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Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

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Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#81

Post by tw04 »

phpisthebest wrote: post #69
tw04 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It only takes a single customer with a RHEL subscription to republish the source, so this is really just a middle finger out of spite to Centos competitors. That is a violation of their terms of service and will result in a termination of your subscription unless I'm misreading it (section d): Unauthorized Use of Subscription Services. Any unauthorized use of the Subscription Services is a material breach of the Agr…

My Assumption would be Section 1.4 over rides in the case of Source Code which is governed by GPL and implicitly allows redistribution, that is the entire purpose of CopyLeft So the prohibition on "redistribution" in this context would be on the compiled binaries. i.e you could not pay for a subscription and then mirror the yum repos publicly.

You're conflating your legal right to redistribute the software (they can't sue you) to your contractual right to redistribute (them terminating your support contract).

They cannot sue you for redistributing the software, or claim damages because you did so. They can ABSOLUTELY tell you that your right to the subscription is terminated if you do so.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#82

Post by yetanotherloss »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move: > Since the earliest days of Linux or MySQL, there were companies set up to profit from others’ contributions. Most recently in Linux, for example, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux both promise “bug for bug compatibility” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while contributing nothing toward Red Hat’s success. Indeed, the natural conclusi…

I have no raw feelings towards organizations trying to keep themselves in business, but I'd be happier if it was literally anyone besides Oracle.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#83

Post by mroche »

pavon wrote: post #23
BossingAround wrote: post #4

I don't get what's the big deal--essentially the only thing being lost is a pointer to commit that marks the difference between RHEL X.Y and X.Y+1..?

RHEL X.Y isn't a simple snapshot of CentOS Stream X at a specific point. It is a fork of CentOS Stream, with cherry-picks and so on. The specific details of what patches made it into RHEL and when and how to create reproducible builds are now only being provided to customers. In the past, customers have been able to redistribute the RHEL repos freely. I assume that will remain the case as long as CentOS Stream is ope…

> In the past, customers have been able to redistribute the RHEL repos freely. I assume that will remain the case as long as CentOS Stream is open source.

There's a duality here. Yes, by the nature of the distribution, GPL, and licensing general, Red Hat cannot stop or prevent a customer from distributing RHEL packages and software to third parties. However, Red Hat reserves the right to terminate any existing subscriptions a customer may have as a result of their package distributing. IIRC, the Enterprise Agreement makes it pretty clear the services and offerings provided by the subscription are for the customer and the customer only. Going outside of that violates the subscription's terms, not the softwares' licenses, therefore allowing Red Hat to end business with said customer.

For those concerned about the final year of CentOS 7: it will not be touched. It will continue to see source exports to git.centos.org as there is no parallel CentOS Stream 7 platform. Also, git.centos.org is not EOL either because it is used by other groups than Red Hat, like CentOS Special Interest Groups.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#84

Post by matthews2 »

Vogtinator wrote: post #55
tw04 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It only takes a single customer with a RHEL subscription to republish the source, so this is really just a middle finger out of spite to Centos competitors. That is a violation of their terms of service and will result in a termination of your subscription unless I'm misreading it (section d): Unauthorized Use of Subscription Services. Any unauthorized use of the Subscription Services is a material breach of the Agr…

How does this not violate the GPL?

The GPL says I must give you access to the source along with the binaries, but it doesn't say I need to give you updates indefinitely.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#85

Post by m463 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move: > Since the earliest days of Linux or MySQL, there were companies set up to profit from others’ contributions. Most recently in Linux, for example, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux both promise “bug for bug compatibility” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while contributing nothing toward Red Hat’s success. Indeed, the natural conclusi…

Isn't redhat profiting from all the software upstream to themselves?

I'm reminded of the definition of a linux distribution: a package manager and a source repository.

(that said, unbreakable linux, yeah)

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#86

Post by passterby »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move: > Since the earliest days of Linux or MySQL, there were companies set up to profit from others’ contributions. Most recently in Linux, for example, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux both promise “bug for bug compatibility” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while contributing nothing toward Red Hat’s success. Indeed, the natural conclusi…

[dead]

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#87

Post by mroche »

Vogtinator wrote: post #55
tw04 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It only takes a single customer with a RHEL subscription to republish the source, so this is really just a middle finger out of spite to Centos competitors. That is a violation of their terms of service and will result in a termination of your subscription unless I'm misreading it (section d): Unauthorized Use of Subscription Services. Any unauthorized use of the Subscription Services is a material breach of the Agr…

How does this not violate the GPL?

It does not. As the other comment in this thread notes there are two agreements in play here: the open source license agreements and Red Hat's Enterprise Agreement. Under no circumstances can Red Hat prevent an entity from sharing their FOSS software, however they can absolutely view that action as a violation of the EA Contract, and terminate the subscription. This doesn't undo the action, but prevents further access to updates and sources.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#88

Post by passterby »

a2tech wrote: post #3

I don’t understand what game IBM is playing with Red Hat. I was under the impression they were profitable prior to the acquisition so I’m not sure why they’re squeezing so hard and ruining the great brand and good will Red Hat had built up.

[dead]

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#89

Post by zaphar »

m463 wrote: post #85
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move: > Since the earliest days of Linux or MySQL, there were companies set up to profit from others’ contributions. Most recently in Linux, for example, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux both promise “bug for bug compatibility” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while contributing nothing toward Red Hat’s success. Indeed, the natural conclusi…

Isn't redhat profiting from all the software upstream to themselves? I'm reminded of the definition of a linux distribution: a package manager and a source repository. (that said, unbreakable linux, yeah)

Redhat contributes back to upstream in a lot of cases. I don't know if Rocky and co do or not but Redhat definitely does.

Re: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability

#90

Post by freedomben »

Aaron2222 wrote: post #71
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

The comments there are insightful and actually make me think this is the right move: > Since the earliest days of Linux or MySQL, there were companies set up to profit from others’ contributions. Most recently in Linux, for example, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux both promise “bug for bug compatibility” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while contributing nothing toward Red Hat’s success. Indeed, the natural conclusi…

Regardless of your views of cloning a commercial Linux distro like that, alling Rocky Linux and Alma Linux 'dirtbags' misses the point of the entire reason they exist in the first place, RedHat discontinuing CentOS (and drastically shortening the support window on CentOS 8).

who called them dirtbags? I've seen this mentioned a few times but I haven't seen any source for it
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