Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Keeping Open Source Open

rockylinux.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 253 posts

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#241

Post by Brian_K_White »

mackca wrote: post #239
bubblethink wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. CentOS stream is irrelevant here. RHEL customers cannot meaningfully distribute the sources of RHEL. This has been the issue since the beginning, it's just that RH has tightened the knobs progressively over the years.

RHEL source according to Red Hat is CentOS Stream. If the source of RHEL is CentOS Stream then how is it irrelevant? Red Hat cannot deprive you of your right to sources and to redistribute them under the GPL. But Red Hat can also determine who they want to do business with.

centos stream is not the source of rhel binaries. it's upstream of rhel.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#242

Post by Brian_K_White »

davisr wrote: post #73
Brian_K_White wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They demand that Redhat pay for what they take in the only coin that the original producer ever asked for. Redhat are the parasites, not Centos. If Redhat don't agree to the deal that the gpl makes, they are free not to use any gpl code. Trying to paywall gpl software is simply theft, and it's an incredible expression of the art, when something is free, and yet you still manage to steal it.

> Trying to paywall gpl software is simply theft No, it's not, and I've seen your comments elsewhere. I don't think you even know what the "free" in "free software" means. You are COMPLETELY allowed to SELL free software. "Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can." See: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html Red Hat is still distributing full correspon…

I never said you can't sell free software. You have picked the wrong argument to try to make thinking I conflate the frees.

It's always been a fact that RH can't actually prevent a Centos-alike from reproducing the binaries from the same source, since RH are obligated to make the source available to anyone they hand a binary to. So you are right, they are still doing that. Congratulations on something that was never contested.

The problem is simply that they are trying, and HAVE at least issued statements asserting policies that they don't actually have the right to make. For instance they said that users can not legally redistribute the source they have access to, because it has RH trademarks in it. Well, fortunately that doesn't actually fly. The GPL isn't nullified by just including your cooyrighted or trademarked logo into the package. If anything, it just creates a derivative work and you just gave away all rights to your logo. Presumably they were'nt that stupid and carefully only do that to software they wholly wrote themselves, or things that are MIT and not GPL.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#243

Post by mackca »

bubblethink wrote: post #233
mackca wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Red Hat the source of RHEL is publicly available on CentOS Stream Gitlab, without a EULA.

It's the upstream source, not the source used to build RHEL. RHEL is downstream of CentOS stream. Much like linux kernel's source is available, it does not help you much.

According to Red Hat it is. If you don't believe them you can get a Developer subscription to get a RHEL ISO to compare with a CentOS Stream ISO. I imagine a lot of people, myself included, would be interested in the analysis of that.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#244

Post by bubblethink »

mackca wrote: post #238
bubblethink wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no extra effort here. The binary comes from the source. You don't have immaculate conception for RHEL. RHEL uses the source, and use to provide a link to the said source. Now they don't. And nobody is even asking RH to post sources publicly. People will happily take that burden off of them. They don't have to post the source, they can let their customers do so, but they forbid their customers. So this argume…

RHEL source according to Red Hat is CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream is publicly available. Red Hat cannot deprive you of your right to sources and to redistribute them under the GPL. But Red Hat can also determine who they want to do business with.

That interpretation of GPL is the main reason for this post. You have not stated anything new here. Your argument started with something about effort and fell back to their legal line. All your posts in this thread are of a defensive/shilling nature. It has stopped being productive.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#245

Post by bubblethink »

worthless-trash wrote: post #240
bubblethink wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the upstream source, not the source used to build RHEL. RHEL is downstream of CentOS stream. Much like linux kernel's source is available, it does not help you much.

However, it is "exactly" that code, isnt it.. thats been my understanding.

It may incidentally be in some cases, but isn't guaranteed to be. Things don't necessarily flow back up from RHEL to CentOS stream, and even if they do in a general sense, it may not be sufficient to build the exact same tag that RHEL uses. Someone else mentioned that they were not able to build RHEL packages from CentOS stream.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#246

Post by bubblethink »

mackca wrote: post #243
bubblethink wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the upstream source, not the source used to build RHEL. RHEL is downstream of CentOS stream. Much like linux kernel's source is available, it does not help you much.

According to Red Hat it is. If you don't believe them you can get a Developer subscription to get a RHEL ISO to compare with a CentOS Stream ISO. I imagine a lot of people, myself included, would be interested in the analysis of that.

So you do that analysis. Two downstream distros of RHEL have said that they cannot continue to offer RHEL rebuilds/updates without substantial changes. That means that it is not possible to use CentOS stream alone to build RHEL packages. You are free to do all the analysis in the world.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#247

Post by ungamedplayer »

bubblethink wrote: post #245
worthless-trash wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, it is "exactly" that code, isnt it.. thats been my understanding.

It may incidentally be in some cases, but isn't guaranteed to be. Things don't necessarily flow back up from RHEL to CentOS stream, and even if they do in a general sense, it may not be sufficient to build the exact same tag that RHEL uses. Someone else mentioned that they were not able to build RHEL packages from CentOS stream.

Do you have an example of this, since the project I work on definitely has its code synced to gitlab..

I believe that would be actuall evidence of gpl non compliance, not this dismisive current interpretation that people have.

I don't think that most people who commented have a subscription.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#248

Post by bubblethink »

ungamedplayer wrote: post #247
bubblethink wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may incidentally be in some cases, but isn't guaranteed to be. Things don't necessarily flow back up from RHEL to CentOS stream, and even if they do in a general sense, it may not be sufficient to build the exact same tag that RHEL uses. Someone else mentioned that they were not able to build RHEL packages from CentOS stream.

Do you have an example of this, since the project I work on definitely has its code synced to gitlab.. I believe that would be actuall evidence of gpl non compliance, not this dismisive current interpretation that people have. I don't think that most people who commented have a subscription.

Pushing things back to CentOS stream is not a requirement of GPL. GPL's role ends once RHEL customers get the source. Do you mean evidence of CentOS stream not being enough ? The post talks about it. Rocky needs to collate sources from several places now to create 1:1 RHEL rebuilds.

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#249

Post by jrm4 »

bonzini wrote: post #230
jrm4 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but the people who started this in no way were prioritizing anyone's salary. They had a vision of freedom, and THAT VISION -- more than "someone trying to do a company" -- is what got the best parts of this software going. One company that can't make the numbers work ain't my problem.

And you're wrong. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html "Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development". Paying salaries is a way to fund developers. Ergo, distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds to pay the salaries of free software developers.

I said prioritizing, I didn't say anything like "didn't consider at all"

Re: Keeping Open Source Open

#250

Post by rushikesh90 »

mrweasel wrote: post #129
toyg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't easily do that without really risking to break the gpl. Btw, Rocky, Oracle and Alma cannot fork; their entire value proposition is being RH-compatible. What could happen is a new giant trying to displace RH as the reference Linux platform, poaching significant amounts of devs from RH. That would require years and billions of dollars though.

> They can't easily do that without really risking to break the gpl. Why wouldn't they be able to do that? Sure, they can't patch the kernel or any of the existing stuff, but what would prevent them from writing a Grub replacement or a Red Hat shell? It has to be free of GPL code, but the operating system as a whole isn't what's under the GPL, it's the individual components, some of which aren't GPL, but BSD, MIT, IS…

The whole point of selling RHEL is everything is coming from community and open source and they are making money only for support. If they start closing even a bit of software, they will loose customers to other enterprises like Microsoft
Post reply on HN