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Comment by totallywrong | Hacker News Reader

> When Red Hat decided to turn the community CentOS distribution into a leading-edge distro instead of basically "Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but free", users like me were justifiably angered.

I miss CentOS too. But how is that justifiable anger? Are you angry at the myriad of companies using open source code to build a paid product, and not giving it for free? I absolutely think that it backfired and they shouldn't have done it, but I also understand they had no obligation to maintain a 1:1 free alternative of their main product. That's just an unrealistic expectation imo.

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Changing the support terms from 10 years to 1 year mid-stream lost them a lot of trust. It's not just what they did, it's how.

To that, I couldn't agree more.

It's not comparable, as the source code is mostly not theirs.

As long as they comply with the licenses, which they do, that's largely irrelevant I'm afraid.

I'm a little confused how this new move still complies with many licences.

As a paying customer you receive access the sources, as you're supposed to - but under contractual terms that you can't share them.

Take the GPL as the most famous example. Providing me GPL'd sources that I'm not allowed to redistribute under the same terms definitely feels like it's against the spirit of the agreement. I'm too warm-blooded to argue whether it's under the letter.

It's been said elsewhere, you can legally redistribute, but then they will end your subscription, as those are the terms you agree to.

So the restriction isn't on exercising your rights on what you've received, which would be under the terms of the licence - it's on their willingness to provide you with anything else, which would be under the terms of their contract.

I think I'll stick with my position that it's not within the spirit of the licence. (But I'd agree that this change has no impact on this.)

Not just the spirit, the GPLv2 terms include:

"Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."[1]

So if they forbid sharing, they can't distribute Linux themselves.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

It's legally irrelevant, but if you want an explanation for "justifiable anger" it's extremely relevant.

These days isn't OpenShift their main product?

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