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Once again...Once again...Posted Mar 3, 2011 10:39 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: What rights? by dskoll Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source
But it absolutely does interfere with those rights. How can you claim it does not? I'm not claiming that. RedHat does. I don't think you've read the whole thing. Basically RedHat says the following: See? It does not interfere with your GPL rights - but it shifts the separation issue on your side. You must prove that you have the right to distribute anything - and if you'll do a single error... well, your support contract is no longer valid and that's that. Why do you think that? Are you claiming that the patches Red Hat distributes to its customers are not derived from a GPL'd work? They contain mix of the GPLed code and non-GPLed code. For example a lot of files in Documentation subdirectory are not derived works of kernel (even if they are distributed in the same tarball - see "mere aggregation" clause). This means that the fact that patch applies to Linux kernel is not enough to clear you: you must review each and every patch and decide what parts of it are GPL-derived and what parts are not GPL-derived. This is quite non-trivial amount of work.
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Once again... Posted Mar 3, 2011 12:02 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I'm not claiming that. RedHat does. Red Hat is full of crap if it claims that. If you think Red Hat is using the threat of lawyers to stop people from distributing the patches ("Our lawyers are always ready to discuss your proof in the court of law."), then that's even worse. That throws a huge chill over collaborative kernel development. Even I don't think Red Hat is that bad; I believe they won't actually sue anyone for distributing the patches. This means that the fact that patch applies to Linux kernel is not enough to clear you: you must review each and every patch and decide what parts of it are GPL-derived and what parts are not GPL-derived. If you believe that's what Red Hat is doing, then it's even worse that what I'm claiming it's doing. If what you say is true, then Red Hat is deliberately blocking collaborative kernel development and adding legal threats to its arsenal against anyone using its patches. Do you think that's in the spirit of the GPL?
RedHat had not invented anything Posted Mar 4, 2011 17:52 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] If you think Red Hat is using the threat of lawyers to stop people from distributing the patches ("Our lawyers are always ready to discuss your proof in the court of law."), then that's even worse. That throws a huge chill over collaborative kernel development. Even I don't think Red Hat is that bad; I believe they won't actually sue anyone for distributing the patches. If they'll sue or not remains to be seen. But they reserve the right to do so - like Microsoft reserves the right to do so (WRT Mono). If you believe that's what Red Hat is doing, then it's even worse that what I'm claiming it's doing. If what you say is true, then Red Hat is deliberately blocking collaborative kernel development and adding legal threats to its arsenal against anyone using its patches. Do you think that's in the spirit of the GPL? Well, it's good question. Probably not. But... FSF itself developed GNU programs (like emacs or gcc) behind the closed doors for years. When the programs were released they were released as tarballs only - access to the VCS was restricted even fater that. Of course they have not threatened you with lawers and when EGCS project decided to fork GCC they they allowed them to take patches from private tree, but it happened when developers convinced RMS to conduct this experiment, not when they decided that they have unalienable right to publish them...
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