Perhaps it's time we discuss how you will compensate us for our work."Īnother prominent programmer, Jeff Geerling, observed, "What I hate most about Red Hat's response is they call anyone who wants CentOS a freeloader, when: 1. You've never paid me, but I've encouraged my clients to pay you. You've been taking my work for about 25 years, and happily consuming it downstream. Graham Leggett, a well-known open-source developer, tweeted, "Hi, Red Hat. Programmers also aren't happy with Red Hat. Many others believe Red Hat is violating the GPLv2. But he is worried that Red Hat has "moved from distributing publicly to everyone to only giving it to customers who received the binaries already." In short, Red Hat's "murky business model skirts the line of GPL compliance."Īlso: Linux distro hopping is a fun way to find the perfect desktop operating system provided an excellent counterbalance to the problems with the RHEL business model." Now, though, in the pursuit for profit that has led to Red Hat's first layoffs, Red Hat has maximized "the level of difficulty of those in the community who wish to 'trust but verify' that RHEL complies with the GPL agreements."ĭoes Red Hat violate Linux's core intellectual property (IP) license, the Gnu General Public License version 2 (GPLv2)? Kuhn won't go that far. Pre-Red Hat acquisition, Kuhn contended, "CentOS. These pleadings, discussions, and encouragements have, as far as we can tell, been heard and seriously listened to by key members of Red Hat's legal and OSPO departments, and even by key C-level executives, but they have ultimately been rejected and ignored - sometimes even with a "fine, then sue us for GPL violations. Software rights activists, including SFC, have spent decades talking to Red Hat and its attorneys about how the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) business model courts disaster and is actively unfriendly to community-oriented Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Kuhn, the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC)'s Policy Fellow, explained his position:įor approximately twenty years, Red Hat (now a fully owned subsidiary of IBM) has experimented with building a business model for operating system deployment and distribution that looks, feels, and acts like a proprietary one, but nonetheless complies with the GPL and other standard copyleft terms. Not all of the anger comes from those whom McGrath appears to be calling freeloaders. This dispute may end up being settled in the courts. Our legal advisors have reassured us that we have the right to obtain the source to any binaries we receive. To reiterate, both of these methods enable us to legitimately obtain RHEL binaries and SRPMs without compromising our commitment to open-source software or agreeing to TOS or EULA limitations that impede our rights. No one can prevent redistribution of GPL software. These methods are possible because of the power of GPL. This is the easiest for us to scale as we can do all of this through CI pipelines, spinning up cloud images to obtain the sources via DNF, and post to our Git repositories automatically. With this, anyone can spin up RHEL images in the cloud and thus obtain the source code for all packages and errata. In addition, Rocky Linux will leverage pay-per-use RHEL public cloud instances. We have validated this through OCI (Open Container Initiative) containers, and it works." "Using the UBI image, it is easily possible to obtain Red Hat sources reliably and unencumbered. One option is via RHEL Universal Base Image (UBI) container images that are available from multiple online sources such as Docker Hub. Therefore, since Rocky can't get the code from the Red Hat Customer Portal and the CentOS Stream code isn't good enough, Rocky will be using two different approaches to get the pure RHEL code. Rocky believes RHEL's "sources primarily consist of upstream open-source project packages that are not owned by Red Hat."Īlso: RHEL and its Linux relatives and rivals: How to choose As a result, we refuse to agree with them, which means we must obtain the SRPMs through channels that adhere to our principles and uphold our rights. While the community debates whether this violates the GPL, we firmly believe that such agreements violate the spirit and purpose of open source. Red Hat's Terms of Service (TOS) and End User License Agreements (EULA) impose conditions that attempt to hinder legitimate customers from exercising their rights as guaranteed by the GPL. The Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation is taking a more aggressive tact. And, in the long-term, we'll be working with those same partners and with our community to identify the best path forward for AlmaLinux as part of the enterprise Linux ecosystem." So, AlmaLinux "will be working with other members of the RHEL ecosystem to ensure that we continue to deliver security updates with the speed and stability that we have become known for.
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