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Comment by thedriver | Hacker News Reader

Yes, someone can buy RHEL, request the source, and then share it away. And they can do nothing about it.

However, it doesn't mean that Red Hat is required to keep doing business with them, or that they are automatically entitled to receive all future updates.

As I said, GNU never said that the source code must be downloadable by anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world, from some public repository. It would be a completely valid business to sell binaries and then only provide the source code on request. This of course does not fit some people's idea of what free software is about.

There are of course a lot of ways that people can use to obtain RHEL source code even from now on, but I think that some people underestimate how much friction this can cause for the downstream derivatives.

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> GNU never said that the source code must be downloadable by anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world, from some public repository. It would be a completely valid business to sell binaries and then only provide the source code on request.

The GPL says "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" (emphasis mine). So if one of your paying customers were to post your binary and the written offer somewhere public, then you would have to make the source code available to anyone in the world.

> So if one of your paying customers were to post your binary and the written offer somewhere public, then you would have to make the source code available to anyone in the world.

That's misreading the GPL. The person who posted the binary has to provide the source code; in your example, that's the "paying customers", not RedHat. RedHat is only required to provide the source code to persons they distribute the binary to.

> The person who posted the binary has to provide the source code; in your example, that's the "paying customers", not RedHat. RedHat is only required to provide the source code to persons they distribute the binary to.

Nope, look at this option in the GPL:

> Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

from the GPL 2.0:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

----

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

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, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

----

RedHat is only required to pick (a), (b), _or_ (c). AFAICT, they picked (a) by putting SRPMS in their repos alongside their RPMS.

> RedHat is only required to pick (a), (b), _or_ (c). AFAICT, they picked (a) by putting SRPMS in their repos alongside their RPMS.

Well they can't pick (c) because they don't meet either of the two requirements it has. And I know they picked (a) in real life, but I was responding to thedriver's hypothetical:

> It would be a completely valid business to sell binaries and then only provide the source code on request.

And that's (b).

More about it https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/12166/do-mirr...

> Yes, someone can buy RHEL, request the source, and then share it away. And they can do nothing about it.

> However, it doesn't mean that Red Hat is required to keep doing business with them, or that they are automatically entitled to receive all future updates.

That sounds a lot like they can do something about it. It also sounds like RedHat would be violating the GNU Public License by restricting what people can do with it, i.e. share it.

> As I said, GNU never said that the source code must be downloadable by anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world, from some public repository.

That's a strawman.

> That's a strawman

No it's not. It's literally what people are demanding.

There are people who think the earth is flat, but we don't take them seriously in conversations about geography, nor should we use them as examples when discussing various opinions on geography.

The legal issue as I've read it is that RedHat is trying to restrict their customers from redistributing the source code themselves; their removal of the public repos is an annoyance but not the legal issue.

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