I don't get what's the big deal--essentially the only thing being lost is a pointer to commit that marks the difference between RHEL X.Y and X.Y+1..?
In the past, customers have been able to redistribute the RHEL repos freely. I assume that will remain the case as long as CentOS Stream is open source.
Edit: Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if IBM put some content in the RHEL repo that is under restrictive licenses that couldn't be redistributed just to complicate things, but all the important parts will remain open source, due to close ties to CentOS Stream and Fedora. Rocky/Alma already have to replace trademarks, and this wouldn't be much different, but they would have to obtain access to the repos as customers themselves, or have another customer strip the bad stuff out before throwing it over the fence. We'll have to see how hostile they want to be about it.
There's a duality here. Yes, by the nature of the distribution, GPL, and licensing general, Red Hat cannot stop or prevent a customer from distributing RHEL packages and software to third parties. However, Red Hat reserves the right to terminate any existing subscriptions a customer may have as a result of their package distributing. IIRC, the Enterprise Agreement makes it pretty clear the services and offerings provided by the subscription are for the customer and the customer only. Going outside of that violates the subscription's terms, not the softwares' licenses, therefore allowing Red Hat to end business with said customer.
For those concerned about the final year of CentOS 7: it will not be touched. It will continue to see source exports to git.centos.org as there is no parallel CentOS Stream 7 platform. Also, git.centos.org is not EOL either because it is used by other groups than Red Hat, like CentOS Special Interest Groups.
IANAL, but not so sure about that. From GPLv3:
> You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it.
That sounds like a further restriction.
However, on the other hand refusing to do business with someone in retaliation for exercising the rights granted by the licenses smells a lot like a restriction.
> You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
But I expect we'd have to see litigation to determine how broadly that can be interpreted.
Is applying a consequence as a result of an action the same as restricting that action?
I mean, I don't disagree this needs to be tested in court if it hasn't, but what alternative ways of restriction do you think this is referring to? Do you expect it to only apply to the distributor physically restraining the licensee when attempting to redistribute it? Even the examples given in the license such as imposing fees are applying a consequence.
Not a lawyer, so maybe someone else more knowledgeable about the space will expand on this.
I imagine that RH/IBM has had lawyers look into this before the policy was announced.
I'm not so sure. They're obligated to release the GPL'd code, which of course covers Linux itself, but they're under no such obligation for the non-GPL'd software they include.
They could license their RHEL-specific backport patches for non-GPL'd software such that they could not be redistributed, and if that code gets merged into CentOS Stream it could just be dual licensed from that port forward (so Stream could stay open but RHEL would be locked down).
The whole point of RHEL is the long term support (the back-porting), which is what they're going to stop publishing.
Stream does have major versions so you can continue to use CentOS Stream 8 and get backports. You only lose anything if you're tied to some minor version of EL for some reason.