zlacker

>>gnufx+(OP)
Red Hat has not fucking stopped making its source available. It's making it difficult for non-customers to get the source, and that is within their right. The GPL family of licenses do not state that (1) you're obliged to redistribute anything to anyone; or that (2) if you redistribute binaries to Party A, you're obliged to redistribute sources to Party B (let alone the entire public).

Red Hat's behavior is not any kind of loophole in FOSS licensing that's worth worrying about. It's just a shenanigan they are pulling because they think it will help them stay paid.

The loopholes worth fussing about are SaaS (peple having absolutely no control over the software because they are using someone else's installation remotely) and tivoization (locked down hardware preventing users from exercising their rights in regard to the FOSS operating system it runs)

>>kazina+Yj
It's correct that the GPL does not require RH to distribute the source code to anyone but their customers. That's not the issue though! The issue is that if I, as a RH customer, execute the rights given to me by RH via the GPL and pass the sources to a third party, RH will terminate my customer contract. The license does not proscribe this in letter but it seems to go against its spirit.

>>neurom+8t
Although RH terminates the contract, they cannot stop you from using and redistributing what you got out of them, or even creating your own fork of RH.

They don't want to pay their engineers to work on Red Hat only to have some free forks follow the work, so they came up with the idea of eliminating and likely blacklisting customers who look like are there just to pick up changes for a fork.

Red Hat should be applauded for trying to find a business model which is compatible with copyleft, yet prevents freeloading.

Stallman never wanted to create a license that was anti-business, that's why this kind of thing is possible. A license which says you cannot drop or blacklist customers for any reason wouldn't be a free license.

There is an abundance of distros out there; anyone who doesn't like Red Hat for any reason can easily use something else.

It will be interesting to see whether Red Hat's ploy works out in the long run. Will it help grow their business, or will it turn out to be detrimental due to a backlash effect. Obviously, some people don't like it; it's a question of are there enough of them to matter.

There is also the question of whether a free fork of Red Hat that people can develop and test with without becoming paying Red Hat customers really is bad for Red Hat (as they are obviously convinced) or whether it is actually good.

>>kazina+lQ
> you cannot drop or blacklist customers for any reason

Trade law in Europe works like exactly that: you do not get to choose your clients; you either have to serve anyone that is willing to pay, or no one at all. The US should definitely adopt this principle.

>>antice+CM1
If literally true as you have written it up, it's pretty stupid; e.g. a brick-and-mortar store should be able to ban someone who shoplifts, or harasses staff or customers.

>>kazina+BR1
> a brick-and-mortar store should be able to ban someone who shoplifts

I don't even like this. Shoplifters should all go to prison, but once they've paid their debt to society and been rehabilitated, they should be allowed to do everything that law-abiding citizens can do, including going back as a legitimate customer to stores that they previously stole from.

>>joseph+Z04
law-abiding citizens can get banned from WalMart too