BSDlite.
The AT&T code was scrubbed out of the system.*



*Forking does not allow you to change the license.   The code that is there
is still under the license of the original code.   It allows management of
the code to change, but not the license.*
*So yes, **you **can change the license of the code that **you** wrote, but
that is not what I am talking about.*

>
> >My point in writing the article was to bring back to peoples minds the
> >original reasons for Free Software.   The fact that people would get
> >binary code and not be able to do what they needed with it.  The fact
> >that companies would release binary code and then either force you to
> >have a maintenance contract with them to get the bug fixes or
> >enhancements you need.   The fact that over time the companies would
> >walk away from the release you were counting on and never patch it
> >again.  Can you say "Windows XP", with close to 12,000,000 systems
> >still running it?
>
> Another original reason: So you could grab somebody else's free
> software, modify it as desired, and give it free to 1000 of your
> closest friends and customers, with no compliance hassles.
>
>
*True, but as I have stated several times, I do not believe all of RHEL is
"Free Software".  Not all is covered by the GPL, so not all of it bears the
requirement to distribute the source code, even if you believe the GPL
requires that.  As things roll out on this Red Hat may release SRPMs of
GPLed code, but that will still not be a RHEL release.*

>
>
> >Finally, at the bottom of my blog article, was the real meat of what I
> >had to say.   In the aftermath of Red Hat's announcement four
> >different groups came forward and said that they were going to create
> >a clone of RHEL.   If these four groups were going to spend the time
> >and money to each create a clone, that means we would have four more
> >"RHEL"s.   I pointed out that this was, at best, three clones too
> >many.   I also pointed out that what we really needed was a competitor
> >to RHEL, a better RHEL, not just a clone.
>
> The competitor wouldn't have the gigantic marketing power of the
> IBM/Redhat conglomeration, so no matter how good it was, it would be
> hard to compete. You're a historian, remember "you can't get fired for
> buying IBM?" They were still mouthing that platitude in the mid 80's
> when I busted into the kitchen table programming sphere.
>
> If people would buy it, it wouldn't be hard (relatively speaking) to
> create such a beast from the very simple Void Linux. Just pay a few
> people to maintain Void packages for the softwares that are essential to
> the new solution provider, and you could produce something pretty darn
> good. Of course, not having the intentional complexity of Red Hat, you
> wouldn't get as much consulting and training work.
>
>
> >
> >But that is hard work, and from my experience would take much more
> >money than the 10 million dollars that SUSE was putting forth, even if
> >they only managed to copy the RHEL release source code (all of it, GPL
> >or not) and rebuild it.   It is the rest of what is needed that would
> >cost a lot more to bring to the table.   It probably could be done.  I
> >would encourage it to be done.
>
> From a technical standpoint I see it as very doable, but nobody's going
> to risk 10 million dollars on the line when it's likely they'll be
> outmarketed by Red Hat.
>
>
> *And I have said as much.   An enterprise system is much more than just
> the bits in the ISO.   Red Hat has put in the work since 1993 (with a first
> release in 1994) to build those international channels and do that
> marketing. IBM has been doing it much longer.*
> >
> >Sorry if I gave you any other idea of what I was saying.
>
> No problem.
>
> SteveT
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