but how does red hat structure their stuff? I know that gnu projects must surrender their copyright to gnu, in order to prevent future shenanigans. if red hat had their core infrastructure (package manager, package definitions, etc.) copyrighted to red hat, then they can change the license on future releases of red hat to make it restrictive. you're then free to release a gpl source of the packaged code and the red hat specific modifications, since they fall under gpl, but you can't release the scaffolding anymore that make up the rest of the red hat system. I'm not a lawyer, but I've seen this kind of trick pulled on gpl projects before, where version 2 is now bsd/proprietary, while gpl version 1 remains in public access.
(edit: I'm reading the rest of the thread, and it seems there's some confusion about what exactly is in the new red hat contracts.)
Maybe more significantly, Red Hat has only made limited use of CLAs in the past and hasn't used any CLAs for many years now. It's basically corporate policy.
"2 b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
the copy and distribution clause is only part 3, where you "may" copy and distribute the program (or its derivative work, as per part 2) provided that you either "accompany it with complete … source code" or some means to get the source code from you on demand.
I can't claim this just from reading the license, because I'm not a lawyer, but in rms's reading and in Lessing's reading, the combination of part 1 and part 2 mean, paraphrasing, "if you make derivative work, compile it, and distributed it, you must also provide source code".
A trickier thing for Red Hat might be
> You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
One may argue about how to interpret that with regard to, for example, terminating a business relationship as a result. (I could see arguments on both sides.)
Also, Red Hat's method for complying with section 3 could be a subtle issue, because one of the options for compliance requires promising to provide "any third party" with the source code upon request. I don't know whether Red Hat is using that option or a different option.
I think there's been far too little focus on this, which is the crux of it. IMO (an IANAL) it seems pretty clear that even though this is not an explicit new license condition, it de facto does prevent redistribution: i.e. "you can do business with us, but only if you do not exercise one of your rights" in de facto limiting that right
I would love to see this adjudicated. Is there a company that builds statically against RHEL and resells, or modifies RHEL as a paying customer and resells that could show material injury by this move?
> If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
If you are a customer of RHEL, then you do in fact have the ability to request a copy of the source code, including on physical media, and the ability to download it yourself from the customer portal, or from the srpm repositories.
The entire change is that the source code is now only being published in 2 places (CentOS stream and the customer portal) instead of 3 (the following two plus git.centos.org). I suppose it's 3 places instead of 4 if you include the srpm repositories.
There are a lot of drawbacks to use of the written offer option so I'm not sure if Red Hat will continue to use it with RHEL in the future.
>> You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein
Is it all that obvious or clear that "if we don't like what you do with our stuff, we will not renew your contract next year or sell you anything anymore" a restriction on the software they already delivered?
The software to which that clause applies was already delivered, and redhat is not, as far as I know, applying any restrictions on that software.
As a company, they are not obliged to sell to anyone who shows up with the sticker price, so this doesn't look, to me, like a restriction on the software itself.
After all, the right to choose your customers is a very basic one that only has few exemptions related to individuals in protected classes.
Yes, it's obvious.