While I disagree with Red Hat’s decision to hinder source access, this move from Rocky (a commercial company!) seems even more disingenuous, imho.
Another method that we will leverage is pay-per-use public cloud instances. With this, anyone can spin up RHEL images in the cloud and thus obtain the source code for all packages and errata.
Nice. Red Hat gets paid (lets remember that they do contribute significantly to the FOSS, they should be getting paid for their work), and RHEL clones do have a way forward. Sounds like a win-win.
Well, Red Hat doesn’t really get paid (of course, I’m not arguing RH is not making or doesn’t have enough money) – they would get payed for one or a very small number of licenses. At the same time, Rocky (and Alma and more importantly Oracle) wants to actually sell (albeit only support) the same product put together by Red Hat so it’s not really a community RHEL clone. I think that’s the real issue here. I wouldn’t have a problem with this workaround if it were coming from the community, without the commercial asterisk attached.
I agree, I think it would have been better if Rhel just came clean with the real facts instead of pussy footing around it. I am on board with keeping open source open, but if Rocky is undercutting rhel for support with basically a red hat product, it changes the dynamic a lot.
Also, if Rocky is doing this, then it will be rocky’s fault that this clone system falls apart. Alma I believe is not for profit 1:1 and far more ethical.
Let’s not forget Oracle! While Rocky bit the bullet with this poorly written announcement, I believe Red Hat’s target was in fact Oracle, not some 20 employees startup with no customers.
While I disagree with Red Hat’s decision to hinder source access, this move from Rocky (a commercial company!) seems even more disingenuous, imho.
Why on earth is it disingenuous? RedHat is openly stating its intent to violate the GPL. Rocky is telling them “good luck with that.” RedHat wants to be the only game in town providing service contracts. Rocky is saying “no thanks; we’re sticking around.”
I don’t think Red Hat is violating GPL. For sure it’s not violating the legal terms of it (I’m fairly certain the army of lawyers RH and IBM have at their beck and call made sure of that) and I don’t think it’s violating it’s spirit (at least not yet) – they are still contributing any changes and their customers still get access to the source code. And (for now!) it doesn’t even seem they are making it super difficult to do so either. The way I see it, RH wants to be the only game in town providing service contracts for their own product which is fair game, imho. The problem with Rocky is that they also stand to make money out of the same source code which is the disingenuous part, in my opinion.
I honestly don’t know why Rocky made this announcement, even if their intentions are noble, they do come out as the bad guys in all this mess. They could have simply put out some generic announcement that “we are working towards a legal way” and kept doing what they are doing.
And to be clear: I believe the true people that stand to lose in this are the users and the community. I’ve been a user of CentOS (the old style, not this new breed of RHEL beta) for a long time and even an occasional Rocky user in recent times, but that will have to change.
I don’t think Red Hat is violating GPL. For sure it’s not violating the legal terms of it (I’m fairly certain the army of lawyers RH and IBM have at their beck and call made sure of that) and I don’t think it’s violating it’s spirit (at least not yet) – they are still contributing any changes and their customers still get access to the source code.
They are absolutely violating the spirit of the GPL. Telling your customers that you will not keep them as customers if they exercise their rights under the GPL is as clear a spiritual violation as it gets. And whether they are violating the letter of the law is an unresolved question.
The way I see it, RH wants to be the only game in town providing service contracts for their own product which is fair game, imho. The problem with Rocky is that they also stand to make money out of the same source code which is the disingenuous part, in my opinion.
The problem is that the software is not “their product.” Free Software is a collective endeavor that RedHat contributes to. It is not a product that belongs to them. The product is the support, and RedHat, by virtue of the GPL and the nature of Free Software, cannot stake an exclusive claim to the support.
The problem with Rocky is that they also stand to make money out of the same source code which is the disingenuous part, in my opinion.
If only Red Had didn’t kill CentOS, they won’t have this problem now. But noooo. Their IBM overlord demand more revenue, so they killed CentOS to force their users to buy RHEL licenses which increase their short term profits. By killing CentOS, they created a vacuum that’s now filled by Rocky, Alma and Oracle Linux. Red Hat see them as eating their lunch, so they double down on making stupid decision again.
I’m sure their decision to make accessing RHEL source code harder will backfire again within a few years and Red Had will make an even dumber move again.
