Hmm yes because doubling down in face of public backlash has never gone wrong before 🤔
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Unpopular opinion. I agree with him.
As long as they continue to follow the gpl which they are, and contribute back to upstream I do not see the issue. It is entirely within their right to charge for free as in freedom not free as in beer software. This is pretty much exactly what the gpl says.
That being said this could be the start of a slippery slope for red hat and Foss business models and will certainly be keeping an eye on it.
IMO the general understanding had been that you could charge but had to share code with the people you distributed to, but they were free to re-share it. Red Hat punishes customers who do this and even generally reserves the right to sue them, which seems pretty anti-GPL.
The re-sharing was always a risk of trying to sell GPL software and requires a compelling reason why your product is better than the alternative to attract customers.
I get it. It sucks when Nutanix and Cisco are building platforms on CentOS and NASA is signing contracts with Rocky.
IMO the general understanding is that you could charge but had to share code with the people you distributed to, but they were free to re-share it. Red Hat punishes customers who do this and even generally reserves the right to sue them. Preventing redistribution seems pretty anti-GPL.
The re-sharing was always a risk of trying to sell GPL software and requires a compelling reason why your product is better than the alternative to attract customers.
So he reckons that without locking out free downstream users, Red Hat would go tits up and the whole Linux ecosystem would fall into the hands of hackers and hobbyists? Fine by me.
I like Jeff Geerling's response:
Red Hat: those who use open source code and don't contribute back are "a real threat to open source companies everywhere"
I call them: users.
I fight for the users.
I feel the other thing missing from all this Discourse is, IBM made UNIX. If they want to act all proprietary, why don't they abandon Linux and return to their own operating system?
That's right, because of the enormous amount of free labor they get from the open source community.
IBM still sells AIX too. The most recent release was six months ago.
Idk, on the one hand I could see the argument against organizations dodging the Red Hat fees by choosing free downstream, but then again, like, everything that RHEL does was always available? The reason you'd pay is for the support you'd get from them?
To be honest I never really understood why you'd specifically want something like CentOS over say, Debian - I mean, outside of I guess, .rpm packaging?
I've often seen set ups where Prod is RedHat because support, and Test and Dev environments are CentOS to avoid the fees on less important environments.
Interesting post. He seems to be channeling Bill Gates a bit.
The fact that they prevent their customers from sharing the code through restrictive subscription terms and lawsuit threats does seem problematic regarding the GPL, or at least the intent of the GPL. IMO the real money was never supposed to be in the software itself, it was in the support and access to developers that a company like Red Hat could provide.
His point about the free developer account was interesting: “This can be used by individuals for their own work and by RHEL customers for the work of their employees.”
When I was looking into this recently, the FAQ makes it pretty clear, multiple times, that it is intended for individuals and not entities (even if they aren’t enforcing it): “The no-cost self-supported Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals is designed for individuals and personal accounts–only one no-cost subscription may be added to a user/Red Hat account. This subscription is ideal for an individual developer who wants to develop on Red Hat Enterprise Linux using their personal system (even if owned by their employer).”
“You may individually use the no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals on corporate-owned devices. However, you should check to make sure that doing so doesn’t violate your organization’s IT policies (e.g., shadow IT). The no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals is assigned to the individual that creates the account. The account used to obtain the no-cost subscription will be completely separate from any existing corporate accounts.”
“Organizations with multiple developers may reach out to their Red Hat sales associate to learn more about the Red Hat Developer Subscription for Teams”