Hey! On Thu, 2023-06-29 at 19:12 +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote: > > > > On 6/26/23 18:47, Jeff Law wrote: > > > > What Red Hat has done may be technically legal and perhaps good > > > > for > > > > its business. > > > > Something I'm having trouble with is Red Hat's position that > > you can choose to be a customer or to exercise your rights > > under the GPL, but you cannot be both. > > The thing is, many people are learning this only now, because things > indeed have become tougher for people who prepare the RHEL rebuilds, > but > this is not new. _Nothing_ in the service agreement or in any other > legal document has changed since last week, the exact same terms > have > been applicable to the extended-support branches since the beginning > of > RHEL. In fact, as Frank pointed out elsewhere, this is something > that > other companies have been doing for decades as well. >
In my opinion, people haven't complained about service agreements because, till recent changes, RHEL sources were available publicly. The only important contract was the open-source license of the software. Now we have both the license of the software and the service agreement. > For all the people that are complaining only now that the free beer > part > is taken away, I can't help thinking that it's a bit disingenuous to > make it about "free as in freedom", when that clause has existed > forever. What do you mean by "free beer part"? Isn't open-source software free of charge? Does anybody pay for it? The question is if RHEL software is still open-source or closed-source. At least if I look at the OSI's [1] definition of Open Source, the situation isn't clear to me. > > (As an aside, the service agreement also mentions that any open > source > license overrides the service agreement if needed. So by definition > this might be void but it certainly is not a GPL violation). > Yeah, it's hard to say which rules of service agreement are overwriten by software licenses. Especially that there are quite a few licenses shipped with the distribution. Cheers, Piotr [1] OSI Open Source Definition Introduction Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: 1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. 2. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. 4. Integrity of The Author’s Source Code The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of “patch files” with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. 7. Distribution of License The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program’s being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program’s license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution. 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. 10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface. _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
