I want to be clear on my bias here: I firmly believe that open source would not be a ‘thing’ if it weren’t for Red Hat. Linus Torvalds himself once said (albeit 10 years ago) that the shares he received from Red Hat before their IPO was ‘his only big Linux payout’. I don’t think anyone would disagree with the statement that Red Hat has had a major significant positive impact on Open Source across the world.
This morning I listened to an excellent podcast called “Ask Noah” where he interviewed Red Hat’s Mike McGrath who has been active on the linux subreddit and other social media. It seems that Mike has been involved in the decision to restrict Red Hat’s sources on git.centos.org:
https://podcast.asknoahshow.com/343 (listen at ~20 mins)
It’s really worth a listen. Mike clearly lays out the work that Red Hat (I was surprised to find out that it is NOT the Rebuilders) does to debrand the Red Hat sources, why they’re pulling that back on those unbranded sources, and that they understand the ramifications of doing so. It’s also interesting that Mike is of the opinion that there is nothing wrong with doing a Rebuild, and he defends them by stating “that’s the cost of doing business”. Noah and Mike go into many of the nuances of the decision and again, it’s really worth listening to. Mike also talks about “bad faith” when dealing with the Rebuilders at 40:30, which I think explains Red Hat’s decision. I got the distinct feeling he’s bound by some ethical code so he won’t/can’t say too much though.
There’s also this discussion about Rocky Linux securing a contract with NASA:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36417968
that had a lot of internal discussion at my company this week, which given what’s just happened may shed some more light on Red Hat’s decision.
There are always two sides to every story but in this case there are three sides to this story.
On one side, you have Red Hat, a long time champion of open source software, that has poured billions of dollars into open source development, and which has 1000s of employees who not only on ‘company’ time but in their own time manage, develop, contribute, and create open source code. They have funded countless successful and unsuccessful projects that we all use.
Against Red Hat are two largely distinct groups. The first is the Rebuilders themselves, who Red Hat has claimed ‘don’t offer anything of value back to the community’. This is not meant to be a statement on the usefulness of the rebuilds (Rocky, Alma, Oracle, etc.) but rather a very directed statement on whether or not the rebuilders are providing bug report, feedback, and contributions to the packages that Red Hat has included in RHEL.
The second group, which stands somewhat behind the Rebuilders, are the Rebuild users. One could argue that the users are caught in the middle of Red Hat and the Rebuilders, however, I think it is better to look at them as being an equal ‘side’ in this discussion.
The Rebuild users are in a very unfortunate position: they’re about to lose access to a free product that they’ve come to depend on. They are, as expected, unhappy about Red Hat’s decision to stop providing access to RHEL sources. My next statement is callous, and I expect it to be read as such: You get what you paid for. That is not meant to indicate anyone is cheap, it’s just that you shouldn’t have expectations when you are using something for free.
Here’s the interesting part for me. As far as I can see, none of the users are jumping to the Rebuilder’s defence of Red Hat’s accusation that the Rebuilders provide nothing back to the community. And, as far as I can tell across various social media and news platforms’ comments sections, largely the user community AGREES with Red Hat’s position. Informed users – not all users – are using a RHEL Rebuild knowing that there is no benefit in doing so for the community.
I have yet to read a reply from the Rebuilders where they categorically deny that this is the case. And to me, that’s glaring and damning of the Rebuilders’ position. Even the ‘defenders’ (for lack of a better word) of the Rebuilders have yet to provide a response.
I don’t see how Company Foo can dictate that all other entities (customers, for example) can receive a free TV on their doorstep (since the code is open source) except for Company Bar. To make it map better to the situation, Company Bar would receive a shipment of free TVs, rebrand them, ship them out to customers, and install them.
“They don’t have to give Company Bar TVs to install.” So the GPL doesn’t require that Company Foo permit free access to the TVs? They could decide to not give out their TVs to anyone?
Also, what if I wanted to get my cousin a free TV but charge him a few bucks to install it? Is this only a problem at scale?
Here’s where your analogy falls apart. The TV isn’t being shipped to everyone. It’s being shipped (“rebuilt”) by Bar, and then installed by them. They’re free to do that but Foo is under no obligation to help them do it.
Within the analogy (as it compares to Redhat and the Rebuilders), how is Foo helping Bar? Isn’t Foo simply leaving the TVs outside the factory for people to come and pickup? A bunch of trucks branded “Bar” come by, pick some of them up, rebrand them, and take jobs to install them, jobs that Foo thought they were going to get? Isn’t Foo now requiring individual people to walk through a lockable door, sign their name, verify that they don’t work for Bar, and grab a TV instead of just leaving them outside in a pile?
Yes, that kind of makes sense, but Foo was leaving the TVs outside because they thought that was the most expedient thing to do. It takes effort to move them outside, and Foo doesn’t want to do that anymore. So now Foo, as you point out, has moved the TVs inside where only paying customers can get them.
And the GPL is okay with that? Can every repo under GPL put up a paywall?
Google: “The GNU General Public License (GNU, GPL, or GPL) is a free software license originally written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, which guarantees that users are free to use, share, and modify the software without paying anyone for it.”
The GPL only applies to those that get the software that it is applied to. So if I sell you a program FooBar v3.2 under the GPL you have the right to get the source code for FooBar v3.2, which RedHat still does.
But FooCorp only sells you FooBar if you agree to their license, which is independent of the GPL. And should you breach the terms of FooCorps license (redestributing the source of any program they provided you) they cancel your license and can refuse to sell you any further versions of FooBar.
The GPL in this case is still in tact since you can still request the source for FooBar v3.2 and you can do anything you want with it, just the part of redestributing it violates FooCorps license and they refuse to sell you v3.3. But you can still request the source of v3.2 even after the FooCorp license breach.
So… the GPL in technicality is not violated at all (to my knowledge) but maybe in spirit it somewhat is, due to if you want to exercise all the Rights the GPL gives you, you would have to breach FooCorps license.
Ah, okay, this makes sense. I was confusing the product for the source code. If they provide the product, they must provide the source code but they (obviously) aren’t required to provide a product to everyone, so everyone is not entitled to the source code.
I appreciate all of the information and discussion. Thanks all.
To respond to my own initial post: the harm comes from the fact that Redhat is entitled to be the sole distributors of their source code by way of requiring that all those who desire access to the product affirm that they will not distribute the source code the GPL affords them, thereby stopping raw rebuilds of the product (but also potential extensions of Redhat).