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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

> so any third party can ask for source once the binaries are distributed

Ah, but that is false. Only a party Y that has received binaries from X can ask X for the source.

If X distributes GPLed binaries to Y, then X must provide sources to Y.

You don't have to provide sources to someone to whom you didn't distribute binaries. If you distributed binaries to Peter, you do not owe Paul source code.

There has to be someone who buys binaries from Red Hat and gets the source; that someone can redistribute the source.

The issue is some alleged threat that Red Hat may supposedly identify the users who do that, and retaliate against them by disabling the accounts that the use for getting those binaries. One can speculate how; for instance they could identify users who are fetching unusual breadth/scope of RHEL source code packages.

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Here we go again. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/license-rules... "The Linux Kernel is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only"

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html [3.] "b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code,"

QED

As I said, there are other documents, especially in userland, encumbered by other licenses.

I believe "third parties" refers to people who are receiving the software from the redistributor who is entering into this license.

First party: the copyright holder, offering the license (e.g. FSF GNU Project, kernel devs, ...).

Second party: person/organization entering into the the license, intending to redistribute (e.g. Red Hat)

Third parties: persons/organizations to whom that licensee intends to redistribute (e.g. people with Red Hat accounts downloading binaries)

I think you're misreading it as the first party being Red Hat, the second party being the Red Hat user, and third parties being internet randos.

From the point of view of the Red Hat user getting the software (e.g. Rock Linux), who wants to provide the software to additional users (Rock Linux users), yes, those users are now third parties. The first party is still the copyright holder. But that is a brand new agreement, not involving Red Hat. Second party is now Rock Linux. Red Hat is out of the picture and bears no obligations toward Rock Linux users, who did not obtain anything from Red Hat.

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