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Comment by IshKebab | Hacker News Reader

Are you asking why a commercial company doesn't want to give its main product away for free? I'm surprised CentOS lasted as long as it did.

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The thing is, I'm not so sure RedHat actually lost revenue over CentOS. The people who want to use CentOS is a very different type of userbase than the people who would use RedHat/RHEL, and the CentOS people would simply choose Debian or something else over RedHat.

From purely a business perspective I think the entire thing naïvely makes sense, from a far-away view without much knowledge of the business space. But once you look a bit closer I don't think it does.

They definitely lost revenue. People use RHEL/CentOS because a load of software only officially supports Enterprise Linux. But why would they pay for RHEL if CentOS works fine?

> a load of software only officially supports Enterprise Linux

Which software is that?

The database engine IBM DB2 didn't (doesn't?) officially support Centos. It had to be RHEL.

At this point at least they seem to support RHEL, CentOS, SUSE, and Ubuntu. Or at least, they offer downloads for it – I'm having a hard time navigating their documentation to find a more precise answer.

But the people who are running Db2 probably has very little overlap with the people running CentOS, too.

https://www.ibm.com/software/reports/compatibility/clarity-r...

Basically all commercial EDA software. E.g.

https://www.synopsys.com/support/licensing-installation-comp...

Then they shouldn't have poked the bear.

By taking out the CentOS Foundation, which was NEVER going to sell support. They created 2 companies that will sell support, and they still have the same issue.

At the WORST those companies will have to buy a RHEL license somewhere in here, if Red Hat takes away redistribution rights on the srpms... they might as well put a gun to their own head.

SuSE will take the business gladly.

But, sometimes the people that use CentOS get hired by Mega-Corp and when their CTO requires a support contract with contracted SLA's, they choose RHEL instead of Ubuntu One, because they're way more familiar with RHEL'like systems instead of Debian systems.

Yes, cheap/free people will be cheap/free, but sometimes they're not the decider.

The code and bits aren't Red Hat's main product. Red Hat's main product is the "warm fuzzies" that large enterprises get from knowing that somebody is "on the hook" to provide support if there's a SHTF outage or other incident, and somebody to sue in the unlikely chance that they lose serious $$$ as a result of a technical problem. In many ways Red Hat is closer to a company that sells insurance than a company that sells software.

The product is open source. They chose to make a linux distribution.

I guess the question that would lead to is why a company that didn't want to give it's main product away for free would have had a main product that was licensed as open source for so many years.

We all know that an open source license means people can use it, copy it, modify it, and run it where they want, without paying anyone, right?

(Is it even legally possible to have a linux distribution that isn't open source? I'm not sure?)

> Is it even legally possible to have a linux distribution that isn't open source? I'm not sure?

For the GPL parts? No. But that doesn't mean "you must make it the source code publicly available at https://example.com/source-code.tar.gz".

GPL 2 and 3 differ a little bit in the exact terms for this, but both are essentially the same: you only need to ship source code to the people you distribute the software to, not to the general public at large.

You need to ship the source code to the people you distribute the software to and you need to do so under a license that allows them to modify and redistribute this.

So if any of your licensees wants to make a 100% copy of what you shipped, then you need to allow them to.

Kind of, but also no. As I understand it, RedHat customers are forbidden to redistribute the source code by the RedHat EULA. While they can't legally sue you for breaking the GPL, they can sue you or just drop you as a customer for breaching the EULA. I'm not entirely sure how this interacts with the GPL's "no additional restrictions" clause in a legal sense, although it clearly isn't in the spirit of it.

Either way, the net effect is the same: no one is going to risk the wrath of IBM's lawyers, and any avenue of "source leaks" can be closed off. It's not a functional mechanism for RHEL derivates.

I'm not sure that is accurate about the EULA?

The EULA I find googling (this is not something I am previously acquainted with) says:

> With the exception of certain image files identified in Section 1.3 below, the license terms for the components permit User to copy, modify, and redistribute the component, in both source code and binary code forms. This EULA does not limit User's rights under, or grant User rights that supersede, the license terms of any particular component.

