No, you can redistribute it. RedHat can't stop you.
But you might only be able to do this once. Because what RedHat can do is cancel your contract, and stop you from using RedHat services, and you won't have access to future versions or updates.
But you might only be able to do this once. Because what RedHat can do is cancel your contract, and stop you from using RedHat services, and you won't have access to future versions or updates.
As long as one subscriber is willing to leave their contract per release, downstream derivatives should have no end of supply for each release. This may not help with patches, but many of those would come from third parties to begin with.
Start a consortium that creates a new LLC or non-profit organization with no ties back to the consortium. That new organization buys a license, and publishes the code until RedHat cuts them off. Start a new one and repeat.
Of course it could become a cat and mouse game, where RedHat starts denying customers it deems suspicious. They start demanding more info of their customers. But all that could be bad for business...
But RedHat is under no obligation to make future sales to you and can drop you as a customer for any reason, including you exercising your legal right to share the code.
So they want to be legal but sneaky? Let the legal but sneaky games begin!
Contract is a meeting of minds honestly intending to perform. If you did not have the good faith intention to perform the contract, it's not just sneaky, it's fraudulent.
1. You purchase release N
2. You distribute the source code to release N.
3. Red Hat terminates you.
4. You needed Red Hat N. You're doing enterprisey things or using software that runs on Red Hat.
5. Red Hat releases N + 1.
6. You try to get release N + 1 from Red Hat, because you're in the ecosystem, doing enterprisey things, using software that runs on Red Hat
7. Red Hat remembers what you did on release N and doesn't offer you release N + 1.
It doesn't quite seem like the purchase model. This barely seems to get you anything over what a Rocky or Alma or whatever scrape to put together with Red Hat damming distribution, so you might as well resort to them right at release N instead of paying Red Hat for it.
So, again, to become a customer and receive a product where the license of that product dictates you CAN redistribute, you MUST first enter into another contract that says if you redistribute the product, it may violate your standing as a customer and jeopardize your chances of receiving any future product.
Of course it’s a loophole, and I really hope it gets to court somehow because I doubt it would stand up. Just my opinion. I don’t know anything about GPL law, but it doesn’t seem logical that this is something that would be able to stand.
I hate to use an anecdote but consider that you have some rights that you may exercise - say, free speech. You then come to me and enter into a contract. I am within my rights to not renew that contract if I dislike the things you say under your pre-existing right to free speech, and in fact, I can put it into our contract that I will cancel it if you exercise that right in a way I don't like.
This is normal and commonplace.
edit: Please do not engage with the anecdote. It's meant to be helpful, not be literally equivalent in a legal sense. This is why I hate anecdotesssss
Another, perhaps more realistic example, is a government employer choosing to fire an employee who was caught using their free speech to advocate for a political challenger to the office they work under. Firing a person is not criminally punishing them, and in general an employer can fire an employee for what they say, but in this specific case, because the First Amendment limits the government, they couldn't do this. If you were working for private political organization, they likely could do this as the First Amendment wouldn't apply to the private organization.
Depends on the state, many have added political beliefs to their anti-discrimination laws, and such an act would be prohibited, but at the federal level this would be fine.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/businesspers...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...