Red Hat just erected a paywall in front of the source code to their Linux distribution.Are they burning bridges to the wider open source ecosystem?Referenced...
An exceptionally well explained rant that I find myself in total agreement with.
Except they’re aren’t violating the GPL at all. Their source code is still available to subscribers (and it isn’t behind a paywall because you can get a free license) and available to the public via CentOS Stream. Their code also goes into upstream projects as well.
The GPL exists so that companies can’t just take the code and contribute nothing back. But that isn’t what Redhat is doing here so I find your accusations that Redhat is exploiting users to be very hyperbolic.
Except that Redhat is trying to literally stop one of the four essential freedoms - the freedom to redistribute. Arguably they might actually be breaking the terms of the GPL.
I don’t think they are. You can distribute the corresponding source for your binaries. You just won’t get updates to the binaries (and their corresponding source) afterwards.
Except they’re aren’t violating the GPL at all. Their source code is still available to subscribers (and it isn’t behind a paywall because you can get a free license) and available to the public via CentOS Stream. Their code also goes into upstream projects as well.
The GPL exists so that companies can’t just take the code and contribute nothing back. But that isn’t what Redhat is doing here so I find your accusations that Redhat is exploiting users to be very hyperbolic.
Except that Redhat is trying to literally stop one of the four essential freedoms - the freedom to redistribute. Arguably they might actually be breaking the terms of the GPL.
I don’t think they are. You can distribute the corresponding source for your binaries. You just won’t get updates to the binaries (and their corresponding source) afterwards.