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Comment by dizhn | Hacker News Reader

"you are only entitled to the source if you are a user of said software."

Correct but incomplete. One of the rights you automatically get is the right to share said source code. RedHat is making this forbidden with a contract.

IMO this is the only thing Red Hat is doing wrong

(That and changing the end of support date for Centos 8 after they had already committed to a longer timeframe. But this is a different topic.)

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You're still able to share the source code. Red Hat simply decides not to give you new binaries, so you don't get new source code.

Why is this so difficult to understand?

This is not difficult to understand at all. There's actually nothing to understand. It's facts.

How people will respond to it is where you'll have variety. I don't think it's proper to use a license then add an auxiliary thing that goes against the spirit of the thing. This is my opinion.

In what way is the spirit of the GPL that you’re forced to provide product updates to someone for perpetuity?

As long as you keep basing your product on GPLed code of course. You can always write everything yourself, take software with a more permissive license, or don't provide updates to anybody.

The GPL does not say that. You may feel that way, but it doesn’t change the GPL.

It is not the spirit of the GPL to force continued distribution of source.

You distribute binaries you have to distribute its source as well. There is no scenario I know of where this is not true. If there is, please explain.

There is no forcing involved and I have not claimed there is.

>You distribute binaries you have to distribute its source as well.

binaries are distributed only to those on the active contract, if you lose the contract you lose the binaries and thus the source. Of course, if you made a local backup you can still use everything for your own benefits

> if you made a local backup you can still use everything for your own benefits

This is GPL code. You can not only use both the binaries and source "for your own benefits",you can also share both forever with whomever you want. There is no revoking the GPL, nor taking the binaries or source back.

Nobody is taking anything back. If your contract with RH stops you lose access to their servers and cannot download their binaries or their source anymore. You can freely share everything you managed to download.

Agree to agree.

I don't know if you are trolling or actually think this is a clever argument but its not.

Clearly Red Hats thread of cancelling the support contract is intended to discourage source distribution. The point of the GPL is to ensure source distribution is possible. These two goals are inherently opposed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37019136

I want to give Red Hat the benefit of the doubt here until we see them acting otherwise in practice.

The “point” of the GPL is to provide source code to users of a binary. You are misinformed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but sharing the source simply cancels the contract or you receive some legal penalties as well?

Both commenters to my comment used the word "simply". I don't think this is simple at all.

How is it simple for a company who wants support from a vendor to "simply" lose that support even though the license of the code was specifically designed to ensure the very thing.

This is incorrect. Sharing source, you receive from Red Hat as part of your Subscription, is not limited by our Subscription Agreements and there is no penalty for sharing it. See Section 1.4 here.

https://www.redhat.com/licenses/Appendix-1-Global-English-20...

Specifically,

     This Agreement establishes the rights and obligations associated with Subscription Services and is not intended to limit your rights to software code under the terms of an open source license.

This is interesting. If this is indeed the case then much of the discussion around it could be considered FUD. Why is redhat not addressing it? Why did the false idea get traction in the first place?

I do think Mike McGrath tried to communicate this. It got missed somehow.

Maybe we now got a case of foot (or even two feet) inserted into mouth. It’s highly emotional topic, even internally. I don’t know what the communications strategy is. Not my job. I will say that we’re encouraged internally, “don’t feed the trolls” and to let our various communication teams and leaders to do their jobs.

I just hope others like maddog guide the community back to sane discussions.

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