• Lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee
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    1 year ago

    That’s exactly what’s already happened. Rocky and Alma are already no longer an option for a free version of Red Hat since Red Hat code is not allowed to be shared, it can only be viewed. Read their own words from Alma and Rocky, what they themself said about oing forward.

    Red Hat can also change the license agreement further to include anyone proven to have published source code of Red Hat branded material agrees to pay a fee to Red Hat of no less than $10 million, or whatever price they want to put on it.

    Everyone can scream about Red Hat, all they have to have to do is change some wording in agreement that includes fees(fines) for multi millions of dollars, BOOM! Red Hat becomes a proprietary system built on open source software.

    SUSE says they will fork RHEL, but Alma and Rocky are over in terms of being a clone. People have asked for years why there is no free 1 to 1 clone of SLES and SLED. IBM is free to choose to turn all of RHEL in a proprietary development and lock it down, unless you can get a court order that says Red Hate’s code must be made public, but I don’t dare test IBM lawyers over any code that is not released under AGPLv3, only then I would.

    • SpaceCadet@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Red Hat can also change the license agreement

      It’s not a license agreement, it’s a terms of service agreement. The license of the software is still the GPL (or any of the other FOSS licenses that apply).

      all they have to have to do is change some wording in agreement that includes fees(fines) for multi millions of dollars

      The point where they introduce punitive terms to the terms of service agreement in response to redistribution, is also the point where their argument that “they’re free to choose who they do business with” breaks down because they’re no longer just ending their business relationship with you, they’re imposing a punishment. They wouldn’t just be skirting the GPL, they would be blatantly violating it.

      I would love to see IBM lawyers try to get that fee enforced when a customer exercises their GPL granted freedom to distribute a piece of software that Red Hat didn’t create and own to begin with.

      • Lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee
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        1 year ago

        The GNU/Linux GPLv2 does not apply to any software developed and owned by Red Hat like all of the Red Hat security programs, that is not covered by the Linux license. If Red Hat never modifies or changes a single line of code in GNU/Linux, they are free to run closed source programs on top of it. They own .rpm file format so they have the legal freedom to make the system and all RH software proprietary.

        That’s how Rocky and Alma are now permanently locked out from accessing the code.