Rocky Linux Shares How They May Continue To Obtain The RHEL Source Code

[oiaohm]

1) does not change my opinion about it not being OK for RedHat to undermine the GPL
2) the insurance metaphor doesn't map cleanly to the software support scenario because insuranced goods are not GPL-licensed

Sorry insurance metaphor is closer than what you think because support contracts do technically fall under insurance laws.

if you reproduce bugs in the single RHEL machine and ask for support for it

Do note the If there and then wake up people have been open issues with redhat that when you look closely the redhat trade marks are missing with rocky or some other 1 to 1 clone had been used. So the person did not check before submitting issue to redhat that was issue on the single RHEL machine. Yes there are other cases where it been compiler bugs effecting the 1 to 1 clones causing the problem that RHEL did not suffer from because they did not build the binary with the same version of compiler. Yes some of the complier cases have cost redhat staff hours attempting to reproduce a bug that they were never going to reproduce with RHEL because its not a RHEL problem.

sure, again, dick move... but not illega...l even if you can prove it's what's happening, you'd probably be bound by contract to fix the issueon that single machine, provide the source forthe fix, etc... so you need to devise a better business model around this somehow, or live with it

With the contracts parties sign to have redhat support there is a good chance that it is illegal todo the dick move under fraudulent representation laws but the problem also that it going to cost redhat/ibm a lot to take a party to court over it. The problem here is that is simple to prove this dick move has been happening to redhat but its not simple/cost effective for redhat to go hey dick stop doing this stupidity and pay up.

Now as you said Redhat has to look at their business model.
Yes nightmare here is valid options:
1) not release all the MIT and the like license stuff that does not require them to release the source
2) use the written source code provide option of GPL and delay provide of source for 30 to 90 days.
3) Make SRPM that confirm to the bare min GPL requires. Again another legal option.
4) Rework their contracts to make sure reporting a bug about a clone to Redhat support is legal to end support contract and like demand payment of a full redhat license per staff member in company because someone in the company has been dick enough todo this.

Rocky and others need to wake up bad things have been happening to Redhat that costing them resources/money and this is why Redhat/IBM is pissed. IBM legal department will go though the GPL and will work out the min possible way they can obey it to the letter of the GPL licnese. IBM legal department will already be considering not providing the MIT/apache and so on parts..

Lot of ways Rocky should be equally pissed with the dick move happening to Redhat because Rocky support company CIQ is not getting contracts they should because people are using Redhat support for Rocky installs instead of taking out a contract with CIQ.

marlock it takes two to tango. Redhat/IBM is not just pissed because they want to make more money alone. Redhat/IBM is party pissed because they have the documentation that people are causing Redhat support personal to waste their time looking for issues RHEL does not have because they are too cheap to buy the right contracts and report the problem to the right party and are also too cheap to test if the problem really effects RHEL before reporting to Redhat/IBM.

Yes profit is a fact here but the dick move is a big prolbem. Yes the dick move harms rocky Linux and Oracle Linux as well as RHEL/Redhat/IBM. AlmaLinux does not sell support.

We want think if the billion dollar company being the villain here but we need to accept that billion dollar company has a true bandit problem that is absolutely harming them and that this harm is not just restricted to Redhat/IBM. How more resources could have rocky Linux put into rocky Linux development if those exploiting redhat to support rocky had paid CIQ for that support we don't know.

Of course I fear with IBM legal department in the mix with Redhat they are going react in the IBM way that is not going to be nice. Yes attempting to loop hole around the Redhat restriction will make IBM legal department look to more extreme options and the extrema options I can clearly see are not going to be nice.

We really do need to sit down and start working out a clear policy/contract design on how to deal with parties who dick move with support companies like Redhat/IBM, CIQ and so on. Nice would be clause in support contracts of all involved you do the dick move and get caught you have to pay the support provider you wasted the time at max rate and pay support contract like for 10 years to the party you should have had the support contract with so that it too costly to-do the dick move.

[virr]

You're a bit too late. Oracle has been doing exactly that for a while

Oracle and RH used to be partnered, even before IBM acquisition. Also Oracle didn't clone bit-to-bit like "someone else", they add their proprietary software, and they only repack bug update after a period. So you get slower bug update with OL, and in larger scale, it could be cost more than direct support from RedHat, just because Oracle are not bug fixer. The argument that Red Hat is doing all the work and Oracle just copies is not true!

[virr]

In my opinion it is very bad idea as there is no upgrade path for Centos stream.

I could be wrong be I'm pretty sure that you can't migrate from stream 8 to stream 9.

For personal use it is better to use a distro which you can upgrade - that's my view. Something like Debian ,Suse or Ubuntu.

Totally agree, Linux Mint need a decade to make upgradeable to next version be a feature. But in production level, even I accept that using a dev version of RHEL, no migration path is unacceptable. It's not wrong when saying that CentOS Stream is not ready product, AFAIK Meta had to customize CentOS Stream to continue usage on their system.

[marlock]

oiaohm
thanks for the piece-by-piece response! it's been enlightening

after reading it, i'd imagine they can rescind their contracts under the argument of security fraud when this can be proven (eg: when the bug report has no RHEL logo where it should), even under current contracts...

...and they can probably also argue successfully in court that they're not hurting the GPL (at least if they only rescind support contracts that have been abused but keep the source code publicly available), but IANAL


IMHO the other part of their response, where they make it harder for a 3rd-party to get a copy of their source code to prevent a clone distro from being made at all is probably still a step too far under this line of argumentation and may put them in hot waters at some point in the future, let alone burning community goodwill towards them (arguably already happening, but no idea at what scale)