AlmaLinux's ELevate Begins Handling EPEL Repositories

[mSparks]

How did they become pirates?

Distributing copies of other peoples software without a licence to do so. The same as all software pirates.

[spicfoo]

Distributing copies of other peoples software without a licence to do so. The same as all software pirates.

That’s very odd because it is a large company and they would have been sued quickly in that case Do you have a source for this? Which software exactly ?

[mSparks]

That’s very odd because it is a large company and they would have been sued quickly in that case Do you have a source for this? Which software exactly ?

Nothing they distribute is gpl licenced any more, they changed the licence of everything they distribute in June of this year and started pretending they wrote all of linux.

Its instead now theoretically licenced under:

https://www.redhat.com/licenses/Appendix-1-Global-English-20230620.pdf

Which is BS straight up software piracy.

For commercial gain to, when the dust settles I expect I expect hefty fines, but even before then, don't need to give them any credit for stuff they may or may not have done in the past.

At least when someone at microsoft went and

https://github.com/microsoft/DirectXShaderCompiler/issues/30

They had the good sense to fix it.

[spicfoo]

Nothing they distribute is gpl licenced any more, they changed the licence of everything they distribute in June of this year

The document you linked is a support agreement. It's not new and says this: "This Agreement establishes the rights and obligations associated with Subscription Services and is not intended to limit your rights to software code under the terms of an open source license."

You can confirm this readily by looking at the source code that RHEL branches from. The individual components including the kernel is still under the GPL license as you can see in https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-str...ref_type=heads

That's why all the rebuilders are able to continue to use the source code that Red Hat publishes. If they were violating the license, there would be a lawsuit already and I am not aware of any. Are you?

[mSparks]

The document you linked is a support agreement. It's not new and says this: "This Agreement establishes the rights and obligations associated with Subscription Services and is not intended to limit your rights to software code under the terms of an open source license."

But they cant use the gpl licence to distribute software under that agreement, of course it doesnt affect "your rights". Its them that are the software pirates.

But if you feel like defending software piracy, feel free, it was always cool and hip to copy that floppy. Just not a bridge I'm personally willing to cross.

[spicfoo]

But they cant use the gpl licence to distribute software under that agreement, of course it doesnt affect "your rights". Its them that are the software pirates.

Again, nothing in that agreement is new. The way GPL works since everyone involved from upstream to all downstreams must have the same rights. The agreement explicitly says they don't restrict any of the open source licenses and both the vendor themselves and rebuilders are exercising the rights as provided. I don't see a way how a vendor could violate the license without impacting the downstreams. If your understanding of this is shared with any of the thousands of contributors involved here, there would be a lawsuit. Hence, I am going to conclude they are technically complying with the terms of the license. Moving on.

[mSparks]

Again, nothing in that agreement is new. The way GPL works since everyone involved from upstream to all downstreams must have the same rights. The agreement explicitly says they don't restrict any of the open source licenses and both the vendor themselves and rebuilders are exercising the rights as provided. I don't see a way how a vendor could violate the license without impacting the downstreams. If your understanding of this is shared with any of the thousands of contributors involved here, there would be a lawsuit. Hence, I am going to conclude they are technically complying with the terms of the license. Moving on.

What is new is before they were not using that agreement to distribute gpl software, only their branding.

Now they exclusively distribute other peoples software they stuck their logo on under that licence. Software pirates with nothing to contribute that you really shouldn't associate yourself with.

[spicfoo]

What is new is before they were not using that agreement to distribute software, only their branding..

Can you provide a source for this? I see the exact same verbiage in the support agreement all the way back to RHEL 2.1, their first enterprise release from 2002 and nothing has changed there as far as I can tell.

[mSparks]

Can you provide a source for this? I see the exact same verbiage in the support agreement all the way back to RHEL 2.1, their first enterprise release from 2002 and nothing has changed there as far as I can tell.

They used to distribute exact copies of their software under the gpl as centos. iirc centos was set up as part of one of their court settlements.
What you licenced from them under that agreement was then "just" their branding, which was required for support. Sketchy but "not piracy".

Now they licence everything under that agreement, which is piracy.

Comprehensive analysis here:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

Doesn't go far enough imho.

F em, and the horse they rode in on, I fucking hate software pirates.

Also, given the OP, three cheers for alma linux. I also wouldn't be surprised if they pick up some of the better red hat staff that are good enough to not depend on software piracy to sell stuff, lets face it, only the useless devs that will struggle to find other work will want that black mark on their CV any longer than absolutely necessary. Heck, at this point in time useless devs that no one else wants may well be the only ones left on Redhats payroll, they already lost their experienced C suite guys with dev experience.

Jim Whitehurst went to fix unity

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Whitehurst

[spicfoo]

They used to distribute exact copies of their software under the gpl as centos. iirc centos was set up as part of one of their court settlements. .

You are likely misremembering the history here since there aren't any court settlements associated with this. If you find otherwise later, feel free to link me to a source.

What you licenced from them under that agreement was then "just" their branding, which was required for support..
Now they licence everything under that agreement, which is piracy.
Comprehensive analysis here:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

The agreement you linked earlier always covered all of the software and not just branding since its a support agreement. The branding itself is covered by a separate trademark license. This is actually very similar to what other commercial distros like SUSE does. What has actually changed is nothing in any of their agreements but their public source distribution practices. Now coming to the link provided, I have read SFC before and it is a good analysis. They never directly claim any current violations of the license however. If they really thought there was a direct violation, they would sue. They had no problem with suing so many other companies before. Your source just reaffirms my understanding of this issue but I appreciate the conversation. Have a nice day