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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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I've been having ongoing discussions about this topic because I had a similar opinion to begin with. The problem is the way a lot of that source code they're trying not to share is licensed.
A lot of the code causing problems is not RedHat's to choose not to distribute. It is Free and Open Source Software licensed under the GPL, a copyleft license that explicitly grants the rights to copy, redistribute, modify as you see fit... as long as the resulting code is also licensed under the GPL. Reason being, this promotes a benefit for EVERYONE, vs. a benefit for a corporate bank account.
While RedHat is not explicitly stopping people from distributing GPL licensed code within their product, they are saying "well you can, but if you do we're going to stop providing our service to you." They're strongarming people into not exercising rights explicitly granted to them based on the way code RHEL is using is licensed.
This course of action is not technically against the GPL, but... I'm sure you can see how it's a very shitty thing to do.
Imagine you went to a donut shop and they had a buy 1 get 1 free offer, so you go buy a donut and get a free donut that you want to share with your friend. But the person at the counter stops you from giving the donut to your friend, saying "Woah, we gave YOU that donut. You can't just give it away. If you give your friend that donut either you'll have to pay for it or they will, or you'll be banned from the store and you can never buy another donut from us again." That's a shitty oversimplified analogy of what's happening here, but I think it gets the point across.
this is a great analogy - and I am now hungry.
my only suggestion would be that the donut is the binary and the recipe is the source code (which is GPL'd and must come with the donut).
the person getting the donut is free to eat the donut and distribute the recipe (long live the GPL!), but the baker says, if you distribute the recipe, I wont sell you any more donuts (as is their right) and therefore you will not get updated recipes either.
totally garbage move by redhat, but arguably allowed by the GPL. this eventuality is one of many reasons why I chose the debian_way^tm^ decades ago when I seriously started with FLOSS.
Agreed, that's a better way to put it. I thought about using the recipe as part of the analogy, but couldn't figure out the right way to word it. Thanks for that!
I wouldn’t be surprised if this results in a new version of the GPL (much like TiVo inspired in the past) that makes the redistribution rights even more explicit. I think the “allowed” is only in the vaguest of terms and likely more of an oversight based on the software distribution model being used at the time and some crafty lawyers at Red Hat. It absolutely violates the spirit of the GPL that anybody who receives the binary can also get the code to use and modify however they want as long as they also share changes with people who they distribute to.