— https://www.redhat.com/en/about/licenses/rhds-rhcs-eula

I may not be interpreting that correctly or what it means practically, I'm not really familiar with what's going on here. If you definitely know better than me, I'm happy to hear it (cites to other informed authors explaining it would be great!), but I don't want to go down a long thread accidentally discussing things based on a misunderstanding of the EULA...

I do get that Red Hat is trying to somehow add value to open source software (linux), have it's software be understood as being open source itself (for the marketing value), while also trying to get people to pay to use it. They are trying to have their cake and eat it too, I get it. And maybe they have enough lawyers to make it work somehow, or can just make it so inconvenient practically to use the rights the open source license grants to make it work somehow.

But yeah, if you "don't want to give your main product away for free", and your "main product" is licensed with an open source license... you are in a pretty difficult spot. Which is, I guess, where Red Hat finds themselves.

I've seen it mentioned in a few places; it took me a bit to find it, but it's in the "subscription services agreement"[1], the relevant bit being section 2.2:

"Distributing the Subscription Services (or any portion) to a third party outside the Portal or using the Subscription Services to support a third party without paying the respective fees is a material breach of this Agreement even though the open source license applicable to individual software packages may give you the right to distribute those packages (and this Agreement is not intended to interfere with your rights under those individual licenses)."

I think the way this works (legally) is that accessing their service (their Customer Portal) is covered under this EULA, while the software is covered under the license. So technically you're not adding additional restrictions to the GPL. Or something like that. Not a lawyer etc. etc.

Edit: I see there's also some discussion of this over here, in case you're interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36436375

[1]: https://www.redhat.com/rhdc/managed-files/GLOBAL_Cloud_Subsc...

Makes sense -- it sounds like you can't let someone else use your credentials to access the Customer Portal website/online services... or maybe there's something else that's a "subscription service" they're trying to limit too that I don't understand... but they seem to acknowledge you still have the right to redistribute the source code of any GPL licensed code, that the GPL gives you, right?

But yeah, they are trying to figure out how to square the circle and have their cake and eat it too. It does not seem like they are actually trying to tell you that you have lost the legal right to redistribute GPL software though.

The license doesn't actually say that. It says thar if you ship someone a binary then you also need to give them the source on request. Not the same as "everyone has a right to free access to the source".

Open source licenses "actually" also say that anyone you ship the binary and source to is free to share the source with whomever else they want to.

So an open source license to me seems to be in conflict with the idea that you "don't want to give it away for free", but if you think a license that requires you to give users the source and then lets them distribute that source as they will is a different thing than "giving it away for free", I don't know if I'm interested in arguing about it. Although I guess I'm curious if that's your position.

The "four freedoms" are "the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software". Note "copy" and "distribute". Any user of your software is free to copy and distribute it.

"Open source" has for decades _not_ simply meant "you share the source code with your licensed users", while not allowing modification or redistribution except by further license. There has for decades been a difference between "open source" and simply sharing the source with paying customers while not allowing them to share it with third parties -- and attempts to rewrite history and make "open source" mean nothing more than the latter are attempts to rewrite history.

You are right that making software available under open source license does not require the original owner/author to run any particular infrastructure of distribution though. It does not require them to run a web site or git repo or anything else. It just says that anyone with the software is allowed to share that software with whomever they like however they like, as well as make modifications and share those modifications with whomever they like, as well as run that software however they like, with no further permission or fee required because the open source license already grants permission.

So, I stand by my comment -- if you "don't want to give your main product away for free", and you license your "main product" under an open source license -- you have made a terrible mistake. (Or are engaged in some kind of calculated deception of your userbase). Because the open source license has indeed already granted the world the right to use your software for free.

what do you feel RH's main product is?

is it:

1. a collection of very old binaries of software with lots of testing done, or 2. a linux distribution that happens to have a very good support contract and a web of agreements with other vendors

Based on the experience I had with their support (covered by a support contract), it must be 1.

So the value is having to live with the same bugs for 10 years?

The value is not having to reverse-engineer, rewrite and recompile software every week because some random library changed in a non-compatible way.

For some people yes. The bugs you know about usually will have a workaround that minimizes it's impacts. It's the bugs you don't know about that are typically most difficult to deal with.

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