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Commitment to Open ?Commitment to Open ?Posted Mar 5, 2011 23:36 UTC (Sat) by zonker (subscriber, #7867)In reply to: Commitment to Open ? by ewan Parent article: Commitment to Open (Red Hat News)
"or it does inconvenience Oracle and they sue."
Er, on what grounds? RHAT is perhaps doing the bare minimum required by the GPL - but they are doing it.
What this does does not prevent Oracle from recompiling the kernel and running it, nor does it thwart studying the kernel, etc. It just means that they have to do detective work to figure out what's changed and where. Unless I'm mistaken about the GPL, there is no requirement whatsoever to provide any commentary on changes or break changes out as patches from the original source - only that you have to supply the changes, which they've done, but as part of the overall kernel.
I can't see Oracle having any cause to sue, even if they are (I hope) inconvenienced by this.
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Commitment to Open ? Posted Mar 6, 2011 0:42 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Sorry, no. GPL talks about passing source code if you distribute a changed version, not original source code, changes, and running commentary. So here Red Hat has historically done much more than was asked for (distributing to all comers, distributing upstream source and individual patches), now they are still doing more than strictly required. Again the ages old discussion: If you distribute your stuff under $LICENSE, you can't then complain if somebody does what said $LICENSE allows.
Commitment to Open ? Posted Mar 6, 2011 2:08 UTC (Sun) by zonker (subscriber, #7867) [Link]
"If you distribute your stuff under $LICENSE, you can't then complain if somebody does what said $LICENSE allows."
You can complain, you just can't sue.
I compare this to the recent Supreme Court decision about the WBC - the "church" has the right to do what they do under the First Amendment. They should not be jailed for it, nor barred from it. That doesn't mean that the rest of the society/community can't or shouldn't shun them.
I'd much rather see companies kept in compliance with the spirit of the license by people complaining than by trying to write licenses that dictate every community standard.
Commitment to Open ? Posted Mar 6, 2011 2:35 UTC (Sun) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
You can sue, you just can't win. ;) I also don't think complaining is going to win a whole lot. Companies are used to complainers.
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