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Final nail in the coffin of Red Hat rebuilds?

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Re: Final nail in the coffin of Red Hat rebuilds?

#11

Post by jacooper »

beckler wrote: post #8

For those who are out of the loop, like I was, here is how I'm understanding this... "CentOS" tracked behind RHEL, and is considered more stable? Regardless, CentOS 7 is the last supported major version, and it's reaching EOL soon and will not be maintained. This sounds like a push to get those who use CentOS (free) to move to RHEL (paid) to stay in the long-cycle ecosystem. "CentOS Stream" is a flavor that tracks ah…

Old centOS is just a RHEL clone. The only supported version is CentOS 7, which is clone of RHEL 7

Re: Final nail in the coffin of Red Hat rebuilds?

#12

Post by tinus_hn »

beckler wrote: post #8

For those who are out of the loop, like I was, here is how I'm understanding this... "CentOS" tracked behind RHEL, and is considered more stable? Regardless, CentOS 7 is the last supported major version, and it's reaching EOL soon and will not be maintained. This sounds like a push to get those who use CentOS (free) to move to RHEL (paid) to stay in the long-cycle ecosystem. "CentOS Stream" is a flavor that tracks ah…

Isn’t it like all these alternative distributions have to do is buy one license for RHEL and get the sources RedHat uses?

Re: Final nail in the coffin of Red Hat rebuilds?

#15

Post by iDemonix »

Another irritating move from Red Hat, likely driven by their unhappiness with the popularity of Alma/Rocky instead of a mass migration to RHEL they had probably hoped for.

As the source is still available, but not publicly, could it be that these alternate flavours enter in to a license agreement with Red Hat that's community funded?

Re: Final nail in the coffin of Red Hat rebuilds?

#16

Post by jraph »

steve1977 wrote: post #14

How does that work out with the GPL?

It works out ok. The GPL only requires Red Hat to provide the source code to its users, not the whole world. A license requiring publication on the internet would be considered non-free by the GNU project. It would also be rejected by Debian because it would fail the Desert Island test [1].

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/DesertIslandTest

Re: Final nail in the coffin of Red Hat rebuilds?

#17

Post by steve1977 »

jraph wrote: post #16
steve1977 wrote: post #14

How does that work out with the GPL?

It works out ok. The GPL only requires Red Hat to provide the source code to its users, not the whole world. A license requiring publication on the internet would be considered non-free by the GNU project. It would also be rejected by Debian because it would fail the Desert Island test [1]. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/DesertIslandTest

But can Red Hat restrict its users from further distributing the source code or would they be allowed to do that?

Re: Final nail in the coffin of Red Hat rebuilds?

#18

Post by jraph »

steve1977 wrote: post #17
jraph wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works out ok. The GPL only requires Red Hat to provide the source code to its users, not the whole world. A license requiring publication on the internet would be considered non-free by the GNU project. It would also be rejected by Debian because it would fail the Desert Island test [1]. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/DesertIslandTest

But can Red Hat restrict its users from further distributing the source code or would they be allowed to do that?

They can't, but they could do something like GRSecurity, saying that they would end their contract with / stop giving anybody who distributes it further updates.

Re: Final nail in the coffin of Red Hat rebuilds?

#20

Post by lproven »

tinus_hn wrote: post #12
beckler wrote: post #8

For those who are out of the loop, like I was, here is how I'm understanding this... "CentOS" tracked behind RHEL, and is considered more stable? Regardless, CentOS 7 is the last supported major version, and it's reaching EOL soon and will not be maintained. This sounds like a push to get those who use CentOS (free) to move to RHEL (paid) to stay in the long-cycle ecosystem. "CentOS Stream" is a flavor that tracks ah…

Isn’t it like all these alternative distributions have to do is buy one license for RHEL and get the sources RedHat uses?

In practice, yes.

In theory, no, because the license strictly prohibits this. They'd get sued into oblivion or their first release.

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